Secret Spam Summit Held in Washington DC

CuriousGeorge113 writes "Apparently The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail (Cauce) held a secret meeting in Washington with the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) to try and convince the DMA to stop spamming. It's a pretty interesting Article at Salon." The DMA seems to like spam and thinks you should too, just like you love all the junk dead-treee mail its members send you. Such a surprise!

Don't know about spam, but for junk mail...

...I've found that almost all junk mail comes with a business reply envelope. That envelope guarantees that the company sending you the mail will pay postage on any mail sent back to them using the envelope. (That's step one.)

The USPS will send any package that weighs up to or under 70 pounds. (Step two)

Any brand of tape or glue will allow you to stick the business reply envelope to a large cardboard box which can then be filled with rubbish--my personal favorite is scraps of sheetrock--just keep it under 70 pounds. (Step three)

Remember to make sure that you name appears prominently on the package. This lets them know to whom they should send the next invitation for pounds of rubbish. Sadly, most of the folks I've done this to have neglected to send me a second invitation. (Step four)

Try this at home, but be sure to ask for Mom's and Dad's permission.

(A slighly less arduous version has me ripping up whatever was sent and mailing that back inside the envelope. It's easier but nowhere near as fun.)

Unfortunately, spam works

The reason spam continues to happen is because it works. A spammer sends out a million messages, and gets 20 live ones. That is STILL enough to make money on.

We have to make it unprofitable to spam. Here are my suggestions:

ISPs:

1. Block all access to other peoples SMTP ports. Force your customers to go through YOUR mailer. Red flag any account that tries to access somebody else's SMTP port.
   
2. Limit your customers to 100 mails a day. Red flag any account that hits its limit, and look into it in more detail.
   
3. Allow customers to ask for the priviledge of sending more than 100 mails a day, but then scrutinize the customer. Perhaps you should charge more for a higher limit.
   
4. Put a line in the contract that says that a customer who uses his account to spam owes you $10000 (adjust the currency symbol as needed). If a customer spams, bill them. If they don't pay, hand it off to a collection agency.
   
5. Secure YOUR SMTP ports. Why should you let spammers make money?
   
6. Educate your customers! Make them READ and SIGN a form about spamming, including the bit about NOT RESPONDING!
   

These steps would prevent the small time spammers from "whack-a-mole" spamming. Those 20 bites I mentioned wouldn't begin to pay for $10000, the hassle of bill collectors hammering on your door, etc.

Linux/BSD distro makers:

1. Don't install sendmail by default! Ideally, installing sendmail should require the sysadmin to go through a detailed setup on sendmail.
   
2. Install a good set of firewall rules by default. This helps secure people's systems and prevent h4x0z and script-kiddies from hijacking the systems.
   

Much of the spam I get is relayed through poorly configured Linux/BSD setups.

My fellow Geeks:

NAIL THE SPAMMERS!

1. Forward spam to [e-mail].
   
2. Read the headers. Find the relay, and politely tell them they need to check their settings.
   
3. If the spammer is foolish enough to put an e-mail or URL into the mail, traceroute it and get it shut down!
   

If the spammers find that "send spam, lose website" it the law of the land, then it becomes costly to send spam, and the spam will dry up.

Now, I know what many of you are saying: if ISPs start requiring you to use their mailer, how will all of us Unixen use our local sendmail to handle mail. Simple: configure your mailer to forward the mail to your ISP!

Laws are not the way to end spam, we have to make it not worth the spammers while. We can do this (just look at how effective the RBL is, and how well Spamford Wallace was forced to change his tactics.)

Now, if you will excuse me, I must put on my Nomex firesuit.

Flame on!

Direct action against direct marketing

Normally, I think that I'm a pretty reasonable person, but the notion that the gov't should step in with more regulation of the internet and that bad behavior by marketing slimeballs should be the reason is so completely offensive to me that I find I must agree with the Lumber Cartel approach.

I receive hundreds of emails on a typical day. Probably 95% of these are legitimate, non-spam. While it's easy to "just say delete", I still waste time dealing with the 5% of my email that is spam; not only do these Ponzi scheme salesman disregard my privacy, they have become increasingly clever at camouflaging their subject lines and sender names making it more difficult to delete without opening the mail and reading it to determine if it is legit (also validating the theory that they do, in fact, possess a rudimentary intelligence, perhaps on the order of that of an insect). Over time, this waste adds up (and is merely the wasted time of one person. Add this to the financial burden on infrastructure created by these idiots, and it's clear DMA users are free-riding pond scum).

Asking the gov't for help is going to open a can of worms, and unlikely to result in any useful regulation anyway. Does anyone really think that the voices and votes of those who are pissed off by spam will have any weight against the $$ of lobbying groups paid for by DMA and its members? I don't. The result of any regulation would likely still allow spam to be sent under a set of conditions that would broaden each time the regulations were revisited (which would be like voting in Chicago: early and often).

The DMA and its members understand one thing: profit. As long as they can externalize the bulk of the costs of their activities onto the voiceless entity in the middle (the ISP) and the typical, relatively powerless recipient, there is no incentive for them to stop. But the notion that time is money is a double-edged sword (how is that for a mixed metaphor?). Since neither the ISP's nor the gov't is likely to force DMA and its members to bear the true cost of their activities, perhaps the more technologically savvy among DMA's victim/recipients should do so (without violating any laws, of course). If it is legal for DMA to disregard recipient preferences and send unsolicited email until told to stop, then why should it be illegal or immoral for others to do the same to DMA executives and employees?

Pointless Meeting

There is NO POINT in meeting with these people. As a sysadmin that has to deal with spammers and associated scum every single day I can TELL you that these dishonest liars we affectionatly know as spammers don't have a single particle of conscience for what they do. They abuse other people's resources and then expect you to LIKE it.

Recently on the spamtools-list it was revealed that these idiots have their own 'secret' mailing list. It was mirrored somewhere..it wasn't any shock to me to see the names of the biggest net.kooks on that mailing list however.

Nothing will change these people. They have such a twisted view of reality that they think they are preserving freedom of speech by spamming.

Re:Just Delete it

Just deleting spam does not resolve the issue that some of us have to pay for every byte we download. I'm not in this group when I'm at home or at the office but when I'm fishing and checking my email via laptop, I pay for every second I'm on that phone. Spammers are stealing my resources to promote their crap (most of it's crap anyway).

Here is my idea for a GOOD opt-in marketing model.


1. Everyone has an online virtual account which allows any other person to deposit funds into it.
2. The spammer deposits pennies or more into your account when they send you the message.
3. A spamer's chance of having you read this message increases with the ammount of money they put into your account.
4. It would be illegal to send spams without putting a minimum ammount per message length. Lets say 5cents per 10k

I feel that this would completely solve the spam issue by making advertisers pay for their email marketing campaigns in a way that effects the consumer positively.

...

[reality check]
Nobody buys stuff when its displayed as an unsolicited irritation. SPAM from either the acutal mail or E-Mail drives customers away from the spammers products. You are wasting your time. I have never met a person who bought something from a SPAM E-Mail, and I'm sure I never will.

Now I know people are going to give me crap about things like "What about television commercials! Those are SPAM too!" Well they aren't. You can change the channel during commercial breaks. Now you say "but you can just delete those SPAMS". Well, it would be a one thing if I got SPAM from the ford motor company, but most of the spam I get is pornography, and I have almost been fired because data protection at a company I worked for was wondering why I was getting E-Mail from '[e-mail]' or something. Now I'm not saying pornography is wrong, its just not supposed to be in my E-Mail when I don't want it to. I could have easily been an 8 or 9 year-old checking my E-Mail.

You guys forgot rule number 1 of marketing:
DON'T PISS OFF YOUR CUSTOMERS!
[/reality check]

Spam != Freedom

Spam is NOT about freedom of communication. That is EXACTLY what these wankers want you to believe.


1) Spam costs the END USER, not the sender. It is akin to junk fax, which _IS_ illegal. Why is no one complaining about the so-called 'right' to junk fax people?

2) Does so-called freedom of speech give me the right to stand on the corner with a bullhorn and drown out everyone else's communications? (taken from USENET)

Brightmail

Hmm, just a while ago a slashdot article about spam reminded me of looking at my own situation. I receive a lot of spam, mainly due to the fact that I once signed many guestbooks (those were the times when I thought you could leave your uncoded e-mail address around without receiving thousands of spam mails) and this made me take a look round the net for some methods against this (I was already using a procmail filter to cut out possible spam).

Anyways, so I came across brightmail [brightmail.com]. It is, indeed, pretty damn good. It's basically a POP-filter that acts as a proxy between you and your POP server and filters out SPAM. The spam mails are kept for 30 days and can be retrieved through some HTTPS interface. Now, I haven't received any spam in the past three days (it's already filtered out numerous messages). And I'm happy :). You might wanna try it.

Note: no, I don't work for Brightmail or have any kind of relation to them other than using their service.

Re:Make good use!

Some anonymous coward dun said:

Use this method for used diapers, chicken bones, or trash that you would have to pay to get rid of! If you send a used diaper, it would be giving them a message as to what their mailing is!

No, actually, sheetrock is better than used nappies or trash. Two reasons:

1) The USPS generally will not ship stuff that can be classified as "hazardous waste". Used nappies for the most part are considered biohazardous waste, and the USPS can actually come after youif they get a complaint from the businesswankers that " sent us a bunch of used diapers".

2) The point is to make them pay SO much for shipping for a return-reply envelope that it is not going to be worth their while to ever do business with you again (much how shunning/IDPs, strong AUPs, "spam fines" at some ISPs (you pay a fine if your account is ever closed for spamming) and the MAPS-RBL are meant to make spamming more trouble than it's worth). I seriously doubt that you are going to find sixty-nine pounds of used nappies ANYWHERE short of a nursing home, a large orphanage, or a state institute for the profoundly retarded. :) (By god, if I was going to send them nappies, I'd make sure I had enough to make them pay several dollars--in the tens to hundreds of dollars, yet--to pay for it! :)

The idea of heavy packages works because a) you aren't breaking postal regs by shipping hazmat--everything is perfectly legal and binding and they HAVE to pay the shipping, and b) shipping on large packages is expensive enough to potentially hurt a mass-mailer in the pocketbook and thus deliver a 69-pound LART to the offender (postage is $19.60 for a 69-pound package from my hometown to one junk mailer for a normal parcel; around $53.79 for an oversized parcel...so make sure that in any parcels you send, the length of its longest side plus the distance around its thickest part is more than 108 inches and less than or equal to 130 inches, kids ;).

(un)Fortunately, I don't get too much junk mail...mostly coupons and people persistently trying to give me credit cards (I avoid credit cards like the black plague :). This idea is just evil enough that I LIKE it, though. :)=

Clarification.

Just to clarify some things that aren't obvious until you read the Salon story.

This "secret" meeting actually happened last year. It was only secret until it actually happened, and the news of it were made public a long time ago.

What the issue is here is that the DMA made a number of agreements and concessions at that meeting, and what the Salon story is talking about is that they are now backpedaling on their agreements. This made the news after several of the participants of that meeting made a number of high-profile announcement calling the DMA on the carpet to account for their lies.

Basically, the upshot of this is that now we have a proven track record of the DMA being nothing but a pack of liars and skunks. That's a pretty direct way of putting it, without mincing words.

So, we can now proceed without any doubt whatsoever on that account. We know what they are after, we know what they want, we know what they will going to do.

And, we'll stop them. Actually, to be technically correct: they'll be stopped. The DMA is making a big mistake thinking that they can bully us in our E-mailboxes the same way that they can bully us in our postal mailboxes and in our telephones. The DMA fails to understand a key difference between the Internet, and postal or telephone marketing. On the Internet, we do excersize some level of control on our mailboxes and on our portions of the network.

We are completely powerless to prevent anyone from stuffing our mailboxes with crap mail, and there's very little that can be done to block telemarketing calls.

However, a LOT can be done to block unwanted and unsolicited junk E-mail from filling our mailboxes. Depending on the tools that are available, you can do a pretty good job at filtering out unwanted crap from your E-mailbox. The DMA is going to wake up one day and act surprised when half the Internet suddenly blacklisted every DMA member that decided to start spamming everyone else's mailbox. The DMA is going to stomp their feet and make a huge temper tantrum, which, of course, will change absolutely nothing. And, that's all that they'll be able to do. The DMA simply hasn't been faced with the situation where the consumer can effectively fight back and defend his privacy. We tried to tell them that they will have to respect our privacy when it comes to our E-mailboxes. Well, folks, the DMA doesn't want to listen to us, so, we'll just have to show them and explain to the the facts of life, and go ahead and reconfigure our routers and mail servers to eliminate all presence of the DMA from the Internet, from our collective point of view.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.
--

Handling Porn Spam

Actually, I usually write back something like the following:

----------------------------

> Hi, I'm Jenny, an 18 year old college cheerleader
> who's just so horney. Can you call me at 1-800-555-1010,
> have your credit card ready.

hi, i'm eric. i dont have a creit card, im 8 yrs old. where do you do to schol? i like math. i will call you tonite.

----------------------------

(No, I have not gotten replies back, telling me not to call).

--
Evan