Whatever Happened To Sanford "Spamford" Wallace? 45
Tackhead writes "People of a certain age — the age before email filters were effective, may remember a few mid-90s buzzwords like 'bulletproof hosting' and 'double opt-in.' People may remember that Hormel itself conceded that although 'SPAM' referred to their potted meat product, the term 'spam' could refer to unsolicited commercial email. People may also remember AGIS, Cyberpromo, Sanford 'Spam King' Wallace, and Walt Rines. Ten years after a 2003 retrospective on Rines and Wallace, Ars Technica reminds us that the more things change, the more they stay the same."
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It's a shame Law and Order has squandered so much faith, credit and goodwill on meaningless culture war bullshit...
Yes, TV will save us. Mass media will save us all! And absolutely did not play an integral role in causing these problems...
"If Germany had the propaganda apparatus of the United States, she would not need an army". -- Hitler's propaganda minister. Do you understand why he said that?
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ytcracker (Score:1, Insightful)
Number one thing most spammers are most excited abou
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"Until people suddenly wisen up and stop falling for scams and stop being receptive to advertising in general, there will continue to be spam."
Insightful comment. The spammers, revolting subhumans though they are, are simply a symptom of the real problem. And the big "legitimate" marketing companies are signs of the same problem. A sane person would go out of their way to avoid purchasing anything that they saw advertised, and if a significant percentage of the population were sane advertising and marketing
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Insightful comment. The spammers, revolting subhumans though they are, are simply a symptom of the real problem. And the big "legitimate" marketing companies are signs of the same problem. A sane person would go out of their way to avoid purchasing anything that they saw advertised, and if a significant percentage of the population were sane advertising and marketing would be dead, and all the people currently stuck in those soul-leeching jobs could become productive members of the economy instead.
This article really brings back memories. I remember this douche from so many years back. He is one of the few internet "celebrities" that I can remember from 10 and 15 years ago.
I said this years ago, and I still believe its true now, you will never kill off the spamers as long as the market is there. No matter what laws you pass, or how much you fine them there will always be some willing to take the risk. There is just to much money there, it's like drug dealers. As long as there is money to be
Why isn't he in jail? (Score:5, Insightful)
He's in debt to the courts for millions, fails to show up for his court appearances and has repeatedly returned to a life of crime. It's not even as if his lawyer is getting him off. He's a continual recidivist and shows no intention of reforming his ways. Even if the cases themselves were merely civil disputes, his failure to live up his court-ordered responsibilities should have consequences.
Why isn't this jackass in jail yet? He's far more deserving than some poor punk who had the bad luck to get caught with a baggie of pot in his pocket.
Re:Why isn't he in jail? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because our justice system has turned from protecting the public good and society in general towards protecting individual property and particular interest laws.
That's why you can spam millions of people for years (do the math, even at half a second per mail, that's quite a few wasted lifetimes) and get a slap on the wrist ($4 mio? if he weren't a fool that would've been pocket change for an Internet criminal - see Kimble).
But copy a few MP3s and you're down for your life savings. Have a bit of pot on you and off to jail.
It's an entirely different tragedy of the commons - the justice system utterly fails to protect the public at large from deaths by a million cuts, i.e. by small offenses that multiply into the thousands and millions.
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"Because our justice system has turned from protecting the public good and society in general towards protecting individual property and particular interest laws."
While I agree with the rest of what you said that is just plain wrong. Protecting private property is the mission here, it's a crucial part of protecting the public good. And that is exactly where the system has failed. Spam is theft by conversion, and adequately dealt with under common law, but instead of leaving well enough alone, the legislatu
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We mean the same thing.
Of course e-mail spam deprives me of use of my private property. But the damage is too small for an individual case to matter. The real damage is on the whole-society level, when you add up the millions of seconds.
It's the commons - the part of society that we all share. Like our communications ability or public spaces.
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"But the damage is too small for an individual case to matter. "
I dont agree that is *always* true first off, and in the cases where it is, that's why we have something called a class-action suit. You can pool the damages to millions of people and sue together.
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Again, that is not a legal statement. Of course you can sue someone for a cent. But almost nobody bothers to actually do that. Which is why something like a government was invented so things that are too small or too big for individuals to worry about can be handled collectively.
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20 million? Are you living in 1998? Spammers these days send out on the order of magnitude of a billion e-mails.
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Re:Why isn't he in jail? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why isn't this jackass in jail yet? He's far more deserving than some poor punk who had the bad luck to get caught with a baggie of pot in his pocket.
You seem to be misunderstanding: A failed businessman is much less of a problem than a failed worker. Smoking pot = less productivity. That's why we throw him in jail for years at a go, whereas the failed businessman at least was making an attempt to improve the glory of our lord and savior, the Dollar. I only wish this statement was entirely sarcastic, instead of merely mostly. :(
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He's in debt to the courts for millions, fails to show up for his court appearances and has repeatedly returned to a life of crime.
Because he posted bail on the criminal contempt charge.
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Who is the slow learner here, him or the legal system that failed at prosecuting him? He recognised a (criminal) opportunity before everyone else and has the wits to stay out of jail. Crime doesn't pay unless you do it well.
double opt-in (Score:5, Funny)
I saw a movie with that title once, but (to my surprise) it wasn't about Email...
typical... (Score:3)
Lawyers going after money rather than the culprit. Some guy spends one minute in a coordinated DDoS attack and he gets jail time. This guy runs around free because the Lawyers thought that hitting his pocket book would matter but what they didn't realize is this guy has no concept of saving any money, he spends it and pisses it away on gambling so when they come to collect, his pockets are empty. In the meantime he cranks up the old routines to get more money to spend.
I do have to say one thing, it's great to see a guy make the Feds go in loops. We all believe that the Criminal Justice system is this fair system that only punishes the truly guilty. Yeah we want to believe it but if you're on the wrong side of that system without representation and money you're just gear lube for the the machine. This guy without a lawyer has the Feds running around trying to get money that doesn't exist, all the while playing the dumb fool. In the end he's nobody's fool.
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Email filters are NOT effective (Score:3)
Even worse, as time goes on the signal-to-noise ratio only gets worse as spammers get more creative and do a better job of sending spam that resembles wanted commercial email.
If you want to actually do something about the spam epidemic, don't fool yourself into thinking that your filters will do it. Spam is an economic problem, it needs economic solutions. Filters do not accomplish this.
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If you thing SPF as made a difference to the amount of spam being sent I have a bridge to sell you.
SPF was never about preventing spam. It has only ever been about preventing your email address being used as the from address in spam. It reduces the amount of blowback to your account and nothing else. The only reason SPF appears to be a effective anti-spam tool is that there is that the number of sites filtering using SPF hasn't risen to the level where the spammers need to stop using SPF protected addre
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The statement of "before email filters were effective" is delirious at best. Filters will never, in the long term, be an effective anti-spam tool.
Filters where a band aid at best. It seems to me that filters themselves have went along way toward making email next to useless as a communication tool.
In the old days I used to send a nice email to my friends and family but now filters have practically made that useless. Filters also have negated the purpose of a junk mail folder. The idea for that was that filters would throw crap in there and I could delete it with out concern.
Well now my email is so heavily filtered I have to root through it
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Forget the government, why isn't he.. (Score:2)
...in a shallow grave in the Mojave desert?
He seems like he's the kind of archetypal low-rent scam artist with a gambling habit who thinks that because he can walk away from corporate civil judgements he can get away with anything.
Maybe I've seen too many movies, but Las Vegas seems like the place guys like this go only to find out that there's a difference between civil suits and guys in sharkskin suits, and the latter is more than willing to use extrajudicial means to recover their debts.