Spammers Ordered To Pay

[CajunCenturion]

Not intended to start any sort of spam discussion, just a newsworthy item.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/12/18/spam.lawsuit.ap/index.html

Good Luck
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To get the most from your Tek-Tips experience, please read FAQ181-2886
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[MasterRacker]

That's a welcome development. Be nice if they could actually force collection.

Let me second the wish to avoid yet another mindless spammer-bashing thread. There're plenty of those active at the moment already.


Jeff
The future is already here - it's just not widely distributed yet...

 

[Dimandja]

>Be nice if they could actually force collection.

Are the spamming companies listed in the article real companies with offices? The article does not really explain whether these are just names floating through Internet or actual registered corporations.

 

[kHz]

My number one question regarding spam is...

Why or how do people become victims of spam?

I receive very little (probably 5 or 10 a week at most). There has to be a cause. Why do some receive a lot and others little?

They will never collect. A spammer probably doesn't have real estate so you can't place a lien for payment.

 

[Dimandja]

>Why do some receive a lot and others little?

If your email address can be found laying around somewhere on an Internet page (as in a bulletin board), you will get a severe case of spam.

 

[mrdenny]

You will also get a severe case of spam if your email address is on a common domain like msn.com or earthlink.net, etc and the username part is something basic like bob, fred, joe, etc.

And once the spam starts, your getting it for life at that address.

It also doesn't help if you have family like me that fill out all those helpfull little forms to email web pages, or get a virus every once in a while, and get your email addresses added to the spam lists that way. (Not that I'm ranting, my family are all perfect little computer users.)

Denny

--Anything is possible. All it takes is a little research. (Me)

http://www.mrdenny.com

(My very old site)

 

[chiph]

And once the spam starts, your getting it for life at that address.

Absolutely true. I had chiph@pobox.com for years, but then one day I got one piece of spam, and it just grew after that.

I really got cheezed off over losing that address - I had had it for a long time, all my friends knew to reach me there, and I was forced to give it up because people were trying to sell me garbage that I didn't want or need (the usual -- h0t teens, herbal vi@gr@, Nigerian 419 scams, phishing, etc).

I figure that because the address was so short (five letters), the spammers just brute-forced their way up to it, starting with aaaaa, and proceeding to zzzzz. When it doesn't cost you anything to send an email, you can do stuff like this.

Back on topic:
I don't think that they'll ever collect. It's a moral victory, at best.

Chip H.


____________________________________________________________________
If you want to get the best response to a question, please read FAQ222-2244 first

 

[jwenting]

And changing addresses can get expensive, especially if you use it for business purposed.
You have to get new businesscards, stationary, notify all your customers, suppliers and other business contacts.

I've held my current address since 1998. In that time I've seen the amount of spam grow from nothing to over 300 a day on one address.
This does include some crud from email bound virusses (which at current seem to be a low percentage, down to just a few a day from several thousand a day at the peak).

What have I ever done to get this much? For the first few years (when spam was unheard of) I used the address freely in my signature on usenet and bulletin boards.
Even though I have not done so for 4 years now, those old references are still there for spambots to find in Google and Yahoo usenet archives (as well as having undoubtedly been harvested many times already and put on bulk email list CDs sold between spammers).

 

[sostek]

I get very little spam - but then I don't see much of it since implementing a rather agressive spam filter called PopFile.

Here is something to think about. Virtually all spam attempts to sell something to the recipient. So why not go after those actually selling the product. That's where the deep pockets are and many people would be surprised that the cast would include more reputable manufacturers and retailers.

The issue with this approach is the expense to in essence, follow the money. But the payoffs could initially be enormous and worthwhile for some bounty hunter type.

 

[CajunCenturion]

I agree sostek, but until the actual seller violates the law, there are no grounds to use against the seller. Spam is lots of things, mostly words not appropriate to these fora, but as of yet, illegal is not one of them.

Good Luck
--------------
To get the most from your Tek-Tips experience, please read FAQ181-2886
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[jwenting]

Problem is the sellers are usually the spammers themselves (and usually it's scams of course these days).
Websites hosted on hijacked servers in China, mailservers hijacked all over the world, using anonymous payment services like paypal and IMOs.

 

[cdlvj]

Why or how do people become victims of spam?

I believe that banks and the credit card companies are the major culprits. They are selling the information.

 

[BocaBurger]

Almost everyone sells information, it is big business. My uncle worked for a company that sells this stuff. The have a huge database with all kinds of demographics and you could order e-mail, snail-mail, fax or telephone numbers of a very targeted group.



BocaBurger
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The pen is mightier than the sword, but the sword hurts more!

 

[acidbrain]

Everything in this world is for sale, everything has a price, including you mother in law )
I wonder if there's a sort of organisation , whatever who's job is to look after this sort of "sellings". Guess there cannot be one because the stakes are too high, and there's no way to trace such businesses. Is it ?!

 

[GwydionM]

Most spammers are US-based. Any other nation that hosted them could be threatened with boycottes until it behaved.

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An old man who lives in the UK