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Spam

Earthlink Wins Another Spam Award: $16 million 265

Posted by CmdrTaco from the now-just-try-to-collect-it dept.
linuxwrangler writes "U.S. District Judge Thomas W. Thrash Jr. awarded Earthlink $16 million and an injunction against Howard Carmack for Carmack's use of Earthlink to deliver spam. Given that Earthlink is still awaiting payment of the $25 million it won against Kahn C. Smith last year, it views the injunction as the bigger of the two wins." A few more of these, and maybe the tide of spam will eb. Maybe. Nah.
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Earthlink Wins Another Spam Award: $16 million More

Earthlink Wins Another Spam Award: $16 million

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  • As my subject line says...I do, but I dont see how anyone other than large corporations can go through the process to actually get a judgement. I mean, I get mostly spam these days, even on an account I made, but never used a single time! Anyway, thats my rant for the day.

    • Re:I wish I could get in on this (Score:5, Informative)

      by Eric Damron ( 553630 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @09:59PM (#5907521)
      If you live in states with anti-spamming laws you may be able to sue the spammers. Not for millions of dollars however.

      In Washington state we are allowed to sue for up to $500.00 per spam. However, the spammer must do something like give a false return address or misleading subject line.

      You should check your state laws.

      • Re:I wish I could get in on this (Score:4, Informative)

        by t0rnt0pieces ( 594277 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @10:06PM (#5907568)
        If you live in states with anti-spamming laws you may be able to sue the spammers. Not for millions of dollars however.

        In Washington state we are allowed to sue for up to $500.00 per spam. However, the spammer must do something like give a false return address or misleading subject line.

        Considering the amount of spam I get (sometimes hundreds per day, and I'm sure that's not an unusual amount), and the fact that 90%+ of them have fake return addresses, at $500 per spam I probably could sue for millions.

      • Re:I wish I could get in on this (Score:4, Informative)

        by Jeffv323 ( 317436 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @10:56PM (#5907817)

        In Washington state we are allowed to sue for up to $500.00 per spam.

        Actually, it's not up to $500, but exactly $500, or actual damages - whichever is greater.

        See here [aboutspam.com].

        -- Jeff

      • Earthlink is not getting a penny, I live in Buffalo, NY (the home and base of operations of Carmack). Our Hometown News station went to his CRAPPY APARTMENT above his parents house yesterday. He lives in a pretty bad part of town, which isnot so strange since most of Buffalo is a "bad part of town". He definately wasn't making the big bucks.
        • There was a pretty good article [wsj.com] about this on the front page of the Wall Street Journal yesterday. (You may need to be a subscriber to access this link). Anyway, he created at least 343 Earthlink accounts and every one of them was based on a stolen identity (credit card, bank account information). That's the part I find amazing. Isn't fraudulent use of other people's credit card numbers enough to put this guy in jail?

          His grandmother thinks he's a nice guy:

          ...her grandson brings her breakfast from M

      • Does "misleading" include Spam headers like "re: Blah, Blah, Blah", where they try to make it look like a response to a request you made for their "services"? Those are the ones that annoy me the most -- I know who I've sent email to.. and it ain't them!

        Just below that on the annoyance scale is any subject line that refers to me as "Friend" -- that ought to be "misleading" regardless of content because if they're spamming me, then I am certainly not their friend!

    • Don't you know, when Earthlink collects money, all of its customers save money!

      (Oh c'mon, it's no more ridiculous than saying that spam costs the recipient money)

      • Re:I wish I could get in on this (Score:4, Interesting)

        by egburr ( 141740 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @10:16PM (#5907628) Homepage
        No, it's a lot more ridiculous than saying that. Earthlink won a judgement. To do so, earthlink spent a lot of the customers' money on lawyers. To actually collect the money awarded in the judgement, Earthlink will have to spend more of the customers' money on lawyers, collectors, etc. If they get more money back than was spent on the process, I will be surprised.

        So, spam does cost the recipient money, not only in terms of bandwidth, CPU time, storage, download time, frustration, irritation, etc., but also in all the unrecovered costs of prosecuting, persuing, and attempting to collect on the judgement. Customers may not directly pay for all of that, but their monthly rates reflect all those costs.

  • spammers? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    are they ever going to see the money from this settlement?
    • Probably not, but it's kinda hard to pay for a new ISP when nobody will give you a credit card.
      • He was using stolen credit card/bank account information. Not clear if he was actually charging off those card or just using them to sign up with.

    • are they ever going to see the money from this settlement?

      On a $25M award, I'd be happy to go after these bastards for a simple 5% collector's fee.

      ((-: Would it be OK if I destroyed their business in the process?? :-)) [big evil grin]

  • Legal vs technical vs payperemail (Score:5, Insightful)

    by arete ( 170676 ) <[moc.liamg] [ta] [todhsals+eteragix]> on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @09:50PM (#5907452) Homepage
    I used to believe that legal remedies couldn't stop things like spam, but I think I was wrong.

    The very fact that spam is only a problem when it's on a large scale (don't think about recieving on a large scale, think that the list has to be large...) means, I think, that legal solutions can prevail.

    arete
    • I think what we need are technical solutions backed by force of law (e.g. deliberately bypassing anti-spam filters should be treated just like deliberately bypassing any other form of computer security).

  • Payment in Goods? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @09:51PM (#5907464)
    Seeing as how these spammers probably DON'T have millions of dollars in the bank, and even Microsoft was able to negotiate for penalties being only in software, is Earthlink likely to get a truck load of $16M of penile enhancement cream and Nigerian banknotes in compensation?

  • Any relation? (Score:3, Funny)

    by dido ( 9125 ) <dido@@@imperium...ph> on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @09:51PM (#5907465)

    Wonder if this spammer has any relation to good 'ol John. ;)

  • "A few more of these, and maybe the tide of spam will eb." Yeah.. and maybe if the RIAA sues the pantaloons off a few more University students, people will be wracked with guilt and delete their collection of MP3's. Maybe. Nah.
    • There are several differences as to why the threat of (and actual) legal action can be more effective against spammers. First, there aren't very many spammers. Most estimates put most spam to be coming from a few hundred US based spammers, bouncing off worldwide open relays. Bankrupt or imprison them for the various laws they break, not least fraud and deception, and the flood of spam worldwide would become a trickle, and much of that would be nigerian. (don't know about you, but the nigerian scam is only

  • A real jerk (Score:5, Informative)

    by LittleLebowskiUrbanA ( 619114 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @09:54PM (#5907476) Homepage Journal
    This guy used his relative's info for setting up accounts. When Earthlink talked to his 58 year old retired uncle, they figured out what was going on when he mentioned a nephew that works at home w/ computers. (I read the Wall Street Journal. Headline news!)
    • None of the phone numbers listed in the spams he is alleged to have sent are listed in his name. One was in his mother's name. Another in the name of his mentally handicapped brother who lived in a nearby assisted-living home.
      This guy is a real piece of... work.

  • Awards vs. Injunction (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sssmashy ( 612587 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @09:54PM (#5907480)

    Last year the company was awarded $25 million in damages in a suit against another big junk e-mailer, Kahn C. Smith of Tennessee. Youngblood said the company hasn't collected that award. But the monetary award, Wellborn said, is less of a victory than the injunction.

    Nobody will ever collect civil damages from a spammer, because the vast majority of spam does not come from legitimate companies with assets. Most spammers tend to be individuals: low-rent sleazebags with bad credit and a history of illegal or borderline illegal activities. If they actually had millions of dollars they wouldn't stoop to spamming.

    The injunction is a good thing because if one of these lowlifes tries spamming again, they can throw him in jail.

    • Re:Awards vs. Injunction (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gary bernhardt ( 75626 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @10:07PM (#5907569)
      Generalizations like this do *not* further the anti-spam cause. Spam is most definitely an area where very large financial gain is possible. This obviously precludes spammers being "low-rent" sleezebags.

      This reminds me of the thousands of posts over the years on Slashdot asking "Why does anyone spam? Noone buys that stuff." Then about a year ago a story gets posted showing someone who made *millions* spamming, and everyone stopped discussing it as if it had never happened.

      Randomly assigning adjectives to someone you view as an opponent will not help your position. All it will do is make you look like someone who blindly slings insults, without giving any thought to the situation.

      • Re:Awards vs. Injunction (Score:4, Insightful)

        by datavortex ( 132049 ) <datavortex@datavortex.net> on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @10:15PM (#5907621) Homepage Journal
        Sorry, but in this case unfortunately the generalization is correct. That's pretty much how it's played out I'm afraid. There's only a couple spammers like Milette and he's more clever (and able to find scumbag salespeople at desperate bandwith providers) than many would like to admit.

      • Re:Awards vs. Injunction (Score:5, Interesting)

        by dubl-u ( 51156 ) * <2523987012 AT pota DOT to> on Thursday May 08, 2003 @02:12AM (#5908488)
        Spam is most definitely an area where very large financial gain is possible. This obviously precludes spammers being "low-rent" sleezebags.

        Even if somebody lives in a high-rent place, they can be a low-rent sleazebag. Hollywood is full of them, for example. And that the gain is possible doesn't mean that all spammers get it; the spammers I've taken the time to track down and talk to have often made very little from it.

        Generalizations like this do *not* further the anti-spam cause.

        Well, actually, they do, especially when they're true. It makes it much easier from a PR and lobbying perspective to be able to say paint spammers as beyond the pale.

        I recently chatted with a fellow who's in the on-line porn industry. Although he doesn't spam, he knows a number of spammers. He seemed quite convinced that they were sleazebags. I've met a few myself, and all of them, excepting the once who were just plain clueless, were all sleazebags.

        And all the ones I've seen profiled in the press were pathetic excuses for human beings, too. Like the guy in Minnesota, who previously was a cop. Until he got busted for selling drugs to children, that is.

        So if you know some spammers who are smart, upstanding, concerned citizens, hey, share the details with us. I'd be fascinated to find once who is a vegan pacifist buddhist. No, scratch that, I'd be fucking floored.
      • Well these is a sucker born every minute so...
        #!/usr/bin/python
        import time
        print time.time()/60
        So as of right now there is 17,540,006 suckers sience 1970

    • The injunction is a good thing because if one of these lowlifes tries spamming again, they can throw him in jail.

      You mean this guy was using stolen credit card numbers and identities and he's not in jail already?

    • the vast majority of spam does not come from legitimate companies with assets. Most spammers tend to be individuals:

      Perhaps, but they do make a good deal of money (not enough to pay $16 mil.), but there would be no point in spam if it wasn't done on behalf of a company...

      Of course, if the spammer/company is outside US jurisdiction, you may have a hard time collecting, but you'd certainly seriously cut down on the volume of spam if you put an end to all of it in the US.

  • the problem (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    the problem of course is that all the spammers will just move overseas, where US law won't hurt them and they are ignored by local government.
    • Overseas????


      If you mean that they will use overseas servers, that won't help the spammers. If they are in the USA, you can get them in the USA. You can actually sue an overseas spammer here, but it may be hard to collect.


      If you are talking of spammers overseas. You can go after a spammer overseas, but it is harder to do and to collect from.

      We can also go after the people that hire them.

      • The main thing these rulings do is establish that the sender doesn't have a constitutional right to spam. Spamers and telemarketers both attack any sort of limits on their behavior as a limitation of "free speech." By finding that spamming is not constitutionally protected free speech, ISPs can apply remedies on their end of the wire and not be afraid they'll get sued.

        For large ISPs, (Earthlink, AOL, etc.), detecting spam isn't that hard using blaclists, forbidding address spoofing, etc. They even have

  • Huh? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Evil Adrian ( 253301 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @09:55PM (#5907485) Homepage
    They say injunction.

    I say injection.
  • Hitting spammers in their pocket books is the only thing that will stop them. The awards must exceed the amount that they make though spamming.

    Earthlink should not allow these spammers not to pay either. They need to take everything the spammer owns. Don't even leave them a bucket to piss into.
    • I dunno. A 12-guage shotgun blast to the face would stop one pretty good.

      (that's meant as a joke, folks, go ahead and take those two or three big points of karma away for trolling anyway though, I'm sure it'll really hurt me)

      I like the idea of financialy annihilating them though. I like that alot. facial tatooes of "I'm a spamming piece of shit. I wasted your money and the money of your children. Please punch me in the face until I pass out and spit teeth into the gutter" would be acceptable as well.
      • I dunno. A 12-guage shotgun blast to the face would stop one pretty good.

        I honestly don't know why this hasn't happened. When you routinely piss off millions of people, you're bound to catch a few cases of six-sigma-below-mu on the anger management scale.

    • They will probably get off scoot free though with structures such as LLCs and corporations. Some times justice is hard to find...

  • stolen identies/cc #'s (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Pootie Tang ( 414915 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @09:58PM (#5907510)
    Carmack and others kept the bulk e-mail flowing through Internet accounts opened with stolen identities and credit card numbers.

    Considering this and the fact that he didn't even show up to defend himself in court, why bother obeying the injuction? They don't arrest people for this stuff anymore?

    Obviously Earthlink isn't going to get $16 mil out of this. I take it verizon didn't collect on their $6.9 million judgement either.
  • I've looked up our friend Mr. Ralsky on spamhaus and it would seem he's probably not paid anything yet in damages. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2002- 10-29-spam-suit_x.htm http://www.spamhaus.org/rokso/search.lasso?evidenc efile=1290 Further it would seem he has enough money to hire lawyers to appeal convictions and the other normal legal ramblings which take forever to settle lawsuits. Won't this suit/injuction simply be more of the same?

  • erm... (Score:3, Funny)

    by 2MuchC0ffeeMan ( 201987 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @10:01PM (#5907533) Homepage
    wait, i have earthlink, do i get a piece of that pie? how many users does earthlink have? 10 milion? good, that's like a buck twenty i should get off my next bill.

  • I don't understand (Score:2, Interesting)

    by theirpuppet ( 133526 )
    If Earthlink, and company, have been doing side deals with spammers for years, and some people have the documentation to prove it, why isn't there a class action lawsuit or something. Lately, in the interest of customer appeasement, brand recognition, and some more advertising many companies like Earthlink have been suing spammers, except we all know they'll never get any money. They already got their money from the 'secret deals'. They are now flaunting their 'respectability' and 'anti spamness', and this

  • Death of a spammer (Score:5, Informative)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @10:18PM (#5907642) Homepage
    As I've mentioned previously, we had a problem with a spammer forging our Downside(tm) return address, resulting in over 16,000 mail bounces. It's been a headache, but all 24 of his "extreme rape" web sites, plus his billing sites, are now off the net.

    Originally, he was buying hosting from several US ISPs, including Rackspace. We asked the ISPs to identify the site owner, as required by law (because he accepts credit cards) and when they found they didn't have good info on him, they killed his accounts. He was using about five ISPs at a time, and had his own DNS server so that he could quickly switch from one ISP to another as he was kicked off. The spam itself went out via open Telnet proxies. Whois info is plausible, but fake.

    This seemed like a big-time operator, but over time, a different picture emerged. It became clear that this guy's business isn't porno. It's collecting credit card numbers. The porno sites were very shallow. ISP operators told us they were typically $5/month hosting sites with maybe 1MB of content. Some of the web sites were purchased with bad credit card numbers.

    This guy kept coming back, typically buying bottom-level hosting through resellers. He tried a hosting service in Mayalasia and got kicked off. He tried one in Brazil and got kicked off. He tried a "bulk friendly" ISP in the US and got kicked off. Finally, he ended up with everything on a server in St. Petersburg, Russia. It took a few days, but he's been kicked off there, too.

    We have some hints of who he is. We've spoken to some people he's dealt with. When we get a solid ID, we'll go after him for trademark infringement.

    It's possible to win these things. It's time consuming, but persist. Trace where the money goes, not where the spam comes from. Follow up daily. Half an hour a day keeps the spammers away.

    • I'm curious, were you able to get any help at all from Rackspace? I haven't ever had an experience like yours (thank God), but I did find for a time that about 90% of my spam was coming from Rackspace. All attempts to contact them (and I _didn't_ just try abuse@rackspace.com) led to nothing and I ended up having to ban their entire domain and all the IPs they control from connecting to my server and the servers I was administrating. I guess I just determined that Rackspace was quite happy to host known-s
      • Something to try, that's Iv'e resorted to (not for spam, but for other network abuse) is to start up with the threats about upstream providers. Unless you are talking to someone huge like AT&T or Leve-3 or something, everyone has an upstream provider (or more than one). Find out who that is and get in touch, let the people you are trying to deal with know that you are doing this. Like the orignal poster said, persistence is the key. Don't give up because you get shrugged off, keep comming at it, esclati

  • This is way too hard (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ChrisWong ( 17493 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @10:22PM (#5907658) Homepage

    The WSJ article today goes into some detail about the arduous chase with little pay-off. Earthlink must have some really dedicated anti-spam activists to even try this. Think they are getting big bucks? Hardly. From the WSJ:

    The lawsuits rarely collect payments because most spammers don't have much money. Last year, EarthLink won one of the industry's biggest settlements -- a $25 million judgment against a Tennessee spammer, but it hasn't yet collected a cent. The Federal Trade Commission has brought 48 actions against spammers who make false claims about products or identities, but it hasn't recovered much money either. "Many times, there is no money left," says Brian Huseman, staff attorney at the FTC.


    And it involves a lot of grunt work per spammer. How much is your time worth? It's like "The Cuckoo's Egg" story again. For just this one guy, for example:

    The pursuit of the Buffalo spammer became Ms. Youngblood's top priority early last year. She spent about 10 hours a week on the case, and her employees spent another 10 to 20 hours a week, in total, hunting to see where he was hiding on the network.


    Unless we start seeing some high-profile jail time, there won't be much of a victory.

    • Re:This is way too hard (Score:5, Informative)

      by minas-beede ( 561803 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @10:35PM (#5907719)
      And it involves a lot of grunt work per spammer.

      Who are the spammers in the Tulsa, OK area? I've got some pretty good evidence against someone there. Wasn't much work at all. I received a relay test message from him, I delivered it, now spam is arriving that (so sorry, Mr. Spammer) isn't getting delivered. Over 5000 recipients so far. The spam comes to my fake open realy through open proxy systems.

      He's sending the relay tests from:

      adsl-65-70-89-125.dsl.tulsok.swbell.net

      He spams:

      Subject: FWD: ASSET - BACKGROUND - MISSING PERSON SEARCHES..
      Subject: FWD: BACKGROUND & ASSET SEARCHES - SAME DAY!
      Subject: Fwd: background & asset reports - same day..
      Subject: WE FIND MISSING PERSONS FOR YOU...OR NO CHARGE..
      Subject: Re: WE FIND MISSING PERSONS FOR YOU...OR NO CHARGE!
      Subject: Re: BACKGROUND & ASSET REPORTS - SAME DAY"
      Subject: Re: background checks - same day service!
      Subject: ASSET SEARCHES - SAME DAY SERVICE.
      Subject: Re: BACKGROUND & ASSET SEARCHES - NATIONWIDE SEARCHES'

      with this phone number for the marks to call: 1-877-269-3892

      His relay test message went to timsmith777@connectfree.co.UK

      He's been sending tests from that same IP for quite some time so I think it's the spammers IP, not an open proxy.


      • It shouldn't be too hard to get his address - doing a lawsuit in small claims is probably enough to get SWBell to cough up the address of that DSL line. And you should be able to come up with an excuse to sue him. You might be able to get the SWBell security folks after him, but more likely they'd just cancel the account and it'd be protected by their privacy policies.
        • "You might be able to get the SWBell security folks after him, but more likely they'd just cancel the account and it'd be protected by their privacy policies."

          SW Bell has been singularly unresponsive with respect to another relay tester - this after a SW Bell abuse person said she was determined to do something about the guy. That was months ago. The real question in my mind is whether the spammed (and otherwise abused) large ISPs this guy is targeting will wish to/be able to use the information I suppl
      • questions like this (if you really want to get help on tracing this particular guy and/or help get his account shutdown with the help of your sightings) better be taken to NANAE/NANAS newsgroups

        Please read the FAQ before you post - http://www.spamfaq.net/

        BTW, your sighting has been reported already, see Google groups [google.com]

        • I'm familiar with NANAE and NANAS. Thanks anyway for the tip.

          I also knew, from NANAS, that the spam his been sighted - I looked for the phone number and saw a disgusting number of hits going fairly far back in time (disgusting because that means he's gotten away with it for so long.)

          Looking in ROKSO I see a Howard Minsky has sometimes claimed a Tulsa location - maybe it's him. I figure that it's more important to someone who does some form of enforcement to know the name - I can just know him by his rel

  • Let's have the DEATH PENALTY for spamming (Score:3, Funny)

    by dilute ( 74234 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @10:25PM (#5907669)
    I can only think of a few crimes that merit the death penalty, and spamming is one of them.

    Other crimes that definitely merit death include:

    -- Serving popup ads

    -- Peeing in the alley behind my apartment building (dogs get clemency)

    -- Sending emails without subject lines

  • Why isn't he in jail? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by runchbox ( 578541 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @10:31PM (#5907694) Homepage Journal
    The WSJ article said he'd used 350 stolen identities and credit cards to set up accounts. We've got the laws we need to put people in jail for credit card fraud -- so why is he at home avoiding phone calls?

    • Re:Why isn't he in jail? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by silentbozo ( 542534 ) on Thursday May 08, 2003 @02:02AM (#5908457) Journal
      A WSJ article from last month says it all. Basically, the credit card companies aren't interested in prosecuting fraud because they pass the costs directly to the merchant to accepted the card (with extra penalties to boot.) If you (as the merchant, or the customer) try to get the credit card company to follow up on a fraud attempt, they'll just ignore you. As a consequence, identity theft goes unpunished, customers are lulled into a false sense of security (oh, we'll just deactivate your old card and issue you a new one), and merchants get a lossage rate of up to 2% when accepting credit cards for card not present transactions...

      Besides, for criminal cases, you need a prosecutor to file a case. Unless the amount is above a certain number, they'll typically just ignore you.

  • At ~.02 per spam, that's still a bargain (Score:3, Interesting)

    by BreadMan ( 178060 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @10:32PM (#5907700)
    Without knowing what he charged his customers, his fine doesn't seem all that large.

    I think it's about time ISP's started charging for each e-mail both sent and received, somewhat like stamps. Something tells me the elasticity looks very vertical in this market and a small cost will do wonders for reducing spam.
      • I think it's about time ISP's started charging for each e-mail both sent and received

      I don't think that's the best approach. It's artificially raising the price of a very basic service. While individual users might not mind paying 100 cents more a month, Amazon sure would be upset if it had to stop its confirmation emails, or pass that cost on to the consumer. All these companies operating slightly less efficiently ends up being a small drag on our economy.

      And what's to stop us at charging extra fo

    • I think it's about time ISP's started charging for each e-mail both sent and received, somewhat like stamps. Something tells me the elasticity looks very vertical in this market and a small cost will do wonders for reducing spam.

      True, but the side-effect would also be the death of legitimate mailing lists. I like to read Politech and I like it that /. can notify about replies and mods. I'm more willing to suffer with spam for those benefits than I would be to pay for every email I send while losing al

    • How foolish. That just means they will relay their mail through china. What do you want to do, charge connections on port 25? So they'll use another port. What's the point? Thi sjust does not work.
    • I think it's about time ISP's started charging for each e-mail both sent and received, somewhat like stamps.

      Charge for each email received? Doesn't that hurt the wrong people? I understand how charging a tiny amount for each email sent would alleviate the spam problem, but wouldn't charging the receiver just make matters worse?

  • Score one for scientology, nick one for spammers.

    Ahhh! Don't know how to feel! Especially if Earthlink gets to collect on a sizable portion of that money... oooh like those guys need to skim any more off the top.

    It's a good thing I don't use earthlink. I have a huge, behemoth, souless corporate provider, and I likes it that way.
    • I've actually heard conflicting reports about the CoS' hand in Earthlink. I know the founder was a Clam, but as for actual, persisting links, I don't know.

      Of course, if Sky Dayton is still in charge and paying his dues, it ends up in their pocket anyway, eventually.

      Anyone got any definitive answers about CoS and Earthlink they'd like to share?

  • SPAM? What's that? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tony1c ( 610261 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @11:07PM (#5907856) Journal
    I'm starting to believe that the SPAM problem is more of an educational issue now. I've used two different programs that have been highly effective against SPAM (spamnet and POPFile). I use POPFile exclusively now, and I've almost forgotten what SPAM is. Yes, it's still a major problem for users out there (especially those using web-based clients), but there is highly effective technology out there to counter it. We don't need to launch costly and ungainly legal offensives against spammers - we already have software that can render them irrelevant.

    • Re:SPAM? What's that? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Spetiam ( 671180 ) on Thursday May 08, 2003 @01:02AM (#5908254) Journal

      It's both a matter of principle and spam does have a financial and quality of service impact on companies and consumers.

      In order to dodge spam, companies/consumers have to either spend the time manually deleting spam or put out the money to buy software to filter spam. In both these cases, spam still eats bandwidth.

      Companies also have to be careful (i.e., spend time/money) that software filters do not delete legitimate email, as this could potentially have a severe imapact on their business dealings, service record, etc.

      Finally, the burden of spam should fall on those responsible for it, not those that are "victimized" by it. So let's still nail the spammers.

    • Re:SPAM? What's that? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You're missing an important point. Even if you don't see your spam anymore, you're still paying for it. Spam is a major part of your bandwidth bill - why are you and I paying for their actions?
      • Spam is a major part of your bandwidth bill

        I call bullshit. I would venture that the bandwidth used by downloading movies and music (oops, sorry, I meant "previewing"), combined with surfing and gaming bandwith FAR, FAR outweighs a few hundred kilobytes of unwanted spam.

        Spam sucks, but let's not make things up here, guys. Keep things in perspective. No need to lie.

    • Re:SPAM? What's that? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by CodeBuster ( 516420 ) on Thursday May 08, 2003 @01:13AM (#5908302)
      The problem with this argument is that even if we all ran Bayesian Filters and blocked 99.9% of all spam messages from hitting our inboxes there would still be billions of messages going back an forth between mail servers before they are caught by the filters. This is a major drag on Internet bandwidth even if all of us never actually saw another spam in our inboxes ever again. These people who abuse their network privileges and degrade the network for the rest of us should be caught and punished for their behavior. Another thing that would really help is for slashdot people to advocate proper mail server configuration, including disallowing open relays, and education of all of the part-time mail sysadmins out there who perpetuate the problem with their own ineptness. There are groups already trying to do these things and it is helping, but it will take much more work on the part of mail admins and users to shut the spammers down for good.
      • "Another thing that would really help is for slashdot people to advocate proper mail server configuration, including disallowing open relays, and education of all of the part-time mail sysadmins out there who perpetuate the problem with their own ineptness."

        There's some merit in what you say - it's better to try to educate inept sysadmins than to just sit back and complain about them. But there's an entirely different path available to attack the open rely problem and that path doesn't depend on educati
  • I noted earlier this asshole used his uncle's info in setting up Earthlink accounts. He also used his mother's name and his mentally-handicapped brother's name. These mistakes and his persistence in using Earthlink as his only ISP cost him quite a bit.
  • linuxwrangler writes "U.S. District Judge George W. Bush Jr. awarded Earth $16 million and an injunction against John Carmack for Carmack's use of Earth to deliver "spam in a can".

  • Hosting my own server (Score:4, Informative)

    by Nonillion ( 266505 ) on Thursday May 08, 2003 @12:46AM (#5908212)
    This is why I host my own e-mail server. It is FAR easyer to block unwanted spam than to have no control of my ISPs based e-mail account. SPAM has to be rejected at the mail server, accepting the e-mail and then filtering it out with your e-mail client does no good at all. It will be interesting to see if any of these SPAMers ever pay up.

    Maybe when hell freezes over SPAMers will finally catch a clue...nahhh, I doubt it..

  • Avoid court fines now ! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Alain Williams ( 2972 ) <addw@phcomp.co.uk> on Thursday May 08, 2003 @12:54AM (#5908227) Homepage
    I'm just putting the finishing touches to my sure fire way of avoiding court fines, something that I am willing to share for a mere £100. Could all slashdotters please help me in this noble enterprise by sending me the email addresses of all the spammers that they know.

  • Re: "Patriot" Legislation... (Score:4, Funny)

    by nametaken ( 610866 ) on Thursday May 08, 2003 @01:00AM (#5908246)
    Couldn't they bend 'spam' into a legally actionable offense by calling it 'terrorism'?

    I know the idea of a site that sells penis enlarging devices and offers college degrees for $19.95, terrorizes me.

  • how big is the fish ? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by huistr ( 518531 )
    I'm wondering how does he size up against the "top 180 responsible for 90% of all spam". Apparently, he is not in the ROKSO [spamhaus.org] list.
  • What if the ISPs sued the backbone providers? They have money. Aren't they responsible in some way? Think about it:

    If you get a telephone line and when you answer the phone all you get is static, so that maybe 70% of the phone conversation can be heard, should you be paying for this extra noise that is inhibiting your ability to get appropriate utilization based on what you're paying for?

    They say that 40% or more of data travelling across the Internet nowadays is rogue data, neither solicited, nor welc

  • Treat Spammers like hackers!!! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pkinetics ( 549289 ) on Thursday May 08, 2003 @02:25AM (#5908511)
    1. Spam is theft of services and or equipment.
    2. Spam is often misrepresented, ergo fraud.
    3. Spam is often sexual harrassment.

    Why not go after these people for real crimes and send them to the slammer, confiscate their equipment, and all that other stuff the FBI loves to do? Also gotta figure if these guys are making any money, their probably violating some IRS law, so send more feds after them.

    Bah... until judges and politicans actually grow up around this stuff, or have to answer their own emails, they'll never pursue it.

    I bet when Bill Gates kids start getting spam, we'll see some radical solutions.

  • Carmack's use of Earthlink to deliver spam.

    You'd think with all the great games he's made, he wouldn't have to resort to this.

  • I went round to see a friend last night. She is a mostly sensible, mostly reasonable, fairly tech literate person. Her values are on the whole mostly in the right place. She runs a small bunsiness and until recently her business has been mostly servicing a government contract. That contract ended and was not renewed. She has laid off most of her staff, but she has no income and still two employees to pay, and she's desperate to find new work.

    A couple of months ago she came and talked to me about how to set up a bulk email thing and I thought I'd succeeded in persuading her that it was a seriously bad idea and she shouldn't do it. Apparently I hadn't; last night she told me she'd started sending bulk UCE.

    This isn't someone whom I'd describe as sleazy, and it isn't someone who's stupid. It's someone who is desperate. I think you will find a lot of spammers are.

    The problem can be tackled, it seems to me, at two levels. Yes, if there's legislation (particularly if it has real teeth) then peopel will get a good clue that this is not a good thing to do. But it also needs there to be a professional ethic among systems and network administrators that we will not allow the infrastructure we control to be used for this sort of thing, and that we will kick offenders off and cancel accounts; and that if our management say different we will refuse to work for them - a sort of hypocratic oath for geeks.

    • But it also needs there to be a professional ethic among systems and network administrators that we will not allow the infrastructure we control to be used for this sort of thing.

      I had been doing the mailings for our legitimate (customers/registrants with opt-in/opt-out ability) bulk emailings, and so I was the natural go-to guy when someone fairly high up in the company was going to buy a bunch of addresses. I said something like "Isn't that against the law?". They responded that we would be using a re

    • Tell her about AOL's and EarthLink's legal awards. Others suing spammers as well, including Microsoft.
    • So she turned to a life of crime and sleazery after losing a juicy gubbment contract? Wah. She sounds like a one-shot Batman villian -- a couple of bad days and suddenly she's a masked vigilante.

      I've been on the skids too. Putting that kind of time and effort into FINDING A JOB was much more satisfying than hitting up my tech-buds as accomplices to degrading the Internet yet another notch. Well done, Obi-Wan, your failed teachings have brought another soul to the Dark Side.

      Thanks for putting a human face
  • I am so glad that I opted to go with an Earthlink connection (instead of TimeWarner's "RoadRunner" service).

    Seeing articles about these people actively combatting the very sources of SPAM just warms my heart. Hell, I'd pay double for that kind of service.

    I've been on Earthlink since sometime in August or September and have had no problems at all. (I must say that the TimeWarner installer-guy was way cool, too. He didn't much favor TimeWarner but he knew what he was doing, for sure. He had even heard

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