AOL Sues Porn Spammers 136
MasterOfDisaster writes "c|net reports "that in a crackdown on spam, America Online is suing a company that owns and operates pornographic Web sites, accusing it of sending junk e-mail to AOL members." My favorite part is the comment from the accused, "We do not knowingly profit from unsolicited e-mail." Ah, blessed ignorance.
Re:Pointing AOL in the right direction... (Score:1)
Re:Those damn CDs!! (Score:1)
Re:Those damn CDs!! (Score:1)
Disturbing (Score:4)
Singling out Porn smacks of the deep thread of puritanism that still runs through America and gives me a 1st Ammendment chill.
Re:Those damn CDs!! (Score:1)
What you're saying though, can't be true IMO, because why would Fedex offer 2 or 3 day delivery, and UPS offer 5 or 7 day ground delivery? That'd be breaking the law according to the rules you laid out.
Re:Unsolicited commercial junk email not Spam (Score:1)
Spamming is done by spammers. Not spaming by Spamers.
Re:Unsolicited commercial junk email not Spam (Score:1)
Hint1: 127.0.0.1 is IP for "this host which I'm currently (ab)using."
Hint2: abuse is (nearly) a required email address on any mail server.
Now picture in your mind a mail server that doubles as a webbrowser server. True, a very bad idea in the first place, but what is management for if not for the bad ideas?
Stefan.
It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
Re:ICQ (Score:1)
Re:Header forgery as trademark violation (Score:1)
Where a spammer runs afoul of trademark law in forging an e-mail header is this: by making it appear that an e-mail originated from an AOL server, the message allegedly meets the requirements of AOL's AUP and ToS, and is therefore, "approved" by AOL. (I know, I know
As in ANY IP lawsuit, the infringer is liable for treble damages PLUS attorney's fees. I saw, in another thread, that AOL's spam volume could be as high as 30% of total mail handled. Given the cost of handling that mail, the damages for handling 550'd mail from people who have the capability to bounce mail coupled with the cost of handling the complaints to abuse@aol.com and postmaster@aol.com add up to a substantial amount of money.
I hope AOL succeeds in this lawsuit and that they continue in this vein. The trademark infringement issue is a lay-down winner. I'd like to see hotmail (another prime victim of header forgery) adopt this tactic also.
Spammers have been using "throw-down" ISP accounts for access and header spoofing for years. They don't care if they lose their account because they can always open another. Making it cost them money to forge headers and pass off the cost of 550's to someone else just might bring the practice to an end.
Spamming exists because it allows the advertiser to transfer the cost of his advertising to the recipient. This is an evil practice. Battling spammers is something that is not for the faint of heart. One spam-fighter of whom I am aware has received death threats because of his activities. For all it's faults, AOL should be supported for it's apparently novel tactic.
Regards,
ninewands
Re:My experience with Cyber Entertainment... (Score:1)
Benefits?
----
Re:What about the spam I get from AOL? (Score:1)
To clarify: not all spam you get from AOL-based email addresses actually comes from AOL members. They're often forged. I have seen AOL in action, as it were, and since AOL-based email addresses are shown to AOL members without the domain, the presence of the domain in the source address proves more or less conclusively that spammers often forge their headers to fake an AOL source.
You might think that spammers would realize they shouldn't spam AOL members with obviously faked AOL source addresses, but apparently they're not a bright lot.
inigima
Re:Those damn CDs!! (Score:1)
Re:Those damn CDs!! (Score:5)
"But I've never had to pay for it!" you cry.
Actually, you do. The Euro recipients know this right up front, because they get cold-cocked with per-second telephone access charges.
Americans *should* know it, if they'd only just think for a moment. They get higher ISP charges and/or go over their transfer limits because of the spam email.
Yes, yes. You only pay $35/month for your whizbang ADSL connection. But that $35/month *includes* the cost of spam. Your ISP is paying for the transfer, storage and processing of that spam EMail -- and you *know* that the costs are passed on to the consumer, with a few percent tacked on for good luck.
You pay for the spam, sure as god/dog made little green apples.
Ergo, no double standard.
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Wasting bandwidth (Score:1)
OTOH, as said earlier, there is somewhat of a hypocracy in their user agreement...
CAP THAT KARMA!
Moderators: -1, nested, oldest first!
UUNET dialup spammers active again today (Score:2)
The UUNET spammers collective is still being allowed to operate -- one of them tried a stealth port25 probe today but hit our firewall:
00:22:03 (EST) 04 January 2001: Port 25/smtp ACK/no_SYN connection DENIED from: 1Cust180.tnt38.det3.da.uu.net (63.44.201.180)
Coincidentally no doubt, this was quickly followed by the Harvard dialup scanners collective checking our netbios availability:
23:28:10 (EST) 04 January 2001: Port 137/netbios SYN connection DENIED from: sfp220-198.harvard.edu (128.103.220.198)
Someone please tell me UUNET and Harvard are doing something to stop these guys.
Re:Bulk SMTP from www.xs4all.nl (Score:1)
Stop using FUD.
*plonk*
Stefan.
It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
Re:Unsolicited commercial junk email not Spam (Score:1)
Stefan.
It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
Re:Those damn CDs!! (Score:1)
Re: real or feigned ignorance (Score:2)
That may be true for some real-world businesses who are taking their first dip on the web, but it's clearly not true in this case. All of the big players in online porn are fucking brilliantly net-savvy. They keep up with the bleeding edge of technology, and they know exactly what they're doing.
If you read between the lines you'll see that Cyber Entertainment set up the anti-spam policy as a weasel dodge. As long as they don't do the actual spamming, and "don't ask don't tell" about spam sent by their licensees, the devilish contract stays intact. AOL is working hard to prove that even without direct orders to spam, their "wink wink nudge nudge" is bad enough.
Personally, I'd love to see eBay shot down for the same exact thing. eBay knows damn well that their auctioneers spam the hell out of off-topic Usenet groups. Unfortunately, Usenet doesn't keep a pack of rabid lawyers on retainer...
Re:-1 Overrated please (Score:1)
Those damn CDs!! (Score:2)
Dancin Santa
AOL and Wal-Mart (Score:1)
pr0n spam (Score:2)
Dancin Santa
Re:ICQ (Score:1)
In UK you can opt out of paper junk mail (Score:3)
In the UK you can opt out of paper junk mail by registering your name and address with the Mailing Preference Service. After I registered I got no more paper junk mail addressed to me. Occasionally I get junk mail sent to my address which have no name on them.
Freepost 22
London
W1E 7EZ
I was wondering whether there is a similar service in other countries?
Re:Those damn CDs!! (Score:1)
Isn't the price of a stamp in the US going up in a few days?
Perhaps instead of charging people who have legit uses of mail, they should charge the junk mail people more. Every day someone wants to loan me $70000.
Aol is the worst spammer (Score:1)
Upon logging in, there were a total of 4 popup windows! Yes 4! The first one, you had to cancel before you were even let in to aol. If you didn't acknowledge it you'd be prevented from logging in.
Then there's another one, the "welcome" screen, that you can't close. All you can do is minimize it.
But of course, Aol doesn't tell you you can disable 3 out of 4 of these annoying popup windows. To get to it you have to dig real deep into aol's "personal preferences".
Screw aol. They're the biggest hypocrites if I've ever seen one.
AOL Sues Porn Spam(m)ers: The True Story (Score:5)
Re:Those damn CDs!! (Score:1)
-Use them as frisbees. They don't fly as well, but it can be fun nonetheless.
-Simply throw them at the wall to see them shatter. Great stress reliever.
-Use them to install AOL on friends computers when they aren't looking. A great practical joke to play on someone.
-Mount them on the wall with the shiny side out. If placed right, it makes for some sweet lighting effects.
Too bad you can't reformat the CD's, like you clould the floppies.
Re:What about the spam I get from AOL? (Score:1)
Also, one thing to keep in mind is that if you are on AOL, and you get e-mail from blah@aol.com (unless it's from a mailing list or something) then the address is most likely forged.
Kierthos
(Yeah, I use AOL... at least it's not MSN)
Re:Louisiana Pests and Spam Hunters (Score:1)
Re:Hey Anonymous Coward (Score:1)
Re:Unsolicited commercial junk email not Spam (Score:1)
Re:Sorry, but.. (Score:1)
Imagine those spammers running with Boba Fett on their ass!
Woo hoo!
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Re:Unsolicited commercial junk email not Spam (Score:1)
The server from which the users start their webbrowser.
Stefan.
It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
Then we should all sue AOL (Score:1)
Re:Those damn CDs!! (Score:2)
I would argue that point. Many are pointing out that spam costs the end user because it inflates the IPS's operating costs which are then passed on to the end user. Get rid of spam, reduce the ISP's costs, reduce the end-user's monthly bill, right?
Assuming that is the case, doesn't the same thing sort-of apply to the USPS? Did they not just raise rates again? [usps.com] Isn't it possible or even likely that some of the cost of building up USPS infrastructure to be able to handle all that junk mail ends up being passed on to consumers in the form of postage rate increases?
Ok, maybe not that much. The junk mailers obviously have to pay postage, but I'm wondering if that bulk rate has gone up as much (proportionally) as 1st-class postage has over the years. Just a thought.
Re:Those damn CDs!! (Score:2)
Coca Cola spends a fortune on marketing. If you purchase a Coke, you are implicitly choosing to pay Coke for its advertising.
If you choose to purchase a Pepsi, you are *not* paying for Coke's advertising. Coke's advertising costs are born only by Coke, and you have chosen to not support those costs.
Spam doesn't offer you that choice.
No matter which ISP you subscribe to, you will be paying for the advertising of several hundred spam-using companies.
You are *forced* to subsidize their marketing costs.
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1 down... (Score:1)
Porn spam. (Score:2)
Ok listen here, this is AMERICA. When we start to persecute those who like a little spam in their porn, who's next? The very framers of our hallowed constitution so many years ago?
If we start with the little people, the men and women of otherwise fine moral upstanding nature who just happen to enjoy copulation with meat products in all its varied depravity, then who among us can truly claim to be an AMERICAN?
Come on people, this is what
I think it was Mark Twain that said "When you lose the freedom of expression, then you're just fucked." Weighty words indeed.
Louisiana Pests and Spam Hunters (Score:5)
They had a horrible time getting rid of it, and were losing the battle, until they came up with a unique solution.
Someone did some research, and figured out how to cook it, and promote it as a delicacy. The result was that suddenly you had a whole bunch of people hunting down the critter so they could cook it themselves, or sell it to a restaurant, or whatever.
The population is now very nicely under control, and is no longer an ecological threat.
So what has this got to do with spam?
It is my contention that spam will continue to exist as a problem until we make it profitable to go after folks who are spammers. Then it becomes a business.
that is why I have advocated a spam licensing program in the past, so that it would become legal for everyone to bill the spammers for traffic, etc. and business would pop up whose sole purpose in life would be to hunt spammers. The spam hunters would get a piece of the action, and send you a check.
It has to become advantageous for someone to have a business billing spammers on a general basis. Everyone hates bill collectors. We could turn them on the spammers.
Re:In UK you can opt out of paper junk mail (Score:1)
Re:Those damn CDs!! (Score:2)
LS
Re:Worse is **idiots** running open mail relays! (Score:1)
Don't you know?
Installing Linux turned them into a 1337 455 h4x0r d00d.
*sigh*
-=-
Re:Those damn CDs!! (Score:1)
Heh, when we had AOL (my wife and kids) we got half a dozen CDs mailed to us every month. Since we've been off for a few years, it has dwindled down to next to nothing. Strange.
I'm just worried that if AOL gets it's way and the FCC forces AT&T to unbundle Cable access from ISP service, we would get bombarded again with unwanted CDs.
Re:Those damn CDs!! (Score:1)
Re:Those damn CDs!! (Score:1)
You really think this is true? Look here [zerojunkmail.com] and here [stopjunk.com]. I also like this quote from stopjunk.com:
Still think junk mail doesn't cost anything?
Re:Bandwidth cost of spam is negligeable. (Score:1)
It isn't "really" another form of a company attempting to get your attention.
It *really* is a way for a company to force you to subsidize their marketing costs, whether you purchase the product or not.
In all other cases of advertising, you implicitly choose to suppose the costs of advertising when you choose to purchase the product.
About fifteen years ago, an exactly analogous situation existed: spam fax. In those days, faxes were thermafax: they used special paper that was bloody expensive.
Spam marketers had no problem using war-dialers to spread their marketing information to every fax machine they could. The costs to businesses were obvious, as their thermafax paper was rapidly consumed.
Unsolicited faxes were made illegal. It was decided that no business should be able to force others to pay for its advertising costs.
It's only because EMail costs are hidden, mainly unaccounted for and are new-tech, that the governments haven't stepped in to ban EMail spam.
The legal and moral issues have already been determined, by the previous spam-fax ban.
Your points re: porn advertising, AOL et al are irrelevent.
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Re:Those damn CDs!! (Score:2)
Plus wasn't the most recent raise in 1st class postage $0.01?
The cure of the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.
Re:To those saying they aren't paying for spam (Score:1)
What does it matter how many users you have? The useful traffic/spam ratio is still the same.
Re:Unsolicited commercial junk email not Spam (Score:1)
Re:ICQ (Score:1)
Re:In UK you can opt out of paper junk mail (Score:1)
Edward Burr
Re:Those damn CDs!! (Score:1)
Money comes and goes. We, and our world, don't.
Re:Those damn CDs!! (Score:3)
Bad news... you, me *and* our world come and go. Everything will be recycled eventually. What you're really worried about is the 'us' and frankly I doubt 'us' will be around long enough for the universe to take notice.
Mother nature is my recycling bin.
Re:Bandwidth cost of spam is negligeable. (Score:1)
Kinda...
I'm affrade the "Americans pay for it too" argument isn't reasonable..
UK has this small problem of a phone monopoly who is also an ISP and wanabe Internet monopoly.. (Not yet but not for lack of trying)
But some Americans DO pay for time on-line or bandwith... charges for calling an ISP long distence mean spam costs money..
Also we don't allways pay directly.. We all pay for spam in the form of disk space... Your ISP pays for disk space on the bulkload so the added spam dosn't need to be added in..
Same for desktop users.. larg hard disk is used for e-mail, data files, porn, etc.. You really don't notice becouse the spam is really less noticable than the disk space used by your web browser cache. But when using a PCS or a Palm pilot your storage is considerably smaller. Spam could mean buying a unit with more memory or buying an upgrade to what you have.
Also some of us use free services... my free e-mail accounts grant me 10 megs to 30 megs of disk space to store e-mail.
Also spammers may seem rude but at least they try to matain a one time contact rule. Some spammers won't do that. The worst spam I got came from CyberPromo itself.. once every 30 min.. every day.. around the clock... That nonsence adds up..
While thats not happening anymore... Spam means BBS sysops can't afford a Usenet feed (and most ISPs won't provide same)... the FidoNet gateway is (basicly) shut down... etc... We may not be paying in dollers but we most certenly pay in lossed connectivity.. lost time.. and lost posabilitys...
Re:unsolicited snail mail (Score:1)
Re:Louisiana Pests and Spam Hunters (Score:1)
Re:i thought it was (Score:3)
Sevral notes (Score:3)
This dosn't mean "We are making money from spam we just fain ignorence" but "We never bothered to learn what spam is"
Thats the problem with a lot of busnesses. Our luck that spam simply dosn't occure to most people when they first start doing busness on the net. When they try to addapt the old postal junk mail anolog they print up post cards and mail them out. I rember when TI did this.. The first postal junk mail I ever got reguarding the Internet,... I was kinda supprised... But it wasn't the last junk mail.
Still when someone new to the Internet dose his homework often Spam supplyers strike.. They latch on and teach the ways of spam... "Ohh ignore those techno dweeb hippys... they aren't up with the cutting edge..." or some such nonsence... By the time they run accrost matereal against spam they think it's all nonsence and BS.
Then they spam.. lost all credability.. lose money.. and drop off the face of the net never to return again...
Then there is the other side of this...
"Ignorence is bliss" the reply to the comment..
We've come to expect Spammers to lie.. but for many spam hunters this has lead to a gult before innocents addatude..
Just becouse a person says "We aren't knowingly proffiting from spam" dosn't mean "We fain ignorence and spam anyway" they could simply be saying "Look we aren't sending spam.. someone COULD be spamming in our name.. but it's not us" For someone new to spam it seems a reasonable assumption... "Fans" do all kinds of nutty things to premote someone they like.
(Linux advocates are a good example.. some are really painfully annoying...)
At times it's a matter of chilling out...
For a while it was a spammers tactic to clame support (in some way) from a larger company. AoL and Microsoft got hit with this and for a long time (Becouse AoL and Microsoft are "Bad guys" in other areas) people belived it..
But realisticly AoL and Microsoft have allways been against spam... AoL sued CyberPromo on occasion and was sued by CyberPromo... Bill Gates wrote an artical trashing spam as a total waist of time.
So basicly when dealling with a potental spammer two rules apply.. Spammers lie convencingly and innocent victoms tell the truth unconvencingly...
Some times it takes work to find the guilty party.. some times it just takes work confermming the person you have in your claws really is as gulty as you think he is...
You can't use simple rules to base your judgment.. Spammers will just use this against you... They love it when you come down on an innocent victom... "See.. they just resisting change..." and they also love it when you pass over an gulty party.. "Encorcement..."
In the end I don't believe in letting them go easy I also don't believe in being trigger happy...
Re:Those damn CDs!! (Score:1)
usually I put the shiny side up to use them as beermats.
Kiwaiti
Re:Those damn CDs!! (Score:1)
I use the damn things as coasters.
Kierthos
Re:In UK you can opt out of paper junk mail (Score:1)
For instance, I started getting Geico mailers about 3-5 times per week, basically a steady stream, for about 2 months. I started throwing D-Cell batteries in the envelopes, not giving a return address, and dropping them in the mail box (such that the only address showing was the return address on their original envelope). Since then (about a year ago) I've only received about 3 Geico mailers.
It's also helped with Credit Card mailings, too.
250,000? (Score:1)
If one is too many, why did it take 250k complaints before AOheLl cracked down!? They've really got their fingers on the pulse.
Re:Bandwidth cost of spam is negligeable. (Score:1)
If I browse with images enabled, I *choose* to. If I were paying exorbitant per-second connection charges -- and I was, back in the early 90's, using a slow modem and long-distance dial-in -- I would choose to browse with graphics disabled.
I'm not offered that choice with EMail. I have no simple method for blocking spam at the server. I must, at the least, download the headers.
Further, you're only considering the costs as an individual.
There are ISPs with *millions* of users. So multiply your figures appropriately: it works out to gigabytes of information. It's a huge waste of resources, including "time to download."
Get out of the "how does this impact me as an individual" box. The EMail servers must spend some amount of time to download the spam. It is significant.
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Re:MOD THIS SHIT UP, WHAT THE HELL.! (Score:1)
I would like to thank the asshole that modded me down and caused me to lose karma. Pointing out that an important message had been missed by the moderators isn't exactly off-topic. By moderating down people who are posting as non-anonymous you are promoting the type of anonymous-user bullshit that plagues slashdot.
A back-of-the-envelope calculation (Score:2)
Effectively, $35/60Mb xfer per month.
Assume net profit of 10%. Actual cost of providing service, then, = $31.50. (Net profit includes *all* expenses of providing service, and is typically well below 15%, and usually gets down to less than 5%. I'm being very generous.)
Cost of providing service = $31.50/60Mb = 0.05 cents per kilobyte.
Average spam = 1k (HTML format these days, y'know). Average 20 spam received per day.
Average 60s time spent dealing with spam per day. Average wage $10/hr. Population = 330 million for North America. Average 30% population uses EMail daily.
Equals nearly 2 billion spams per day.
Equals nearly 2 gigabytes of spam xferred per day.
Equals $16.5 million dollars *per day* in wasted time.
Equals nearly $1 million dollars *per day* in wasted ISP resources.
Equals $64 **out of your pocket** every year, because those costs are ultimately paid for by you, the consumer of EMail services.
And that's an optimistic figure.
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Re:Unsolicited commercial junk email not Spam (Score:1)
Have you even read my post? You certainly have not understood it! If you had it would be clear why I use the email address I do.
I use abuse@127.0.0.1 for the very good reason that Junk emailers and mail-bombers, etc end up report themselves to their own Sysop.
If you can suggest a more elegant solution, I'll be happy to consider it.
Re:Those damn CDs!! (Score:1)
Oh, I realize that. I wasn't trying to say that the rates went up because of Junk mail, only arguing the point that an AOL cd in your mailbox costs you nothing. But I guess even that is next to nothing.
>Plus wasn't the most recent raise in 1st class postage $0.01?
Yep. They say last year they handled 200 billion pieces of mail. That obviously wasn't all 1st class mail, but probably a good chunk of it was and one cent increase on some fraction of 200 billion is still a lot of money.
Sure. $0.01 increase isn't a big deal for the dozen or so letters I mail each month. But dammit, I'm old enough to remember when it was a dime!
Bulk SMTP from www.xs4all.nl (Score:1)
Permit me a rant (Score:1)
Re:Those damn CDs!! (Score:1)
1st class postage costs so much more than bulk mail because even if it's 1st class bulk mail, it;s pre-sorted. And then if you send enough and can stand the fact that it'll arrive slower, you can opt for 3rd class. Direct mailers send so much that they have buying power in a sense. They pay so much more that anyone else does they deserve lower rates...
Of course a year or two ago when the rates last increased.... it was 2nd (magazine) and 3rd (bulk) class mailers that got hit with the brunt of it. Should have read the DM News then to see some true rage!
Re:In UK you can opt out of paper junk mail (Score:2)
http://www.unt.edu/legal/mail_preference_service.
Re:In UK you can opt out of paper junk mail (Score:2)
Yes, it's not 100% reliable. And yes, there's no recourse if someone decides to not run their list against the DMA's. But hey, that's free enterprize, right?
legality (Score:1)
The legal term for this kind of ignorance is called "plausible deniability." It is a clever way to escape guilt by claiming ignorance and surprisingly has worked for many people and companies.
Re:Those damn CDs!! (Score:1)
receiving AOL CDs doesn't cost you a penny, whereas receiving spam EMail does cost you.
and you *know* that the costs are passed on to the consumer
Wouldn't the argument you make about the cost being passed to the consumer also cause postal rates to increase (effective Jan. 7 USPS is charging more [usps.gov])?-HobophobE
Charge 'em (Score:1)
Sorry, but.. (Score:1)
The road to nowhere leads to me-Ozzy Osbourne
Re:In UK you can opt out of paper junk mail (Score:1)
The only problem is the MPS (and the FAX & Phone version) do not work very well.
We registered with MPS in Nov 98 because the amount of junk mail we where getting was becoming unreal, (~6-10 items a day).
We still get a dozen items a week which we dilligently forward to MPS, only for them to make an excuse.
We've complained to the DTI, and are seriously considering legal action.
The MPS is self regulation by the people responsible for the problem in the first place. Self regulation never wins over the profit motive.
Bandwidth cost of spam is negligeable. (Score:2)
The ISP, too, is processing image and other binary data as the bulk of its traffic. Spam does load down the mail server quite a bit, but not the pipe.
I don't *like* spam, and I don't think I should be *sent* spam, but the "time to download" argument doesn't hold water.
Unsolicited commercial junk email not Spam (Score:2)
Guys,
We should call this stuff what it IS. This is Unsolicited commercial email / junk email it is not Spam or done by Spamer's.
Spamer is my family surname (Try searching Google, you'll find hundred of us), and you can appreciate the unrestricted use of the expression Spamer, Spam, Spaming causes me (and my Brother who both work in IT/Internet industry) considerable problems. I've been flamed, mail bombed, had my machines attacked, this has become seriously unfunny!
This is plea that everybody be responsible, use and encourage others to use, the most accurate term Unsolicited commercial email / junk email.
Re:Porn spam. (Score:1)
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Re:Worse is **idiots** running open mail relays! (Score:2)
If this is the case then IMHO the vendor/supplier is at fault. There is no good reason to supply an MTA configured to relay at all. i.e. the sysadmin should have to explicitally configure it to relay. (Especially since the primary reason for needing third party relays at all is to handle crippled software which won't work without one.)
[*] Most of these sites are is asia, or some schmucks cablemodem/DSL conencted Red Hat box. What is it with Red Hat (l)users anyway?
It's Red Hat who are at fault here. They put together a system with inappropriate defaults. If they were doing this 15 years ago they might have some excuse, but there has been no legitimate reason for supplying an MTA which is an open relay in its "out of the box" configuration for well over a decade, assuming there ever was a good reason in the first place. Since RFC821 allows for relaying to be refused with a 551 return code.
Re:Unsolicited commercial junk email not Spam (Score:2)
[SNIP]
I've been flamed, mail bombed, had my machines attacked, this has become seriously unfunny!
Then why, oh overwrought one, do you specify your email address on slashdot as it is? Do you get your jollies thinking about how now and again overworked and underpaid email server administrators get an email intended to you, but incomprehensible and not truly trackable to them?
I think you need to think again and recalibrate your sense of humour. Hint: specifying an email address is not mandatory on Slashdot.
Stefan.
It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
What about the spam I get from AOL? (Score:2)
irony (Score:5)
...but I'm afraid they'd sue me.
Is spamming, in and of itself, illegal? (Score:2)
Re:In UK you can opt out of paper junk mail (Score:2)
I was wondering whether there is a similar service in other countries?
You can do that to some extent in Norway too. You can tell the post office to not deliver "unadressed mail". That don't stop others (local shops etc.) from delivering junk themselves in densely populated areas. And it don't stop junk mail explicitly adressed to you. The latter can be stopped by calling/writing the sender and tell them to remove you from their database, something our database law require them to do. But there are many senders, and they will sometimes re-aquire your name when they buy an adress list from someone else. You can of course use the law and force them to reveal their source and tell the source to delete you from their list too, but who will bother with doing that all the time?
Fortunately, the same law apply to telemarketing. I don't need to call them - they call me. And then I just say "please delete me from your database, you must according to the law. And then they don't call again. :-)
Re:Those damn CDs!! (Score:3)
10 minutes to speak with someone in QA about his nasty e-mail she received telling us he wanted to cancel because he objected to our AUP.
10 minutes discussing it with my supervisor.
15 minutes for me, my supervisor, the QA representative, and the QA manager to discuss the situation.
5 minutes for me and my supervisor to tell the manager of billing that the customer was definitely to be billed for the time he used, even though he stated in his message that he wouldn't pay.
30 minutes for the manager of QA to speak to him and tell him that he was going to get charged, since he had asked and was told at the time of signup that we don't do refunds. It was at this time that his intention to spam was revealed.
10 minutes for me to spaek with our sysadmin to find out if he had spammed while he was connected, which he hadn't, as far as we could tell at the time. Now you can add up the time above and get an idea of the cost. Keep in mind that you'll have to double, triple, or quadruple some numbers based on the number of people involved. And I don't even know if we ever got our money out of him. And don't forget the costs to another organization if the spammer hijacks a mail server to relay his junk. Sure, anyone running an open relay these days is asking for trouble, but there are times when closing them can be a huge pain, such as on an old mainframe running an old MTA and an outdated OS. There are some machines out there that are old enough that there just aren't any upgrades available, and the organizations that own them might not be able to justify replacing them solely for that reason. My point isn't to downplay the annoyance of regular junk mail, but spammers cost lots of people lots of money, and I didn't even get onto the subject of fraudulent spam, which most of it seems to be. IMHO, AOL is right to sue them. Hell, I wish they'd do this more often, and it'd be nice if other ISPs did the same. If these lowlifes want to use the resources of others to try to squeeze a buck out of some newbie, then they need to get their balls nailed to the wall for it.
Re:Those damn CDs!! (Score:2)
It's against the law to compete with the USPS. FedEx, UPS et al deliver things that the USPS either doesn't want to (packages) or generally can't (overnight). In fact, it's against the law to send something via an overnight service that doesn't actually have to be there overnight.
The USPS is a federally guaranteed monopoly.
Check this [emory.edu] out.
Quality of service too (Score:2)
Short of blocking all binaries, limiting crossposting and honouring cancels (and hoping they arrive in a timely fashion), there's not much else a server can do.
Why is it... (Score:2)
Why is it that whenever I send -anyone- on AOL mail, I start getting spam for a few days after?
I've long wondered whether AOL might be selling lists of external e-mail accounts to spammers.
To those saying they aren't paying for spam (Score:5)
A lot of people seem to be under the impression that since their own personal download time for spam messages is next to nothing in comparison to regular browsing traffic, it can't be costing them much.
As a sysadmin for an ISP, I'd have to disagree. Spam in general raises operating costs quite a bit, ad that's what a customer's bill pays for. What users aren't thinking about is that it isn't just a few users that get spammed. Let's say a mid-sized ISP, with maybe 40,000 customers, suffers a spam attack in which 50% of their customers receive a 5k e-mail. You're looking at almost 100 MB of traffic generated by just one spammer in a short period of time.
This isn't the worst of it, though. It used to be that spammers used lists of valid e-mail addresses to send their spam from... Now, going by what I've seen lately on our mail servers, spammers have taken up what I've coined as "shotgun spamming." They fire off e-mails alphabetically, from multiple sources simultaneously, choosing common last names and pairing them up with first initials, first names with last initials, etc, knowing full well that the bulk of their mail won't get anywhere, but be bounced back. During such an attack it is not uncommon for a server to get hammered with several thousand messages a minute assuming the hardware can handle it without deferring connections. By the time the attack is over, a server will have received somewhere along the lines of 100,000 to 200,000 messages.
The problem that makes this sort of spamming worse: MTAs will attempt to send a bounce message back to the sender if an address doesn't exist on a given server. The spammers know this, and don't want to catch all that traffic themselves, so guess what? They use an address that doesn't exist as well, causing the attacking server to bounce the bounce message our victim server sends right back again. This is known as a double bounce, and once it occurs, the message does finally die... But let's look at what damage has been done:
Using the hypothetical ISP outlined above, let's assume a fairly small attack of 100,000 5 kilobyte messages, of which 50% of the 40,000 customers end up receiving a mail... This results in the aforementioned 100 MB of traffic, and leaves us with 80,000 bounce messages to send. These bounces generally include the contents of the original message plus some additonal text describing the problem, so they'll be a little larger than 5k, but we'll ignore that.
Now, we've got another 400MB of traffic in bounce messages to send, to which we'll get another 400MB of double-bounces in reply. This results in 900MB (that's bytes, not bits, for hose of you counting at home) of total traffic from one such salvo of spam, not counting the endless amount of resends on each side since both servers will likely be deferring acceptance of messages by about halfway through, causing a buildup in each server queue and wasting HD space to boot. This is a fairly tame example.
I personally spent an entire week recently monitoring the mail queue of a mail server being shotgun spammed ("TURNKEY E-COMMERCE SOLUTIONS"), and shutting down acceptance of messages from their sources -- It was disgusting to see the Net's lowest life form next to child pornographers (spammers) sink to a new low in their tactics. Automated spam-blocking tools can't fully alleviate this problem, no matter how well designed. Heck, even non-automated attempts can't. As I was shutting down acceptance from one relaying machine, another would pop up and start spamming, taking the place of the one just blocked... It was like trying to fight a DDoS being done through SMTP!
Anyway -- in short, spam will cost you, not matter who you are. I'd recommend http://www.cauce.org for more information on this issue.
--
NeoMail - Webmail that doesn't suck... as much.
AOL has long fought with spammers (Score:2)
Remember back in 1995(?) or so when AOL changed its terms of service to allow AOL to profit from charging businesses for access to AOL's mailing lists? The hypocrisy is revolting.
Re:Those damn CDs!! (Score:2)
As a side note, I was complaining to my aunt who worked for the post office about all the junk snail mail, and she laughed and told me how important it was. Junk snail mail pays for the US Post Office. Bulk mailings are what keep it afloat. When I thought about it, I realized that only a tiny percentage of my mail was anything I had intentionally wanted. I have three magazine subscriptions, and get 4-5 different bills per month, , and occassional cards at Christmas and my birthday (so not that much) yet I get lots of mail almost everyday. In the end it is an inefficient system, but it is worthwhile noting that it does keep this system in existence, and it is far more preferable to me than telemarketers!
All the spamming and privacy issues just make it apparent to me that the US Postal service should take some sort of active role involved with email. It would be nice if it your email privacy was protected by federal law, and so forth.
For anyone who hates telemarketers, and I think that includes everyone, including telemarketers, but most especially people who work at home, I would direct your attento to the Tom Mabe site [tommabe.com] which features the very funny Tom Mabe, who deals with telemarketers in a unique and hilarious way. You can even buy CD recordings of his interactions.
Email spam is actually quite easy to stop. (Score:2)
Basically, every time someone spams you, they give you information about themselves. You can use this information against the spammers.
Give the spammers a bunch of nice juicy spam trap aliases to fill their mailing lists then just
It's documented here:
http://www.yelm.freeserve.co.uk/spamido/
Excuse the spelling.
I like the AOL CDs (Score:2)
Others think so too:
http://www.wanderlist.com/aolsux
http://www.networkboy.com/humor/aolcd.htm
http://www.aolwatch.org/disks.htm
Re:A back-of-the-envelope calculation (Score:2)
20% of 3Gb is 600Mb.
Cost/k is then 0.005 cents.
ISPs lose only $100 000 *per day*.
Which works out to still be over $60/year being stolen from your wallet.
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My experience with Cyber Entertainment... (Score:3)
Specifically, we provide them with a fair number of email boxes.
While I certainly cannot attest for their practices with regard to AOL, I have noticed that they appear to follow their AUP closely; at least when it comes to us.
In every instance where a large number of complaints have come our way (generally because someone found one of the email boxes, discovered who the ISP was, and started hammering our abuse department), Cyber Entertainment has handled the issue quickly and professionaly, instantly terminating (or at least we never heard another word about it) their relationship with the offending spammer. In fact, we've seen numerous misplaced emails from former "webmaster affiliates" who are VERY upset that CE refuses to do further business from them.
Logically, I think CE views the whole thing (until now) as quite a scam.
Think about it: They get to have other individuals/companies spam for them, but once the spam is reported, CE can sever the relationship, not have to pay the spammer a dime, yet still reap the benefits of spam.
Re:In UK you can opt out of paper junk mail (Score:2)
NO, I don't want any unaddressed mail | No, I don't want any free local newspapers
good thing is: its binding...the stickers are readily available for free.
//rdj