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Spammers Stoop To New Low
Posted by
Hemos
on Fri Aug 31, 2001 04:02 AM
from the using-the-law dept.
from the using-the-law dept.
mathowie writes "I received an unsolicited spam this week from MonsterHut, extolling the virtues of their "products" which are "email marketing" (they're a spam cannon). After reporting it at Spamcop, I received an interesting email from their bandwidth host. It seems that before they could cancel MonsterHut's account for violating their terms of service, MonsterHut began suing them. The worst part? A judge granted MonsterHut a temporary restraining order, forcing Paetec to keep their site online while they continue spamming, before Paetec even knew about the suit. Paetec is collecting affadavits from people that received the spam, so if you did, fill one out. It may be their only chance against the court. How far will spammers go to get their word out? When's it going to stop?"
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Spammers Stoop To New Low
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Oops, unexpected outage. (Score:4, Interesting)
(The most annoying thing is that the judge who made the decision probably doesn't even have an e-mail account.)
Re:Oops, unexpected outage. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Oh, great... (Score:4, Insightful)
Nicely put. But in USA(c) or United States of America (for Corporations), what did you expect? A sane legal system?
The thing I can't understand is why has PaeTec sold the service to MonsterHut? I thought MonsterHut is a well-known spammer. If someone is well known to violate the policies of the corporation I work in, they end on our 'corporate blacklist' and will not be dealed with. Sometimes we share the blacklists with a few of our competitors so that someone having/being a constant problem will not be able to change from one to the other provider. For example, if someone can't keep his deals with one of our competitors, why should he treat us differently? We don't take risks like that. No company can be forced to sell/buy a service/product. This is also a good way of saving legal costs and trouble. I think 10% of our customers make 90% of the trouble.
Activities that will generally put you to our blacklist include spamming, paying bills only after 3rd reminder, and some other things.
Re:Oh, great... (Score:5, Informative)
PaeTec sold the service because, well, that's what they do. PaeTec's T&C's explicitly prohibit spamming (defined in the contract as unsolicited e-mail) and MonsterHut represented that they only send targeted e-mail to addresses that have opted in. Using PaeTec's definition, not spam.
Where PaeTec blew it is by allowing an addendum to the contract that essentially allows 2% of MonsterHut's mail to be spam. MonsterHut contracted the addendum to cover the case of what they claim are people who opted in and then forgot or who've just got an axe to grind. Furthermore, the 2% means that 2% of all recipients have to complain.
MonsterHut has sent 96 million e-mails. That means just under two million people have to complain before reaching the 2% threshold. Oops.
So the basic lesson learned here is: Don't allow stupid addendums to service contracts. Or, don't do things based on a percentage of volume.
In this particular case, it would seem (believe it or not) that if MonsterHut were found in violation of the 2% rule, an acceptable remedy would be to send out more spam on the bet that fewer than 2% would complain about the new round of mail. Relief through dilution.
(Consider the nuclear power industry. In the early days, dumping of radioactive material was legally limited to some number of microcuries per milliliter. Got something to dump that's too hot? Just add water. There's a radioactive stream in Windsor, CT. as result. These days disposal is limited by total microcuries. )
Go read the transcript. (Score:5, Informative)
-russ
Does Monster Hut send spam?! (Score:5, Interesting)
According to the affidavid filled by the plantiff, they were not involved in sending unsolicited email, and thus not violating any terms of use. If you possibly opted in through some other company then maybe it isn't technically spam? (according to the TOS)
The point I'm trying to make is I can understand why the court wants to show some restraint before allowing an ISP to cut a firm's internet access. What would be the consequences if they cut the pipes and then sorted it out? Monster Hut could be deprived alot of revenue!
I'm not trying to defend Monster Hut as they could very well be guilty. I just think that we should be pleased with the Judge's injunction until this gets litigated.
Re:Does Monster Hut send spam?! (Score:5, Informative)
It is Spam (Score:5, Informative)
There is no way they could have opted in anywhere since these addresses aren't used for anything other than domain contact.
If one of those people got an unsolicited email, then it's spam, against terms of service, and reasons for terminating the contract.
Monster Hut got that 2% complaint figure thrown in hoping it would save them from getting cut off for spamming, knowing there's no way to get 120,000 separate provable complaints.
But they forgot that that's complaints on truly opted-in spam -- and they should have to prove the opt-in status. They can't -- they're toast.
Attorney: this is only for 10 days or so (Score:5, Informative)
This is a temporary restraining order. THe very nature of these is that you get one at the time of filing to protect the status quo. A time for a preliminary injunction hearing is set, typically within ten days, which is the first time that evidence from both sides will be heard. There is *nothing* sneaking about getting the TRO before the other side heres of the suit; you serve them both at the same time.
While the standard of evidence to get the TRO is pretty much "file an affadavit,", to get the preliminary injunction you must show a likelihood of winningat trial and that you will be irreparably harmed. If the other side shows you perjured yourself in the TRO affadavit, you tend not to get it (Judges *hate* perjury. They were the group most angry at Clinton).
hawk, wsq.
Actually this is a good thing... (Score:5, Informative)
Think about the bigger picture for a second. What's happened is that a client of an ISP has forced the ISP to win in court before cutting off service.
We've seen lots of cases where service has been cut off for questionable reasons (hosting deCSS, hosting "slanderous" material, whatever) and the ISP's client has had _no_ recourse.
While I would wholeheartedly support the lynching of spammers, I also welcome any trend that forces ISPs to be accountable for disconnecting service. It's not right that my Internet access can be cut off because of unsubstantiated allegations made in a lawyer's letter to my ISP.
Rather than fighting to get these guys booted from their ISP, just enter their IP into the black-lists. If their outgoing mail is handled by the ISP, the ISP can set up a specific IP address as the source of the spam and the rest of the world can block it.
Wrong. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wrong. (Score:5, Interesting)
Sadly you're right. Large companies with extensive legal resources can do pretty much whatever they want to indvidual clients. It's only when the victim has some money that things start to get interesting.
Anyway, I didn't dispute that. I'm just saying that there should be some recourse. Companies might be more careful about breaking contracts if they risked large punitive damages.
Finland has an interesting system regarding traffic fines. They're based on your salary, so if you're a billionare you still have to worry about getting caught speeding - the fine could be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. It makes a lot of sense.
The same kind of system should apply in these situations. If AT&T costs me a years wages by cutting off my connection (say I'm a consultant who works from home) then they should be liable for a year's worth of their revenue. Then they would have to think seriously before breaking their contracts.
ARIN info (Score:3, Informative)
1 Columbo Drive
Niagara Falls, NY 14305
US
Netname: PAET-RO-MONSTER-1
Netblock: 64.80.216.0 - 64.80.221.255
Coordinator:
Pelow, Todd (TP521-ARIN) tpelow@monsterhut.com
716-298-9797
Cultivated e-mail addresses. You jest, surely? (Score:4, Funny)
"All of our email lists are permission based. Our lists have been cultivated through list broker alliances and affinity agreements that we have established."
Translation:
"We didn't ask permission, but we don't feel guilty about that. Our lists were purchased in bulk on CD-Rs in exchange for sexual favours. We hope to aquire more CD-Rs as it's the only sex we get."
Spam protection (Score:5, Interesting)
It currently kills about 70% of the spam I receive (still leaving about 20 messages per day in my normal mailbox
ftp://ftp.bero.org/pub/experimental/NoSpam-0.0.1.
And yes, it kills spam from monsterhut.com.
Give MonsterHut a Call... (Score:5, Informative)
716-298-9797
A good read! (Score:5, Interesting)
Some interesting points so far...
The biggest part of the case is whether this was actually a case of unsolicited email or not. The Defendant has stated that they believed Monsterhut was an opt-in advertising service when, in fact, they buy their lists externally with the apparent assumption that these are genuine opt-in customers.
The Plaintiff has pointed to a provision in the contract that allows for a 2% complaint rate to avoid immediate termination of their contract. First, whoever agreed to this for the ISP should be shot considering the sheer amount of traffic Monsterhut can throw out and the number of spam messages that 2% allows for (the Plaintiff even mentions a number over 6 million outgoing messages to date, if I remember right). Apparently, this provision exists to protect Monsterhut from users who opt-in but later forget (or change their minds). When the ISP receives complaints, they are to forward them to Monsterhut who will verify the address, validity of the complaint, and apparently make the appropriate changes to their database. Makes you warm and fuzzy to know your complaints are, in fact, going directly to the spammer.
An interesting side effect to all this is the ability to verify individuals. Quite a lot of attention is paid to whether the individuals could be identified according to their email addresses and the fact that SpamCop removes this information. It seems this comes in to play during the complaint / remediation process. But it is even more important when dealing with the court. The Defense pointed out that the Plaintiff had ample opportunity to subpoena SpamCop for identifying information, but failed to do so.
One final interesting tidbit... the Judge wanted to define the difference the Defense saw between a case of one of the 2% mistaken users and a "true spam" case. The Defense began to talk about harvested email accounts that are not user email accounts, such as those used for contacts in Network Solution's whois database. The Plaintiff apparently perks up on this, grabs the ball, and attempts to run. It appears that Monsterhut does "use Network Solutions" to identify businesses offering services that could be marketed by Monsterhut. Since they only send mail out to, say, 5 "targeted" customers... why... this isn't the kind of mass emailings that we're all talking about. Not spam at all. Nosir.
You have to stop it. (Score:5, Interesting)
look at all the junk snail mail you get every day, do you think that's going away any time soon?
My standard reply seems to work well. You could also try to look at some consumer groups, they have good advice on this.
'I will inform all my friends and their dog about your harassive and misleading marketing' (which I actually never do, griping about junk mail is boring) ... 'I hereby forbid you to send
me any mail in the future. I am not interested
in you products and never will' ... 'Legal actions may follow' (Some companies sending junk mail do not have large legal depts, so I try to scare them).
For the junk mail send to me by without an address, I have a 'No junk mail here, please' sticker on my mailbox. And if I get some, I call the local post office. The amount of junk mail I receive has diminished by about 75% in two years. Some of my neighbours have started imitating me, as they are getting sick of junk mail.
As absurd as spam seems, it works.
Sometimes spam is counter-productive.
The spam I get is mostly 'harvested' from the company website. Most of the spam we get is 'evaluate our new (MS-Win) software'. The department I work in has about 40 Linuxes, 5 Sun and 3 Mac workstations and 2 Windows machines for the secretaries. So, we do not use Windows software expect the Office package that the secretaries use. This is also clearly stated in our website.
The company spam policy is:
1. Sending spam is strictly forbidden. (This applies also to the marketroids, not only R/D where I work). Spamming would lead to suspending of e-mail account (or the employee, depending on how bad it was).
2. Any spam received should immediately be reported (forwardedto ). A 'legal actions may follow' reply describing our spam policy is sent to the spammer, his/her boss and the webmaster/sysadmin of the spam-sending company. In a few days, the spammer is added to a corporate blacklist for some period of time (something like 3 months). The spam-sending company is also informed on our policy. Anyone on the blacklist will have the following treatment: Any mail sent to our employees from their addresses is dumped automatically. No business will be made with anyone on the blacklist. Repeated spamming results in that we contact the ISP and CEO of the company sending spam, and ask them to stop the harassment.
Some of our departments are Win-only, so the blacklist policy is actually hurting spammers. An their bosses are infomed on that.
Legalise and regulate is the answer? (Score:3, Interesting)
Suppose its legal to send commercial offerings to people by email, lets say we add a tax of 1 cent per email. Tax would go towards enforcing the law.
The tax would make it unattractive to send to just any email address there is. They'd do more targetted stuff and use more opt-in lists, simply cuz they would be paying for it. They dont pay now, so why would they care that their spam hits half a million burmese farmers whose english is limited to "fack joo".
You wouldnt need any new laws to cover spam specifically either, it'd simply become tax evasion and you'd be invaded by the IRS (in the states atleast) if you did anything naughty.
Ofcourse, it wouldnt completely stop spam, but do you think anything could?
/proton
matter of common sense (Score:3, Interesting)
The thing that will help the spammer... (Score:3, Interesting)
According to the defense affidavit, "Spamming is the distribution of unsolicited commercial e-mail in bulk"
What constitutes "bulk" email from regular email? They do not define "bulk email" as being 10 messages or 10,000 messages, and this gives the spammer a technicality to argue before the court or a tool to delay the process.
Another way to help filter spam? (Score:3, Interesting)
First, I use the SpamBouncer procmail scripts, so I actually don't see that much spam any longer. But SpamBouncer is just a set of pretty good heuristics for scoring mail, and sometimes it is a little over or under-zealous.
Second, I use mutt and it has a keystroke ('S') aliased to move a mail to the =spam folder and delete it from the current folder.
What if hitting 'S' (or pressing the hypothetical "Spam" icon in the Outlook toolbar) went so far as to make a MD5 checksum of the alleged spam and send a packet with that checksum off to a centralized server. The server then keeps a database of each checksum and increments a counter associated with that piece of alleged spam.
Now, when the procmail scripts see incoming mail they can request the value for that checksum from the server. Depending on user configuration, a certain threshold (100, 1000, 10000?) must be reached before agreeing that it spam and proactively moving it.
Upsides to this system: if widely used as directed it would be extremely effective at blocking spam. Relatively private (because you are sending checksums not the actual mail).
Downsides to this system: Someone could vote multiple times to make an email appear to be spam (you could have a second packet that decrements the counter as well that people could use on their "spam" folder, or less effectively, you could restrict it to one vote per IP). There is a central server (you could mitigate this by having hierarchical servers that communicate and synchronize with their parent and children in batches). Plus the first 'n' people still have to see the spam.
Yes, this is a lot of overhead to deal with the intelligent filtering of spam. But if we can reduce the efficacy of sending spam to negligible conversion ratios, then there will no longer be an economic incentive to send spam.
This happened last April (Score:3, Redundant)
The reply to the complaint (April 5, 2001):
From: IP Admin
To: "'21047903@reports.spamcop.net'"
Subject: RE: [SpamCop (http://www.monsterhut.com) id:21047903] Compare and
Save at CompareWebHosts.com
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 17:35:20 -0400
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2653.19)
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="iso-8859-1"
Status: U
PaeTec Communications, Inc. received the attached complaint from you
regarding your contention that you received spam, i.e., that you received an
unsolicited, commercial, bulk e-mail. PaeTec is an integrated
telecommunications provider which offers access to the Internet to
businesses. PaeTec strongly opposes spamming. The e-mail about which you
complained originated from a customer of PaeTec's by the name of MonsterHut.
PaeTec's agreement with MonsterHut expressly prohibits the
sending of spam. In reliance on the complaints it received from you and
others stating that the e-mail you received from MonsterHut was spam, PaeTec
informed MonsterHut that it was terminating its contract.
MonsterHut responded by commencing litigation against
PaeTec. Prior to PaeTec being advised of the existence of the litigation,
MonsterHut obtained a temporary restraining order from the Court, which
prevents PaeTec from terminating MonsterHut's contract pending a hearing at
which both sides can present evidence. The only proof before the Court at
the time it issued the injunction was MonsterHut's claim that it had
received permission from the recipients, such as yourself, to send the
e-mail, and therefore, the e-mail was not spam. PaeTec has disputed
MonsterHut's assertion and has demanded that MonsterHut prove that you and
the other recipients solicited the e-mail. MonsterHut has also claimed that
virtually every complaint PaeTec received was simply a request to be removed
from MonsterHut's mailing lists and was not an allegation that its e-mail
was spam. PaeTec interprets your communication as not simply requesting
removal, but complaining that the e-mail was spam.
It would be very helpful for PaeTec to obtain sworn
statements, which are also known as affidavits, from you and others stating
(if true) that, to the best of your knowledge, you did not solicit e-mails
from MonsterHut, you did not opt-in to being included on the mailing list of
MonsterHut, you did not opt-in to be included on any mailing list that
indicated you were authorizing the sending of e-mails by other unspecified
parties, and that your complaint was not merely a request to have your name
removed from a mailing list. If you are willing to assist PaeTec in its
efforts to vacate the injunction and terminate MonsterHut's Internet access
service, please reply to this e-mail and advise of your willingness to do
so. On the other hand, if you did solicit e-mail from MonsterHut and/or if
you intended merely to request that your name and address be removed from
MonsterHut's mailing list, PaeTec would appreciate it if you would advise it
of those facts so that it can take them into account in deciding whether to
pursue a termination of MonsterHut's service.
The affidavit request (April 9, 2001):
From: IP Admin
To:
Subject: Monsterhut Affidavit
Date: Mon, 9 Apr 2001 17:14:37 -0400
Importance: high
X-Priority: 1
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2653.19)
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="iso-8859-1"
Status: U
Thank you very much for indicating a willingness to help PaeTec
Communications, Inc., in our litigation with MonsterHut. We have gotten a
tremendous positive response from members of the Internet community, and
this will make a big difference in our efforts to vacate the injunction and
to prevent MonsterHut from using PaeTec's network and/or IP addresses to
spam. MonsterHut contends that all of its commercial bulk e-mail is
permission-based and therefore not spam. MonsterHut also contends that most
of the complaints PaeTec has received (particularly those received through
Spam-Cop) were merely requests to be removed from MonsterHut's mailing list,
and were not allegations that the complainant had been spammed. We hope to
refute those claims with your help.
Attached to this e-mail is the text of a sample affidavit that
PaeTec has prepared to assist you in putting your statement into a form we
can submit to the court as evidence. The text of the proposed affidavit is
also located at a website created solely for this purpose,
. The text is somewhat generic because of
the volume of people who have indicated a willingness to sign an affidavit.
As a result, we must ask you to type in some basic information. Please fill
in your name on the first line. In item 1, please fill in the state and
county in which you live. If you do not live in the United States of
America, please modify the language in Item 1 to indicate the country in
which you live and your general location using the equivalent terminology
that is applicable in your country.
Next, please review the text in Items 2-8 very carefully to ensure
their accuracy. Feel free to make whatever additions, deletions, or
modifications you feel are necessary. Since this affidavit is being given
under oath, we want you to be sure that it accurately and truthfully
reflects the facts pertaining to your situation. In this regard, the vast
majority of the people who responded to my last e-mail stated they were
absolutely certain they had never solicited e-mail from MonsterHut. As a
result, the sample affidavit was written this way. A relatively few people
indicated that "to the best of my knowledge" they never solicited e-mail
from Monster Hut. If you feel more comfortable providing a sworn statement
with this type of qualifier, please add it to the appropriate sentence(s) in
paragraph 6 of the sample affidavit. In addition, we need you to fill in
two pieces of information. In Item 5, please indicate the month and date on
which you received your e-mail from MonsterHut, and type in the subject line
of the message you received from MonsterHut. If you cannot recall this
information, it is located below in the "Original Message" portion of this
response or in our initial e-mail to you. In Item 7, please fill in the
blank to indicate whether your initial complaint was made via Spamcop or
directly to PaeTec.
We have left a blank area after the number 9 at the end of the text
so that you may add any additional information that you believe would be
helpful to demonstrate that MonsterHut's e-mail was unsolicited by you .
For example, a large number of people indicated that the e-mail address to
which the MonsterHut e-mail was sent is used only as a contact point for
domain registration purposes with Network Solutions. As another example, a
number of others indicated the e-mail address was not active or was used
solely as a "spam trap". Many others of you indicated the address was used
for only certain specific purposes and was never used to solicit e-mail from
anyone from this address. If you do not wish to add any information, please
delete the number 9.
Once the affidavit meets with your approval, please type in your
name below the signature line next to the word "By:", print out the
affidavit as a separate document, and sign it before a notary public (or if
you are from outside the United States, the equivalent official in your
country who can attest to a signature affixed to a document that is sworn to
under oath). In order for the affidavit to be considered by the Court, we
must receive the original signed copy so
we can submit it to the Court. Therefore, please mail the original, signed
affidavit to PaeTec's outside legal counsel at the following address:
Suzanne, Galbato, Esq.
Bond, Schoeneck & King, LLP
One Lincoln Center
Syracuse, New York 13202
United States of America
If you do not wish to incur the expense of mailing, PaeTec will send you a
self-addressed, stamped envelope for you to send it the original if you
provide PaeTec with a mailing address to which it can send the envelope.
Finally, many of you requested that we ask MonsterHut for its proof
that you solicited e-mail from it. We already have made a formal request
for this proof from MonsterHut. MonsterHut has not yet formally responded
to this request and its time to do so will not expire until after PaeTec
must submit its affidavits to the Court. Moreover, in informal
communications, MonsterHut has advised our attorneys that, at this time,
MonsterHut will be unable to prove on an individual basis that most of you
solicited the e-mail because most of the complaints went through Spam-Cop,
which masks the identity of the complainants,. As a result, we have
requested that MonsterHut describe the sources from which it obtained the
names it used. It appears there may be a relatively few sources.
If you have any questions, please contact us by e-mail at
ipadmin@paetec.com
. On behalf of PaeTec, we want to thank you for your assistance.
"Keitai" spammers are the worst (Score:5, Insightful)
The ones who are really pissing me off now are the mobile phone spammers. I live in Japan and have to pay 300 yen (about $3.00 US) every month for the "privilege" of e-mail. Before registering my mail alias (I used a word which is NOT in common use in Japan
Not only do I pay 300 yen a month, but I have to pay per packet, so everytime one of these SCUMBAGS sends me spam, it's an actual yen or two increase in my monthly bill -- per message. It doesn't take long to add up.
So to the previous person who said, "Just calm down and hit 'delete'", there are many, many reasons to disagree with you.
ISPs: cross your "T"s (Score:3, Informative)
In this case, it appears Paetecs original contract was vague about the 'bulk' that constituted spam; the addendum on 2% was unclear; and their termination letter was not consistent with the terms of the contract on the 30 day cure provision. Paetec did not cross its 'T's on this.
You can be sure that the AOL handling of TOSing people is a -lot- more tightly done. ISPs who deal with "bulk emailers" need to be airtight too.
-dB
Oh yes it is. (Score:3, Insightful)