Spammers Finally Under the Legal Gun? 204
MarkvW writes with this welcome bit of Schadenfreude: "People are finally starting to use the anti-spam laws in the malevolent manner in which they were intended — unlimited consumer lawsuits from unlimited plaintiffs!" The story's protagonist is my hero for the season.
You'd think TFA could at least get English right (Score:5, Funny)
San Francisco-based Balsam has been wielding a one-man crusade against e-mail marketers he alleges run afoul of federal and state anti-spamming laws...
Wielding a crusade? Really?
Re:You'd think TFA could at least get English righ (Score:5, Funny)
To be fair, a one-man crusade is fairly easy to lift.
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I don't know, "wield" has such a heavy sound, man.
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Anybody can do what this guy is doing. It's not particularly hard.
Note that the spammers are settling with him!
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Whoosh! Dude, you're missing that we're making fun of TFA's author's bad use of the English language here... It's even in the title of your posts :-)
It used to be easier to track down and collect from spammers a decade ago than it is today, because so much of it has moved to off-shoring and botnets, and spammers have learned to use shell corporations, bogus domain registration information, fly-by-night web hosting services, and other techniques, so the low-hanging fruit is mostly gone. It's especially
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A scummy lawyer sueing scummy email company, nothing to see here.
Please detail exactly how you think the lawyer's actions are scummy. Or are you saying that all lawyers are scummy, just by virtue of being lawyers? In that case, I hope for your sake that you're never sued or accused of a crime, because it might be hard to maintain your self-righteousness when you're relying on those scum to keep you from going bankrupt or to prison.
Re:You'd think TFA could at least get English righ (Score:4, Interesting)
He's scummy because he doesn't do a damn thing. He sets up honeypots, and then sues the spammers, hoping they settle. It's like the pigs buying up a crackhouse and busting everyone that comes in, but never finding the dealer. Legally right? Yes. Morally? No. Only scum go after the low-hanging fruit.
Any Joe Sixpack moron can go file a lawsuit at small claims court. If he was really interested in making a change, he wouldn't be taking the settlements, he'd be dragging them all through the coals. Instead, he's just a money grabbing slimeball.
Hell, he was just some two-bit marketing droid before he thought "oh kool, getting default judgements is fun, I'll go make myself a loyuh!"
Fuck him. Maybe I'd be OK with him if he was working pro bono to help 419 scam victims or something, but right now, he's just as bad as the assholes on TV that advertise class action lawsuits
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$50 per day??? No! (Score:5, Insightful)
Under California Law, Business & Professions Code Section 17529.5 it is $1,000 per e-mail.
But, there are two things you forget: (1) that there is a cost; and (2) if many people do it, it will bankrupt the people who are advertised by the spam. This threat may convince companies that will hire spammers to think carefully before hiring a spammer.
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Hey, it doesn't cost me anything what he's doing, and it might reduce the amount of spam I get. At the very least, that buys my nodding tolerance. Better if he actually shut them down, perhaps, but applying a cost to spam will have the same effect.
Re:You'd think TFA could at least get English righ (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't happen to work as a spammer do you? I don't see how any reasonable person could think this is morally wrong.
I also don't see anything morally wrong with your example you gave either however it isn't exactly equal to what this guy is doing since he has evidence.
Everyone's tired of the internet being treated like a toilet (except you it seems) by companies. If this dude can clean it up a little then that's good by me regardless of what reasons he has to do it.
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If he was really interested in making a change, he wouldn't be taking the settlements, he'd be dragging them all through the coals. Instead, he's just a money grabbing slimeball.
He's sued the holding company running AdultFriendFinder 4 times, and will continue to sue them until they stop spamming. The courts won't award him 1.1 million dollars per violation, unfortunately. Also several are pissed that he drags them through court instead of settling; I haven't determined why he settles some cases and drags others through court. Maybe because he can squeeze them for lawyer fees by dragging the case through court (they do have to pay their legal team), but he doesn't incur any him
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"Unlimited plaintiffs"?? (Score:5, Informative)
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How is this "unlimited consumer lawsuits from unlimited plaintiffs!"? What I see in this article is a substantial but limited number of lawsuits from one plaintiff.
"Unlimited" does not mean "infinite." Think, "there is no two." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_One_Infinity [wikipedia.org]
In this case, as with software, "unlimited" means that there is no arbitrary limitation on the number of plantiffs or lawsuits. Sure, there is a theoretical maximum of some 308 million plantiffs, and a further theoretical maximum of some six billion defendants... meaning that if the theoretical maximum were reached, we'd have more lawsuits on this law than have ever been filed in the history of o
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How is this "unlimited consumer lawsuits from unlimited plaintiffs!"? What I see in this article is a substantial but limited number of lawsuits from one plaintiff.
"Unlimited" does not mean "infinite." Think, "there is no two."
No shit. Why do you think I said "limited" rather than "finite"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_One_Infinity [wikipedia.org]
In this case, as with software, "unlimited" means that there is no arbitrary limitation on the number of plantiffs or lawsuits.
Well, the maximum of the number of plaintiffs discussed in the article is one.
Sure, there is a theoretical maximum of some 308 million plantiffs...
So, yeah, "unlimited" sounds about right.
Once again, I wasn't talking about the theoretical number of plaintiffs and lawsuits in the world. An article about that might be kind of awesome. What we got was an article about one dude, limited by the number of lawsuits that one dude has time to file. TFA made the summary a teensy bit misleading.
What I See.. ;) (Score:2)
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You can sue as many Russian / Former Russians as you want. Will they ever be brought to AMERICAN justice? No. Russian Justice? Not as long as the keep passing suitcases of cash to Moscow.
I think I see a solution.
1. Be in cahoots with Moscow.
2. Bring Russian court suits against spammers whose only way out of lawsuits is to pass suitcases of cash to Moscow.
3. ?
4. Profit!
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Most of the spam I get is obviously for American products. Maybe they pay some Russians to send it, but he source is the USA.
In any case, when it comes to sending money to the said assholes, wherever they may be, it isn't in a suitcase, it has to go through American banks and credit card companies. Too bad they don't g
Domestic Companies (Score:3)
You can't sue a foreign spammer but you can sure as hell spam the domestic company who pays them. Knowingly or not, that should be regarded as breaking the law.
Go after the domestics Mr Dan!
Judging from what happened to Blue Security though, I would be concerned for my safety if the spam cartel unifies against him.
Poetic justice (Score:4, Funny)
Oops, spam must be on the mind. That should read "you can sure as hell sue the domestic company who pays them".
Although it would it would be funny if every employee of a company that pays a spammer receives a clogged inbox of real spam as part of the settlement. That would be wonderful. I mean, if everybody is reading or filtering spam emails, they company will surely go bust!
userfriendly.com webcomic version of that (Score:3)
Userfriendly.com comic from Aug 7, 1999 [userfriendly.org]
Pitr: Am wonderink what is this email
Email: This is not unsolicited bulk email. Buy me. Blah blah blah
...
Pitr: Zlotniks! Sending me spam! Am fixink their leetle red wagon!
...
Boss: What happened to our email server?
Worker: It's flooded. And there's an email here that says "This is not a denial of service attack."
Not just domestic! (Score:5, Informative)
I have sued foreign spammers.
In 2003, I sued Global Web Promotions for their penis pill enlargement spam. Though Global Web was in Australia, they solicited business from California and caused harm in California.
See Snowney V. Harrah's Entertainment, Inc., 35 Cal. 4th 1054 (2005) (Solicitation of California Residents) , Calder v. Jones, 465 US 783(1984) (Harm directed to California)
I am currently suing a porn organization, the third time, operated by David Szpak and Emmanuel Gurtler for illegal spamming. (See http://barbieslapp.com/spam/axscharge/axscharge.htm [barbieslapp.com]) The main companies are all located off-shore, the US companies were mere shells for the offshore companies. These guys hired Yambo (See http://www.spamhaus.org/rokso/listing.lasso?file=880 [spamhaus.org]) to send spam for them. They created two new companies, just after I sued them the first time, but they claimed it was not to avoid my lawsuit but to avoid the Visa anti-fraud/chargeback detection mechanisms.
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They created two new companies, just after I sued them the first time, but they claimed it was not to avoid my lawsuit but to avoid the Visa anti-fraud/chargeback detection mechanisms.
That actually sounds like a legitimate claim, and quite a hilarious one too. I'm surprised such a rotten company would even tell you that. It might be relevant in your lawsuit.
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Now that would be a business model for litigation. (hope the sarcasm comes through.)
Re:Calling Sarcasm Bluff (Score:2)
Why not?
Why not use the same tricks as the RIAA to sue the originator of the emails as "does 1-1000".
it's Schadenfreude (Score:2)
Does no one here know German? Shame on you.
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Does no one here know German? Shame on you.
Many here know German...none of whom, unfortunately, are among the editors.
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Does no one here know German? Shame on you.
Many here know German...none of whom, unfortunately, are among the editors.
Had there been any, then they could have gone past the spelling and gotten the meaning. If the spammers had rheumatism, St. Vitus dance, and erectile dysfunction, then where might be schadenfreude in the Village of the Spammed.
Dan is... odd (Score:5, Informative)
I know a company that has had the fun of dealing with Dan. While I hate spammers as much as the next guy, Dan's little crusade seems less than legal to me. Having a valid opt-out isn't good enough. Here is what you agree to by sending him email (not that you would know it at the time):
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I wonder if I would get a bill? After all it would be an unsolicited commercial email.
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I don't think so. From his website:
[...] our federal government passed the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, which [...] attempts to pre-empt the state laws [...]. But, there is an exception to preemption. CAN-SPAM does not pre-empt anti-spam state laws that prohibit falsity & deception, [...] and so I continue to file lawsuits.
So looks like you would need to be deceptive (or falsify the headers or something like that) in o
It is just another way to attack spam. (Score:4, Interesting)
It used to be, not as much now, that spammers would scrape web sites to obtain e-mail addresses to spam to.
Terms of use are many times enforceable as a contract.
The simple thing is NOT to SPAM!
Just because the DMA bribed enough congress people to get a law passed to allow it in the USA, specifically to override the California ban on the law, does not mean that it is wanted.
There is more to comply then providing an opt-out link.
Re:It is just another way to attack spam. (Score:4, Interesting)
All true, all true. But this opens a door for the legal trolls that would be worse than all the spam of the world combined.
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But this opens a door for the legal trolls that would be worse than all the spam of the world combined.
The terms laid out seem entirely reasonable to me, and I've certainly never sent an e-mail that would violate them. It's true, I suppose, that a troll could set up a website with insane terms buried on the site somewhere ("If you send the owner of this site e-mail for any reason, you agree to pay $1,000,000 per byte") but the solution to that problem would be either not to e-mail any of the listed addresses, or sue the site owner for ... oh, hell, I don't know, something that a good lawyer could no doubt c
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The point is that you didn't even WANT to send them a mail. You made a typo and it ended there.
Example:
You (or let's make it a MBA, just to increase the chance of a computer related fuckup) receive a business card from a new business partner telling you to send him your offer to dan@somecompany.com. You send it to dan@sonecompany.com. Because you made a typo when copying the name from the business card.
sonecompany.com belongs to our law troll and you receive a mail telling you that you just implicitly agree
Oh yeah, right. (Score:2)
First, there is a defense of mistake. Second, it is not against spam, but spam that has a deceptive subject line or header.
Even if you make a mistake in the e-mail address, should be be offering a free TV, that is not really free, to someone who gave you a business card asking to be e-mailed?
The California law outlaws deceptive spam.
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Trolls? (Score:2)
That is what they said about the junk fax laws, if you allow people to sue it will create junk fax trolls. I have not seen that, but instead I saw junk faxes become almost extinct.
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I don't say "outlaw suing". I said make sure that you don't open a bigger can of worms than the one you're closing. Make sure that law trolls can't jump on it and feast on it.
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Actually, dictionary attacks are still alive.
Even so, there are a few things that you forget:
1. Spammers will add to lists and sell it, whether the policy says it would or not.
2. It is still spam, unless you specifically ask for it.
3. The law says that unless they name the "affiliate" then it is not permission.
4. Many don't say "web site and affiliates," but say "partners". In spammer speak, a partner is anyone they sell a list to. In English a partner is someone they have close ties with.
5. I have e-mailed
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So kind of like an EULA you only get to read after purchasing a product?
All he needs to add is: 'If you do not agree to these conditions, please contact %site_email_provider to delete your email from our inbox'
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So kind of like an EULA you only get to read after purchasing a product?
Except, of course, it's published on his website, so you can read it before emailing him.
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If this holds in court, here's what every lawsuit troll will do:
1. Register domain names that are similar to those of companies and contain the usual suspects for typos.
2. Set up a mail server and put this drivel up there.
3. Wait for someone to make a typing mistake.
4. Sue
5. Profit.
Re:Dan is... odd (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it isn't.
I'm not Dan, but I've dealt with people who think like you before.
Let me put it simply: I didn't opt in to your spam. You're already stealing my time and resources if you managed to get it through my spam filters. So I'm sure as fuck not going to trust you to opt me back out of it.
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Especially when it is hard to tell whether the opt-out really is an opt-out.
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Like I said, I hate spam. I get hundreds of pieces a day, and I wasn't for CAN-SPAM (since it legitimized it). I think all email should be opt-in. But Dan's little agreement seems like you suing me if I sent you a letter from my business because I didn't take the time to go read a note posted on his door I didn't know about. It seems like trap, and a somewhat unfair one.
I just worry is method is too heavy handed. What if I send him a question (about something else, totally not business related) and he deci
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Both you and Opportunist with you're lame "what if" situations completely ignore that the emails are commercial spam. He's not suing legit email.
When that happens wake me up otherwise your lame "what if"'s are over complicated nonsense.
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Reality impaired is a good name for you. As you slide over, there's no way to determine who the affiliates are. So to claim that you authorized those (previously) unknown people to spam you is ... peculiar. It's at most legally true, and not true in any ethical, moral, or sensible way.
Then there's the matter of reading all the agreements on the web sites that you have signed up at. This is, frankly, impossible. They change those things without notice to those who have previously agreed to them, and the
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Dear Dan,
We are thrilled to hear your response to our offer of \/1A g R 4. However, as we are persons thus far unknown to you, in a country thus far unknown, who have contracted with other persons unknown to you in Russia and China to hire the services of 100,000 computers in 12 separated countries for to send our valuable messages to you we must reply to your filing of the law suit against us in California court with a "giggle" as they say in English. Good luck collecting on your defaults judgement.
OXOX,
V
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So what? He makes a comfortable living from the people he can easily catch. It doesn't matter to him if he doesn't catch everybody. Besides, for a sales-based spam you need some way to get money to someone, some way to order something, some way to get something shipped to you. All of these are traceable - it doesn't matter if you can't trace the PC the mail was sent from.
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No, that would not be legal. There are rules for contracts that require that an offer must be accepted by the offeree [wikipedia.org]. You can't agree to the terms of an offer that you have not seen. Now you could say that if a spammer sent further messages after the first one resulted in a reply with those terms then they would be liable, but I am not sure. It is like when you get one of those automated phone calls with a recorded message. You can't just talk back to the message and legally say that you have informed the
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I am not sure who to cheer on here, a spammer or a lawyer.
Let them kill each other, then the rest of us will be better off
Putting email addresses on web page solves that (Score:2)
If he's got the contract on his web pages, and the only way you can find out most of his email addresses you're targeting is by reading his web page, then you're presumed to have read his offer. If you're spamming "dan@danbalsam.com" that may not apply, because that's obvious without looking at his web page, but if you're spamming user34590438509348@danbalsam.com, you got that from his web page.
And maybe that's not a tough enough legal contract to force you to pay him $1000000 and your first-born child, bu
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Yeah, that's my big problem. If he auto-responded with a copy of the terms and "By continuing to send me email you agree to them" that would be much better.
I like the idea of suing the people who's products are being advertised, but since so much spam is a fake scam, suing Apple because someone is offering a free iPod (or Pfizer because of "cheep V1agR4") doesn't seem like it would accomplish much. Actual cases where the companyis the advertiser are much more rare.
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It is like when you get one of those automated phone calls with a recorded message. You can't just talk back to the message and legally say that you have informed the phone spammer of your conditions.
Ahhhh! US lawyer culture...
A local sCammer used a fake name under *my* phone# and we've been in the sights of a few collection agencies.* A recent agency has the guts to leave repeated voicemails with robo-messages stating that "This message is for $fake_name. By listening to this message you certify that you are $fake_name... If you are not $fake_name, hang up now. There will now be a 3-second pause." Only after that, do they give callback info for $fake_name to make ammends. But this bold pretense is offe
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While I hate spammers as much as the next guy, Dan's little crusade seems less than legal to me. Having a valid opt-out isn't good enough.
He's correct. Having a valid opt-out is NOT good enough. There are two reasons for that.
First, if a valid opt-out were good enough, it would mean every spammer gets a freebie, and then we have to actually take positive action to not receive further spam from them.
Second, opting out requires communicating with the spammer--letting them know that you actually spent time looking at their spam. That is likely to just get you even more spam.
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Luckily, all persons, businesses, and other entities that receive any unsolicited commercial email from any email address containing any of my domains also voluntarily enter a contract with me as described herein:
0 : You retroactively agree to exempt said communication from any retroactive Terms and Conditions you would normally seek to apply.
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The only reason you would ever run foul of this is if you were sending out unsolicited commercial email... SPAM!
In that case, fuck you. I have no sympathy.
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That contract only applies to COMMERCIAL emails. You can email Dan as much as you like as long as the emails are non-commercial in nature, but there's no reason to send him commercial emails because - well, he doesn't want any. That really cannot be hard to understand?!
How hard can it be to limit your emails to people having opted-in to receiving those? - That's really all he's asking for.
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Bollocks, completely unenforcible. I bet he's never had anyone pay any of these "agreed" fees, and never taken anyone to court to claim them. It's just a longwinded way to say "Piss off spammers".
Re:Dan is... odd (Score:5, Funny)
For future reference, posting as AC is quite pointless when it's so easy to perform a whois lookup, Brett.
But props for *actually* buying the domain. Usually when I involve money in a Slashdot comment, it's from posting an affiliate link or something.
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Replying to self, logged in now.
More specifically my idea was-
He says:
" Unless Dan Balsam or someone else with an email address including “danbalsam.com” "
which i now have, since my email includes danbalsam.com in it. (someuser@iamdanbalsam.com).
" has specifically opted in to receive commercial email from you, you understand and agree that neither Dan Balsam nor anyone else with an email address including “danbalsam.com” has ever requested any commercial communication from you, and
Spam still makes it through the filters? (Score:2)
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Considering he's already made a million, I'd say you're wrong.
And why should filters have any relevance here? Are you saying you prefer the way things are where filters are necessary to find any usefulness in email?
Re:Spam still makes it through the filters? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, this guy is making a living out of it. He's seeking spammers, at least the kinds of spammers he can figure out where to send a subpoena.
Unfortunately, those seem to be the comparatively benign spammers. Oh, they're still spammers and I wouldn't shed a single tear if any of them had their faces eaten off by wild dogs. But at least from the article, this isn't the Nigerian princes, or Russians trying to sell you v1@gra. It's the companies who really should be complying with the CAN-SPAM laws so that they "can spam" you. (And the kind that's REALLY easy to filter.)
They're not filling your in-box with millions of spams. That's the other guys, and as far as I can tell this guy isn't doing squat about them. Work for somebody else, but it means that this guy is less interesting than he might appear from a cursory summary.
They're violating CAN-SPAM when compliance is easy (Score:3)
It looks like he's especially trying to catch spammers who are doing business in California, since California laws are tougher than the US CAN-SPAM law. But it sounds like he's also catching people who are violating CAN-SPAM, and any US spammer who can't figure out how to comply with that law cheaply and easily while still spamming their way to Making Money Fa$t is too stupid to deserve to stay in business, and yet many of them don't bother. Obviously non-US spammers don't have to comply with US or Califo
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The real problem is that it's not a very profitable plan. Suing viable American companies in an American court means a tolerable chance of actually getting some money out of it. Where would you sue the Russian Mafia? How would you collect if you won?
They'd save the price of a hit man by simply ignoring you.
Don't Waste Your Time (Score:2, Insightful)
If you want to actually make a difference in the spam epidemic, you need to address the underlying cause of spam. You need to accept the fact that spammers are not spamming you to piss you off; rather they are spamming you because the
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Your assumptions are flawed. Point of fact the US accounts for fully 80% of spam.http://www.spamhaus.org/statistics/countries.lasso
But more so you suggest that to stop spam we transfer fully half of our wealth to other countries? good luck with that one.
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Point of fact the US accounts for fully 80% of spam.http://www.spamhaus.org/statistics/countries.lasso
That is not relevant to my point. The money that drives spam comes from all over the world. However, the numbers they use for that page refer to the number of open spam incidents per country, which doesn't have much of anything to do with where the spam is actually coming from or who is funding it; they are looking at where systems are located that are relaying that spam.
But more so you suggest that to stop spam we transfer fully half of our wealth to other countries? good luck with that one.
No.
I have no idea how you came to that utterly disconnected conclusion.
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First off, it's not like there has to be a single solution. I think by far the biggest problem is that if your email is spammed once, it's spammed forever. Everybody knows opt-outs do not work, making such requests will only make your address ten times as spammed. If I were to redo my mail setup, no one would get to know my real inbox. Every address I'd use would be an alias - yahoo will give you 500 of these for free - and every mailing list and every site that requires email for registration would get the
randomalias@yourdomain.com or you+tag@yourdomain (Score:3)
The easy half of the game is to have a system for generating lots of aliases - either of the form alias@yourdomain.com (or alias@yourusername.yourisp.net) or yourusername+tag@yourdomain.com are both standard approaches for supporting an infinite number of tagged addresses.
The difficult problem is getting your email user agent to be friendly about making sure that if you got mail from someone who knows you as alias123@yourdomain.com, your replies to them get sent From: alias123@yourdomain.com, and also maki
Re:redo (Score:3)
I have that setup already. Problem is they do automated attacks against domains, so eventually they crack through to your real email. Once they score a hit they sell the live address to other people for their lists. The best you can do is keep it at a dull roar.
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In other words, the only way we will ever stop spam is to address the economic issues behind spam.
That's what Mr. Balsam is doing - addressing the economic issues. The problem with spam is that, essentially, it has zero financial risk. You aren't guaranteed to make any money, but the cost is as close to zero as you can get, hence you have very little chance of losing money. Thus, as long as a single moron is stupid enough to buy your product, you end up with a profit.
By adding a financial burden, ie. litigation, to spam, it becomes possible to end up with a net loss by spamming. One man alone probabl
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In other words, the only way we will ever stop spam is to address the economic issues behind spam.
That's what Mr. Balsam is doing - addressing the economic issues.
By adding a financial burden, ie. litigation, to spam
The problem with that assumption is that the litigation actually adds zero - or very close to zero - actual cost to spam. This is because of several important factors, not the least being that most spam is run by groups that are not within the jurisdiction of US law. You might as well file a personal lawsuit against Osama Bin Laden while you're at it, the result will be just as relevant.
If you want to make a difference, you need to go after the companies that are funding the spammers. The spammers, ar
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That's what Mr. Balsam is doing - addressing the economic issues.
I don't think so. The economic issue is that you want your penis enlarged. Don't you?
As long as people want their penises larger, spam will continue, and efforts like this are just talking around the issue. The issue being that you want your penis enlarged.
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Re:economic (Score:2)
I'm quietly working on that too.
Right now Spam is a "push" mechanism, of something with negative value.
I am working on Converter concepts to suddenly turn spam into something with POSITIVE value.
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Addressing economic issues behind spam can be done by ensuring that companies that use spam in their advertising pay more in fines than they could earn by the sales of their products.
A large part of the spammers are actually in the US - see any statistics on spam origins. Most of the spam wants to get your money, so they sell and deliver stuff in US, so they are quite vulnerable to US jurisdiction, as the court verdicts would apply to their money and stuff passed through US. Dan's methods won't work against
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So, go after the suckers that buy from spammers? But there's a sucker born every minute!
No. You need to disconnect the spammers from the people who are funding the spammers. Spammers get paid for sending the spam, regardless of whether or not any product sells as a result.
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I don't really want people to even be able to contact me anonymously
That may be the most ironic piece of writing I have ever seen here from an AC.
Not unlimited (Score:2)
FTFS: "unlimited consumer lawsuits from unlimited plaintiffs"
Au contraire. You can limit the lawsuits by limiting the amount of spam you send.
No, this is just as bad as spam. (Score:2)
No, he's busting Dumber US Spammers (Score:3)
Legal solutions aren't going to kill all spamming until we acquire Un-bribe-able World-Wide Pork-Product-Hating Overlords. But a large amount of spam actually does come from US-based spammers, including little guys and big businesses. It's extremely easy to comply with CAN-SPAM if you're not a deliberate spammer - don't send people unsolicited commercial email and you've done your job. It's pretty trivial to comply with it even if you *are* a deliberate spammer, and cheap and easy to set up a $100 shell
What a great part-time career opportunity! (Score:2)
I'm surprised I didn't hear about this via email direct marketing!
The Doctor says! (Score:2, Funny)
UNLIMITED RICE PUDDING!
passing on the cost (Score:4, Funny)
The spammers just pass this cost on by raising the price of penis enlargement pills. As always, it's the little guy who pays in the end.
A little guy suing? no big deal (Score:2)
delusions (Score:2)
Re:delusions (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, he's winning those court cases, and earns enough money doing so to make a living, so I'm not sure about delusions.
We use PGP whitelists, and don't get spam. (Score:5, Interesting)
By requiring all incoming mail to be either on the user controlled white-list (ie: any user can opt to allow an address such as *@slashdot.com or joe@sixpack.net), or to be linked via our PGP chain of trust we have eliminated all spam.
Signing up for a web service that validates e-mail address? Simple: add that site to the white-list first.
In my company signing our e-mails via our PGP key is essential to prove who wrote what when.
Seriously folks, the solution to SPAM is not yet another awesome filtering algorithm, or futile and expensive legal proceedings; It's verifying the sender is who they say they are. Stop complaining about how unsecured & non-authenticated the unsecured & non-authenticated e-mail protocol is and instead, help us all work towards the solution by adopting/advocating secure & authenticated e-mail.
Why does SPAM exist? Because people are too lazy to force the authentication issue. If everyone digitally signed their e-mail we could say, "filter all mail connected by more than 6 degrees of separation into the junk folder," and the fight against SPAM would be over. IMHO, we shouldn't be fighting against SPAMers, we should be fighting for adoption of authentication.
low hanging fruits (Score:2)
He's not my hero, and that with me hating spam with a passion.
What is is doing is picking the low-hanging fruits. The ones you can easily identify and sue. He's suing dating sites and social networking sites for being too aggressive and misleading with their mailings. He's doing squat nothing against the real scourge, which is the the Viagra and penis enlargement and Nigeria scamming.
Yes, I don't like those mailing you get from every site you sign up to all the time, but at least on those the opt-out link u
Hero? (Score:2)
So... where exactly is the heroism? What has he done for the greater good of another individual or for society?
I RTFAed, he just takes the money and move on.
Re:spam is just an example of e-Marketing (Score:5, Insightful)
Because it's using my resources to "speak" without asking me first.
The first amendment does not require me to hold your protest rally in my garden. I may do it, provided I support your case or at least don't care, but the 1st does not require me to surrender my property or my rights to something (in this case, the storage space on a server that I have the right to use) to let someone execute his 1st amendment right.
Re: (Score:2)
The bottom line is still that you are using my resources to practice free speech. Even if it's just my time, needed to push your spam mail towards /dev/null.
Having a "publicly accessible" mail server (I guess you mean one that "anyone" may send mail to, rather than one that can be (ab)used as anyone sees fit) doesn't allow anyone to fill it with virtual garbage any more than a "publicly accessible" front lawn that I didn't bother to fence in with any more than entirely necessary to mark it as mine allows an
Re: (Score:3)
The right to free speech gives you the right to publish your own newspaper, for example. In modern terms, it gives you the right to have your own website. What that right does not do is extend to the taking of property belonging to others to achieve the free speech. You cannot, for example, steal, or demand free usage of, my printing press. Likewise, you cannot demand free use of my web site to do your free speech.
Free speech is not free beer.
So how does this apply to email? Simple. Email functions by