Receive Spam, Make Money!

Bud Dwyer writes "Wired is running the heartening story of Bennett Haselton, who was awarded $2000 from spammers under Washington state's anti-spam law. From the article: 'Spam fighters hope that if enough individuals take spammers to court, it could eventually drive the industry out of business. And, some savvy individuals could make some easy money along the way, and with a clear conscience, too.'"

Spammers in the US, sure

About 70% of the spam I'm getting is offshore and a good percentage of that is in some language (probably chinese) which doesn't translate.

I'd love to take these weasels to court, since I'm getting about 30 spams a day and a one week vacation can result in lost email due to a clogged mailbox.

hmmm

Probably won't be that easy to collect, especially if they didn't even show up in court. I'm just not sure the idea of driving the industry out of business is feasible; the vast majority of spam mail I get doesn't have a valid e-mail address. In fact, the vast majority of spam I get isn't really advertising. Most of it are just grifters trolling for victims, figuring if they send a million messages out, and get 3 marks, they'll make a profit.

Re:hmmm

The WA state law is NOT to prevent spammers from spamming, but to use truthful information in their spam as to whom they are, how they can be contacted, or how one can be removed from their spam lists, all which is consider consumer fraud (and thus why this bill has survived judcial scurtinity). If anything, this will simply force spammers to actually identify themselves and make it easier for people to remove themselves from their lists.

Also, from what I've read of the various cases, if you sue the spammers and they don't send anyone to court, that's contempt of court and can be considered jail time. So instead they send out someone, weakly plead their case, and lose, and write the $500 check. To them, that's chicken feed, but only because a bare handful of WA state citizens are using the process. If only 100 or 1,000 residents did this, the spammers might actually consider changing their methods instead of blinding accepting the penalty. As far as I've read, only one spam corp has fought this, and that was the case that validated the law's constitutionality.

Now I'm Curious...

I see these people winning in small claims courts against defendants in other states. How do they go about collecting the judgement, particularly if the out of state person/company just blows it off?

Possible new Spam trend:

From: [e-mail]
To: (undisclosed recipients)
Subject: Make Big Money Suing Spammers!

Hi, Friend! Are you bothered by Spam clogging up your mailbox, hard drive and embarrassing you by it's content? Worry no more!

For $25 we'll show you how to get rich by suing spammers! Send payment to:

O. B. Laden
Cave #1248
Tora Bora
Afghanistan

Act now, before it's too late!

So, how long..

.. until I start receiving a load of "received spam-mail? Make money NOW!" messages in my inbox?

The most interesting part of the article...

was where the guy gave a link to someone that shows others how to do this exact same thing. Try http://www.wa-state-resident.com/tugpayup.htm (unlinked for the goat weary).

He gave a form letter, even step by step directions on how to do this. Only thing was that you would have to be living in oregon unless your own state has fun laws like this. That does definately sound like fun.

Spamcop

I realize that most of you probably already know about this, but I am going to mention it anyways: if you're having problems with spam, you should go to SpamCop [spamcop.net]. They have a free service that you can use to report spam to the necessary network administrators via parsing the headers of the spam mail. Simply save a bookmark that they give you, and when you receive spam mail, go to that book mark, paste in the whole text of the spam mail (including headers) and click a button.

I know that it's hard to keep spammers from doing what they're doing due to their using different email addresses and hosts each time they send out some spam mail. But I have found that by using SpamCop regularly, the spam mails eventually stop coming to my inbox. And whether this means that they've been taken out of business or they're removed me from their spam list due to my being a thorn in their side - well, either is good enough for me.

It's about time

It's about time spammers started paying for their sins.

Spamming is basically a form of theft, externalizing around half the cost of sending an advertisement to the reciepiant of the spam. That's clearly what makes spam attractive to advertisers (and their swinish lobbyists, the DMA).

The second order effect of this externalization hasn't been talked about in the press much. Ordinary advertising costs up front - a Tee Vee commercial for laundry detergent gets paid for before you buy the Whisk. A two-page spread in Time magazine for the latests SUV gets paid for before any consumer buys a 2002 Yukon. And yes, the company doing the advertising prices their product to account for the ad expenditure.

The fact that a spam victim pays for the ad before making a decision on whether or not to buy the laser printer toner means that market forces controlling advertising are vastly weakened. For example, the makers of "Whisk" laundry detergent used to have an ad campaign based on the phrase "Ring around the collar". During the mid 70s, the Women's Movement found this ad campaign offensive, so they boycotted "Whisk".

Fast forward to 2002 - you've already paid to receive an ad for Hotwet Russian Teen Sluts. No boycott on earth will have an effect on the advertiser - you've already paid for it, without being given a choice in the marketplace (maybe you prefer Hotwet Bulgarian Teens).

There's only very weak market forces that affect spam. We need government regulation of spam, we need the ability to punish spammers economically.

Re:It's about time

we need the ability to punish spammers economically.

You can punish them just goto http://www.goto.com and do search fro "bulk email" every limk you click will cost tehm several dollars last itme I looked it was about $8 per click

Somebody Call a Class Action Attorney!

Spam is one area where a very aggressive attorney making a career out of class action suits would be doing a public service. Some clever attorney out there ought to get on the ball with this.

more info

there's quite a bit of info about this stuff at wa-state-resident.com [wa-state-resident.com]

spam back

I've tried spamming back people who spam me, with thousands of emails, and random subject and bodies. That makes me feel good. It is a hog to run on my computer though.

Now i just send them a bill with PayPal. I haven't had any responses yet, but i think they definitely owe me something for wasting my time, bandwidth, and storage. Maybe some lame spammer will cave and pay me the $30 that i billed them

DON'T spam back

While it's tempting to mailbomb spammers, it just increases the problem.
It doesn't just boggle down your computer, it also affects your ISP's (innocent) mail server, and all the hosts that happen to be on the route between you and the spammer.

Going After Spammers

Some of you may like this ;-)

For a while now, my company has been in "hot pursuit" of spammers. Getting them for the message itself is mostly a grey area legally (the Washington state makes an exception), but using corporate resources without authorization is illegal. So we send them hefty invoices (for relay easily in the $500,000 range) and enforce them worldwide with the help of a collection agency, which adds 48% to the original cost to the spammer (we operate under the assumption that none will pay voluntarily, and all cases go through the full court process).

Currently there are $1.2m pending in courts, 90% in the US, the rest in Japan and Korea. And a vast majority has not even been invoiced (we have spent a ton of money on that already, but it does take time to research proper addresses to serve documents).

The goal is to get a few major judgements against the people who have their goods promoted this way (if we can collect on that, is another issue; and they can see if and how they can collect from the actual spammers). Once that is done, and press releases have been issued, we hope it sends strong enough a signal to spammers and their clients to stop it worldwide.

Any surplus beyond covering our costs will be donated to the EFF. Top EFF lawyers were very helpful in validating the legal approach. We are not looking to make a profit on this.

For more information see:
http://www.meliorinc.com/html/policies.html

[Why? We were shut down once too often by relay, at a time when we had to keep some servers open for special customers]

(I didn't remember my SlashDot login, and the password didn't arrive yet via e-mail - sorry for the "anonymous" sender address)

Thomas J. Ackermann
CEO
Melior, Inc.

Radio Shack (not quite spam)

Not quite spam, but I remember a month or so ago, that a user billed spammers at the rate of 125$ per hour with a minimum of 10 hours to filter out their email to his/her domain.

Anyways, recently, Radio shack posted my home phone number as one of their local stores. I emailed them a couple weeks to change it and got no response, so I gave them a notice to remove it within 24 hours or I'd bill them the same amount (1250/10hours), to route their phone calls to the correct store.

I went to the store and they also have it listed on their reciepts and said they're having it listed in the phone book. They told me that they shipped in the notice to not print it in the phone book and were working on the reciept prints, but the website was up to corporate, so that's who I'm billing.

They have until 5:32 tonight to change the number on their website or they're getting a daily invoice.

I don't care if it works or not, I'd love the cash, but I'd love even more the phone to stop ringing off the hook, its worse than spam.

Tidbits did this too

Tidbits (a MacOS maillist & web site that happens to be based in Washington state) sued a spammer in 1998. They won in 2000 [tidbits.com], but by then the spammer had fled across different state lines a dozen times, and you have to file new paperwork every time. They eventually gave up on collecting from him.

The article doesn't specify if Bennett has actually received money yet, or just a judgement. It's quite possible he won't see a dime.

Laws shouldn't allow for suing spammers...

Spamming should be a capital crime. Seriously, if the penalty for deliberately sending out unsolicited bulk e-mail was death, we would have a lot fewer spammers in this country. Of course sometimes you have the problem where a US-based company spams but uses an offshore spammer to do it. In those cases, long periods of incarceration for knowingly arranging a spamming run would be sufficient, IMO.

Re:Laws shouldn't allow for suing spammers...

If you actually take the time to read the spam, you can get much harder punishment for spammers.
Simply be creative in what you report.

"MAKE MONEY FAST": Report them to authorities not for spamming, but for fraud. Punishment is much harder.

"LOOK AT MY XXX SERVER!": Report them for sending pornographic material to children (spam will ALWAYS reach kids as well...) - at least in .de, this can get spammers to prison for a couple of years.

Other spam: If you're running your own mail server, call it theft of service (your mail server's resources were abused against its terms of use -- therefore, it's theft of service).

I've actually tried the second variant on a major repeat spammer; the court hasn't come to a decision yet, though.

So *that's* what it meant...

when it said "MAKE MONEY FAST" :^)

Oh come on!

The title of this article should have been "MAKE MONEY FAST!!!!"

A golden humor opportunity thrown away.

WA has a gaggle of litigants

I am one of a handful of people actively pursuing spammers in Washington. I am vice-president of a Seattle ISP and when I get bored on the weekends, I scan the Qmail alias file, which is 99% double-bounced spam. Under RCW 19.190 [wa.gov], almost every one of these is illegal as the spammer "misrepresented the point of origin" of the email.

I pick out the easy spams -- ones with phone numbers, fax numbers or physical addresses -- and I contact the spammer and say, "look, we got illegal email from you and we're willing to overlook it if it doesn't happen again." A fair number of spammers then remove all of our domains from their lists. The ones that don't get a few reminders, then a notice of small claim. Under Washington law, ISPs can sue for $1,000 per email.

Check out my lawsuit page [inwa.net] for some info. For those non-Washingtonians, you can get in on some of the lawsuit fun by suing junk faxers and telemarketers under federal law, which I've tried just to see if it works. The good news: it does.

Us folks in Washington State have a great deal of cooperation going on via mailing lists. We're gearing up for some serious spammer suing. And it is hard to collect, but it's not impossible. Once you get a dozen cases going, the money from one case isn't a big deal so you just send it to collections to fuck with the spammer.

Essentially, this is just a real fun hobby that happens to pay a bit of money. Oh, you might find this interesting: Zen and the Art of Small Claims [inwa.net].

Hotmail spam

Ok, so Hotmail is owned by a Washington state corporation, right? Assuming that the mail servers (and hence the final destination of the messages) are located in Washington, could I file for violations of that state's law on all of the spam I get to my hotmail account? IANAL, but if my mail all ends up in that state, wouldn't I be protected by that state's consumer protection laws?

- Freed

ways to screw spammers

you can find ways to fight spam here

http://www.lenny.com/spam/