Class Action Lawsuit Against Spammer 299
sfjoe writes "California-based spammer eTracks is being sued by the law firm, Morrison and Foerster (who have a very cool homepage). M & F's press release says they are "...seeking other relief, including attorneys' fees and statutorily authorized damages of $50 for each email delivered in violation of the law, up to $25,000 per day".
California's anti-spam law has already held up under appeals court scrutiny so this may very well be a major setback to the spam industry."
I think spammers should be forced to pay by donating an organ for each
forged header.
Mofo. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Mofo. (Score:4, Informative)
They are cool, not clueless. Vince Flanders of webpagesthatsuck.com related how he (or an acquaintance) emailed them, in essence,
"Um, Mr. Morrison & Foerster, are you aware your URL, mofo.com, is, well, kindof obscene?"
Their PR person replied, basically, "Yes, we're aware of that. We're cultivating an image of a firm you don't want to mess with."
Given that, I will heed their advice and not mess with them. :)
More law firms with funny home pages (Score:2)
Re:Mofo. (Score:3, Funny)
MoFo (Score:2, Funny)
Judge: And the defendent is MoFo and associates.
I'll have to hire them if I ever get caught
Where's My Money, Mofo? (Score:3, Insightful)
D
Go where? (Score:2, Insightful)
The hole in this theory is that most of these people are actually based in the US and spamming because they have squat for money and need to con people to get any. Now, assume they relocate to Mexico they might get away with it for a while, but I wouldn't count on that either. Effectively they'd have to pick up and move themselves to a country without extradition, etc. If they have the wherewithall to do that, most probably wouldn't need to spam.
Re:Where's My Money, Mofo? (Score:2, Funny)
Then do streaming video and sell the rights to finance the convictions of more spamsters
-
homepage (Score:2, Funny)
Not anymore in say... 30 minutes ?
Mr. Turd, this is MoFo.Prepare for some heavy slashdotting
standing up well (Score:2)
You call yourself zealots? (Score:2, Funny)
Spamming... a *law firm* ? (Score:5, Funny)
Oops. So when can we expect a) spammers filtering to avoid spamming law firms, and b) law firms offering e-mail aliasing to avoid the spammers?
Re:Spamming... a *law firm* ? (Score:5, Funny)
Class Action Lawsuits (Score:2)
It's like trying to fit a round cat through a square hole [rgreetings.com]
Re:Spamming... a *law firm* ? (Score:2)
$50/e-mail! (Score:2, Funny)
The big problem is how can we get at all of the garbage that originates overseas? Half of my spam comes from ".tw"
While it would be nice to get rid of spam, I will miss the daily opportunity to have my penis enlarged.
Re:$50/e-mail! (Score:2, Informative)
The way we get rid of
Do you think that I can sue them... (Score:5, Funny)
PPA, the girl next door.
Re:Do you think that I can sue them... (Score:3, Funny)
-J
Re:Do you think that I can sue them... (Score:2)
Politicians are not very smart (Score:2)
just to make sure the spambots pick these up.... (Score:4, Funny)
staffhelp@etracks.com
busdev@etracks.com
email_removal@response.etra
isp@etracks.com
and all the politicians who don't help (Score:3, Funny)
Pointless (Score:2)
Re:just to make sure the spambots pick these up... (Score:2, Funny)
But if works as it usually works, you effectevely created a cycled list of selfsubcribing spam lists!
Awesome!
Re:just to make sure the spambots pick these up... (Score:3, Funny)
Hey! Stop posting on slashdot and get back to work, like the rest of us! Uh, oh, wait....
(mr edrugtrader is my employee :)
Not To Be Confused With... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Not To Be Confused With... (Score:2, Funny)
Kintanon
Re:Not To Be Confused With... (Score:2)
or mifi.com, Manaco International Forwarders , inc....
or mefe.com, a silly poem.
Re:Not To Be Confused With... (Score:2)
Lawyersplotation Theme Song (Score:5, Funny)
-Mofo!
Who won't let you down when there's spam all around?
-Mofo!
You damn right.
That mofo is one bad mutha-
-Shut your mouth!
I'm just talkin' about Morrison and Foerster.
-We can can dig it!
D
Whoops look what else MoFo are doing... (Score:2)
(If the name doesn't ring a bell, that's the crazy US national that was captured fighting alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan.)
Good make them pay (Score:2, Interesting)
Hmm. Wonder why (Score:5, Funny)
Not only is your target moving...It's picking up speed.
Now I wonder why that is. Could it be that your "target" is trying to not receive your fucking worthles spam? Perhaps they are satisfied with their penis size? Maybe they don't want to about losing 150 pounds in three days? Perhaps the Ladies Quilting Club down at the retirement center isn't interested in tight teen anal sex?
Re:Hmm. Wonder why (Score:2)
And so the impossible happened (Score:5, Funny)
Do thier IT/Sys Admins read /. ? (Score:4, Interesting)
[snip] Morrison & Foerster was named by Fortune Magazine in its first list of 100 Best Companies to Work for in America. [/snip]
Thats alot of desktop computers and servers for a company, Always wondered how many people from the companies in articles on
Come on MoFo IT/IS guys, post some replys!
Re:Do thier IT/Sys Admins read /. ? (Score:2, Funny)
- MoFo attorney (is there any other sort?)
Duplicate stories (Score:2, Flamebait)
Sigh.
Re:Duplicate stories (Score:2)
Deja Vu? (Score:2, Informative)
-Henry
This is a really good sign. (Score:4, Interesting)
Spammer's worst case just got much worse.
If spamming becomes a risky, possibly very expensive proposition, the big spamhauses could be in trouble. They've got deep enough pockets to be hurt badly by such a suit. Bad news for them; good news for the rest of the Net.
Sadly, it's probably not much of a threat to spammers in China, Russia, etc.
Not Class Action (Score:3, Informative)
CORRECTION: lawsuit != class action (Score:2, Informative)
Now if Illinois had a similar anti-spam law (Score:2)
Couldn't Californians bring suit against Shifman if they have recieved one of his silly resumes?
Interesting statistic . . . (Score:2)
Response rates:
E-messaging 5%-15%
Traditional direct 0.5%-5.0%
Source: Jupiter Communications
Anybody know how accurate this is? I always though spam was less effective than junk mail . .
Re:Interesting statistic . . . (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyways, the info he told me about their first spam run:
400 web page hits per day pre-spam
500K emails sent out (on behalf of a client)
192K hits to client's webpage after that
only 400 "take me off this list" messages
*sigh*
So I guess it works.
Re:Interesting statistic . . . (Score:2)
and also, what was the nature of the spam, Mr. AC? Was it porn? I bet porn gets a lot more response than anything else.
Re:Interesting statistic . . . (Score:2, Informative)
Response rates:
E-messaging 5%-15%
Traditional direct 0.5%-5.0%
Anybody know how accurate this is?
The 5-15% response rate for emessaging is about right for "direct email marketing" [non-UCE or unintentional ("oops, we f---ed up") UCE]. Actual response rate varies wildly, depending on list composition, message type (newsletter, service reminder, etc.), and the vlue proposition of the message itself. Response rate is usually defined as unique clickthroughs (at least one "click" on at least one link contained within an email per recipient == a response). Jupiter may have defined it to mean something else.
Response rates in this range generally require good recipient lists (recent, active accounts comprised of people who actually opted to receive your message). Weaker lists ("sign up for special messages from our partners when you open a HotMail account") typically net a 2-4% clickthrough response in best case scenarios.
Now, true UCE/spam ... well, I find it difficult to believe that its response rates (measured as clickthrough) rarely approach even 2-4%, let alone 5-15%.
Note that the "response rates" for the two media you lifted (email v. direct mail) aren't necessarily measurements of the same *type* of response.
- fmr. direct email mktg. cog
Re:Interesting statistic . . . (Score:2)
Spam is not only more effective than traditional direct mail, it is far cheaper (for the advertiser).
I suppose the effectiveness will wane when net-newbies are no longer newbies. Which means never. As long as someone responds and the spammer gets results, the spammer will continue to seek those results.
Organs from spammers? (Score:4, Funny)
Who would want an organ from a spammer in them? I'd sooner trust an organ from a pig, at least it's a mammal.
Wish them luck (Score:2)
Anyway, contact them at info@mofo.com
For everyone running mail servers and hating spam. (Score:2)
Try looking at TMDA [libertine.org]... I'm running it on my mail server and I am down from 10 spams a day to one a month. That one is through a mailing list that I would rather not unsubscribe from.
Basically it adds a whitelist of people that you will accept mail from, a blacklist that you will reject mail from, and will allow people to automatically add themselves to your whitelist.
You can also have time limited addresses, keyword addresses that you can revoke, and so on...
It is working for me, if it's not working for you, why not. :-)
Z.
Forged Heads (Score:3, Funny)
I'm not sure I'd ask anything from a spammer, short of their immediate death.
TO: Jace of Fuse!
FROM: Body Organs Galore
Hello! I am e-mailing you about this great opprotunity to get ahold of a high quality kidney! Let me tell you the story! Once not too long ago, a college boy woke up in a bath tub full of ice...
Definition of "solicit?" (Score:4, Interesting)
This lawsuit made it onto NPR tonight... I was rather amused by one spam executive saying the mail was not "unsolicited" because many users give their names to mailing lists when registering for products... "without knowing it" (exact quote... forgive the lack of attribution, but I'm sure someone can dig up an NPR transcript for around 6:45 PM EST on 15 March 2002).
My question then is this: how is the mail not unsolicited if the user doesn't know he's soliciting?
Plato's Socrates might argue, of course, following the Meno, that the user's psyche solicited e-mail advertisements before birth and merely forgot about his solicitation upon entering the world. Perhaps he would demonstrate this by having an uneducated slave register software and sign up to be notified of special offers that might be of interest to him... but then the Athenians forced Socrates to drink hemlock precisely because they didn't want to put up with that kind of nonsense.
I have a better idea (Score:2)
Electronic Freedom Foundation
Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email
Free Software Foundation
DigitalConsumer.org
Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC)
Privacy International
We'll have enough lobbying power to stomp the NSA, telemarketers, spammers, AND the RIAA
Spammers Lie (surprise!) (Score:2)
Has never hurt anyone, or,, (Score:2)
I wonder... (Score:3, Funny)
I wonder if we could bring class action against his campaign?
Spammer was Bill *Jones*, not Bill Simon (Score:2)
Re:Spammer was Bill *Jones*, not Bill Simon (Score:2)
I coulda sworn it was Bill Simon.
Just goes to show you how little difference there is betwixt those damn politicians these days, eh?
Well, except for Bill Simon...he's pretty much Ashcroftian in his insanity.
Hmm...Ashcroftian...I like the sound of that...
Etracks *looks* legitimate ? (Score:2)
Compare that to the average spamhaus or spammer page you've seen that tells how you can !Annoy! People!! Fast!!! or get !!!Bullet-Proof !!!Bulk!!!! Email!! Accounts!!! and !!!Address !!!Harvesting !Software!!!!!!!.
That doesn't mean that these guys *aren't* just spammers with college educations trying to attract a better-paying class of spammer or trying not to discourage the occasional legitimate customer, but at least on the surface they look respectable. But perhaps Mofo Knows [sincity.com]
Re:A death blow against Free Speech (Score:2, Insightful)
There is a right to free speech. There is not a right to force that speech on others.
Re:A death blow against Free Speech (Score:2)
Re:A death blow against Free Speech (Score:2)
Never confuse your right to write with the lack-of-right to spraypaint that message on your neigbours' walls.
Re:A death blow against Free Speech (Score:4, Informative)
"Even after receiving formal notice of Morrison & Foerster's policy against spam, Etracks has sent at least 6,500 unsolicited email advertisements to Morrison & Foerster's California users."
So, my mail server I pay by the byte. Why should I pay for any spam, even the headers? If I'm forced to stop because of that, aren't they inhibiting my First Amendment rights?
Read the law. The mail:
Must be labeled advertisement
Must have valid contact information
Must not have forged headers
Must cease mailing upon request How is any of that against the First Amendment?
Re:A death blow against Free Speech (Score:2)
The internet is a private domain
Wasn't built buy gov't, not owned by gov't, etc, so doesn't enjoy the same First ammendment rights. It is 'owned' by business and individuals.
There have been a couple of court cases that have reaffirmed this but not quite sure what they are.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:A death blow against Free Speech (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's see, I have a domain where I pay by the byte (well, megabyte).
In the EU, people pay by the minute for net time.
How is this spam free again?
Re:A death blow against Free Speech (Score:2)
Some broadband may be unmetered, but much dial-up is. More than half [theregister.co.uk] of the UK uses metered access.
Re:what gives? (Score:3)
Re:what gives? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, however, I receive about 20 spam a day to that address. I miss messages that I should be receiving. After going two months while travelling without internet access, I returned to discover nothing *but* spam in my inbox -- hotmail had automatically deleted the older messages on the assumption that I would want to keep the newer ones.
Now, my hotmail block-list is full, and I have about another 200 addresses I would like to add to it. I cannot use that account, because it is now fundamentally useless. And spammers don't cost me money?
Spammers cost money everytime they send an ad that a distracted person clicks on, and gets shipped off to a porn site. That red-flags the corporate internet policy manager or whoever, who has to then go TALK to that employee about their going to a porn site. Sure, they just show the spam and say "Oops". It costs both of those people at least half an hour, though, and at $100 an hour, that's an expensive piece of e-mail.
The bandwidth used is not inconsiderable, either, particularly for people who are using dial-up accounts in regions where they pay-by-minute.
Spam is hardly a victimless crime, it's just a stupid one, and it's all opportunity or possible cost, so it's hard to really say "oh, that cost us money". It definitely costs money. It cost me my fucking hotmail account, and discarded my lengthy correspondence with folk hero Donovan, for Chrissakes.
Bah.
l
Re:what gives? (Score:2)
I know the feeling. Nowdays it's an automatic trip to the power switch if something redirects me. It's easy enough to show HR the bad link. (after a reboot, I forward the mail to HR and request they and legal work on a reply for me) They have been quite effective. I very rarely get ADLT mail at work anymore. They also check the source and purge the mailserver for the entire company. It's also kept me out of HR hot water. I think I've had more bad (goat) links on slashdot than I ever got by e-mail. There were a couple times it took me about 5 minutes to open my inbox due to a purge in progress.
Re:what gives? (Score:2)
Not directly, but you can use gotmail [emu.id.au] to fetch it in a similar fashion to fetchmail.
Myopia (Score:2)
So, next time you decide to talk about how it's no big deal, could you send me a few hundred dollars to make up for the insignificant impact it's had on me?
Virg
Re:what gives? (Score:2)
Re:what gives? (Score:2)
Really, this "just hit delete" ignorant attitude is getting old.
Re:what gives? (Score:4, Informative)
These people are not legitimate marketers. They collect names, that much is probably legal, but the illegal part comes when they commit computer trespass, exploiting poorly configured servers, and signing the mail with fraudulent return addresses.
If these crimes take place in other countries, it may be legal, but it is illegal in most of the united states. VA has a personal juristiction clause in the law. If you spam here, then you do business here, you come to court here.
Re:what gives? (Score:3)
Commerce *is* subjected to regulation, you know...
Re:what gives? (Score:2)
Oh, wait - mailbombing is *illegal*, even if it's in retaliation for spam from a stupid or amoral ISP. But spamming, which is a mail-bomb en masse, *isn't*.
So I'm a terrorist; the spammer is a savvy capitalist.
Go figure.
Max
Re:what gives? (Score:2)
I use a blacklist and I risk blocking potential customers.
I use content based filters and I risk blocking legit email.
Faked headdres, open relays, isp hopping. I've even had reports of spammers paying people to root boxes and install their own software.
They won't stop until it gets expensive, and until then there are just enough stupid people online to make spam a profitable buisness.
Re:what gives? (Score:5, Insightful)
How about because spammers take up network resources and user time without being asked to, without being authorized to, and without yielding benefit? It costs a spammer essentially nothing to send an email that will consume perhaps thousands of dollars in lost bandwidth, CPU cycles, and user effort. The cost is not borne by the instigator, but by the unwilling recipient.
Let's say I decided to drop by your house every day and scrawl an ad (or an offensive message) in chalk on the sidewalk. It's easy enough to erase -- just a little water spilled over it. Is it OK, then? What if I decided to do this every day to every house in your neighborhood? What if I got the chalk by, say, dropping by the local public school and absconding with it?
And I don't know what a good anti-spam law would be, but I wish to death that people would stop acting as if it were a priori impossible to write one without somehow opening up all imaginable governmental ills. Good laws do exist, though it's fashionable on slashdot to pretend they don't. A targetted law helping to assign some economic cost to sending spam would help restore the operation of normal market forces. Not all slopes are slippery.
Re:what gives? (Score:2)
Or how about because it pisses me off!
It's like a guy constantly tapping you on the shoulder... after a while, you want to turn around a deck him.
Re:what gives? (Score:2, Insightful)
They're just trying to make money
Sure, by using up resources that they did not pay for. 1) I pay for internet access so that I can communicate with those I want to 2) resources are being wasted to store and forward the spam emails 3) resources are being wasted to delete the email
It's really not hard to do a lot of stuff. Like protecting yourself against criminals isn't that hard, perhaps we don't need police? Seriously though, it doesn't matter that it is not difficult. It is the sheer volume. I have some email accounts that I use as "fake" email accounts when I think I'll be spammed by the people I'm giving out my email to. One of these accounts gets at least 50 spams a day. Now if I were some poor newbie, tell me how much effort it would take to filter out the one email a day I get that I did intend to receive. If you don't get enough spam to think it is a problem, just change your email address from samsa@@@anitisocial...com to your real address.
Why in the world should it be illegal? Because in California it is.
"They're just trying to make money" (Score:2)
Re:what gives? (Score:5, Insightful)
I run vectorstar.net, a free hosting service. I would easily wager that greater than 90% of the mail that wriggles through to our users is spam. Thus, 90% of my mail-related disk space and 90% of my mail server processing goes to handling unwanted, unnecessary spam. That's the difference between being able to run a Pentium 100 server or a PIII-1ghz server. Thus, it costs me a LOT of money to deal with spam mail.
The same situation falls true for the majority of businesses. Their mail servers handle far more spam than they do valid email. It leads to serious expenditures on mail server hardware, (in some companies) software, and staff to maintain the servers.
So that's why we hate spam with a passion.
Would this be a good service? (Score:2)
I've never configured a mail system, so I'll admit I don't know how much processing power this would save them, but the storage would drop dramatically.
Give me a good interface to manage my white list, give me a daily/weekly/monthly list of all return addresses that have tried to send to me (so I can add new ones to my list) and I'm a happy camper.
Re:Would this be a good service? (Score:2)
Re:Would this be a good service? (Score:2, Informative)
It's called Tagged Message Delivery Agent, or TDMA. You can find more information on it at http://software.libertine.org/tmda/ [libertine.org].
Basically it works on a whitelist, you can automatically add people to this whitelist and they are free to send you email anytime. For people not already on your whitelist, when you send that user a message, it will pop back a email with instructions on how to confirm your message, once you do that (usually simply by replying to the message), your on the whitelist.
It works with qmail, Sendmail, Exim and other popular mailers.
Re:what gives? (Score:2)
They're just trying to make money, and it's really not that hard to delete the stuff.
I know you're trolling, but this is an argument I've heard from many people who are not trolls (such as legislators). Generally people confuse spam with a First Amendment issue, or view attacks on it as if laissez faire capitalism were at stake. Spam is a big deal because we are starting to drown in it. Spam traffic has been increasing exponentially. It doubles every X months (although I don't know offhand what X is). After 10X months, when you are receiving 1024 times as much of it as you are now, your ideological blinders might fall off.
Also, they're not "just trying to make money" if they're scamming people.
As soon as we start allowing the government to regulate commercial email, other, less welcome regulations are sure to follow, in the ostensible interest of national security, or justice, or any of the other stock government facades.
Unlike other "problems" the government is looking into (SSSCA, etc.), this is one that really does need fixing.
Re:what gives? (Score:2, Informative)
In this case the law firm, this is NOT a class action case, claims they received spam from the company without a valid return adress or a toll free phone number as required by CA law so people can remove themselves; it is also claimed that Etracks did not identify thier comercial messages as required by CA law. The firm then suposedly tracked them down and told them not to send any more messages to them, they did not comply.So the law firm sued.
While one might complain about the need to identify messages in the subject, it seems to go a bit far to say that one should not be able to make someone stop sending you stuff. The supreme court has ruled that the rights to free expresion and free speech do not allow one to annoy others on thier property. A round of messages could be defended as free speech, but to continue mailing after you have been asked not to is to make a nuissance of oneself.
Re:what gives? (Score:2)
Which is what happens with e-mail spam.
Big Difference (Score:2)
Virg
Re:what gives? (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a subtle difference here, if I remember the bizarre laws in the US concerning the US Postal Service...
When a spammer abuses the network and your email account, he/she/it is NOT paying for the distribution, and is, in a way, "tresspassing" on your "property"...
If I recall correctly (I may not), in some bizarre, technical, legal way, "your" mailbox (the physical one that the USPS delivers to) is ACTUALLY the property of the USPS (not sure how this works exactly, but I THINK this is law so as to put the Big Guns of the Federal Government behind dealing with illegal abuses of the Postal Service, rather than having to rely on individuals to report and accuse abusers). If this is true, then when a junkmailer pays the post office to deliver a bunch of crap to your address, it's only (again, in a technical, legal sort of way) the USPS' resources that are being used, not "yours".
I may be totally off base here - if somebody with a better understanding of USPS-related law is reading this, I'd love a clarification...
At any rate, the summary is that with junkmail, the junkmailer is covering the bulk of the cost to deliver, while with spam, the ISP's and recipients are covering the bulk of the costs. (Looked at another way - you don't pay the USPS to RECEIVE mail, so you're not really losing anything. You DO pay your ISP to recieve E-mail [as part of the cost of the rest of the ISP service] so receiving email does actually cost you something, even if it's a tiny amount.)
Besides, paper is recyclable (though I suppose electrons are, too, come to think of it...)
Re:what gives? (Score:3, Insightful)
billboards, or bus placards, or fancy lighted neon marquees. I can
avert my eyes as I drive by them in my car.
I do have a problem with graffiti. When you sneak up in the night and
spray-paint "Eat at Joe's" on the side of my building, you are using MY
PROPERTY without my permission. And I want to see you tarred, feathered
and drowned in your own paint.
Spam is grafitti. My computer, my disk space, and my bandwidth are
things that I pay for; they are my property. When you use them, without
my permission, to transmit your Nigerian Bank Scams, your porno ads,
your Ponzi schemes, your stock-market pump-and-dumps, and your offshore
casinos, you are spray-painting on my property.
And I want to see you tarred, feathered and drowned in your own flith.
Re:Get em, you mofo lawyers! (Score:2)
Kintanon
Re:Get em, you mofo lawyers! (Score:3, Informative)
So MoFo.com is going for the amx the law will allow, they might even get attorney's fees out of it (Section 5, sub f, sub 2).
Re:set up a war between lawyers and spammers (Score:3, Funny)
Re:set up a war between lawyers and spammers (Score:2)
Re:Spam laws (Score:2)
If a spammer paid you a 1/10 of a cent for each spam, would that make it ok?
Didn't think so.
Spam is bad for a number of reasons, but the relative costs to the
spammer/spamee isn't one of them.
-- Spam Wolf, the best spam blocking vaporware yet! [spamwolf.com]