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Spam

SpamRecycle.com Prosecutes Spammers 133

Posted by CmdrTaco from the hey-thats-a-great-idea dept.
relyt writes "If you get spam, check out Spam Recycle. Forward them your spam, and they will prosecute the spammers for you, giving you time to do other things. It is also is supported by CAUCE! Send them your spam, and their trained monkeys will poke it, prod it, and kill it. " Somehow I'm skeptical, but hey, I get spammed every 48 hours to buy toner and I don't even own a printer. Sure would be nice if it would stop ;)
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SpamRecycle.com Prosecutes Spammers More

SpamRecycle.com Prosecutes Spammers

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  • I've never looked it up and verified it, but I got this little bit of legalese from some guy on USENET a long time ago, and have had it on my homepage ever since:

    By US Code Title 47, Sec.227(a)(2)(B), a computer/modem/printer meets the definition of a telephone fax machine. By Sec.227(b)(1)(C), it is unlawful to send any unsolicited advertisement to such equipment. By Sec.227(b)(3)(C), a violation of the aforementioned Section is punishable by action to recover actual monetary loss, or $500, whichever is greater, for each violation.

    IANAL, but maybe somebody out there is and can verify or debunk this.

  • If everybody honked their horn, all the time, when driving, nobody would be able to hear police sirens and move out of the way. So honking automobile horns should be made illegal.

    The thing about spam that makes it different from situations like this is that spam consists of theft of resources. When you spam me, you are stealing my bandwidth and stealing my time (remember, "time is money). Therefore, spam is theft, plain and simple. But what is someone "stealing" from you when they honk their horn at you? That's right, nothing (well, they might be stealing some increased blood pressure and an obscene gesture or two, but that's beside the point).

    Any questions?


    =================================
  • Most people aren't as passionate about fighting banner ads as they are spam because ads are just a small part of this page. You went to this web page to read a story or post a comment, and the ad comes with the territory. If all banner ads popped up in full screen windows, I'm sure the story would change and people would begin to complain more.

    The same goes with spam. If advertisements were attached to the bottom of emails on mailing lists, I don't think many people would get as upset, since they're actually getting something useful out of the email (the discussion on the mailing list).

    I think the main difference here is that spam is a push technology, and a banner ad is a pull technology. If you don't want to see a banner ad on slashdot, don't go to slashdot. If you don't want spam, you can't (easily) tell everyone to stop sending it to your mailbox.
  • "Make money fast! This is NOT a pyramid scheme!" (That's the best tipoff that it is.)

    Kind of like the ones with "fwd: Fwd: [fwd] FWD: fwd: FWD: FWD: [fwd] Fwd: THIS IS NOT A CHAIN LETTER!" in the "subject" line...

  • They didn't think you were smart enough to get a Phd. in a week using your life experiences.

    No offers to buy spamming software?

  • Re:I have a bad feeling about this... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "just hitting delete" is the worst thing you can do. You harm the anti-spam cause when you give in to such complacency. If someone left pornographic pictures in your mailbox everyday, would you just say, "ahh.. necessary evil in life.." and throw it away? Stand up for your privacy and mail-box which *is* between you and the server. No one else has *any* right to it at all. At least report the offender to their upstream provider, which takes no less than a minute using automated systems like spamcop.net.
  • Regardless of what anyone thinks about spam,
    the ACLU has an effort to ensure that spam
    is protected under the Constitution. I have
    been assisting them in this effort by forwarding
    to them at freespeech@tjcenter.org a copy of
    every example of spam that I receive. I am
    sure that they appreciate the wide variety of
    subject matter that I have provided.
  • H.R. stands for "House of Reprehensible" er, "House of Representatives." The bill got through the House, but never made it through the Senate, and was never signed into law by the President, so it means nothing.
  • Took them 3 months to get me off their mailing list so I'm not surprised.
  • ...but hey, I get spammed every 48 hours to buy toner and I don't even own a printer...

    Toner? Sheesh, you're lucky.

    Try getting spammed thrice a week with someone trying to sell you viagra!

    The irony is, I'm 19 years old and im not exactly what you would call "sexually active".

    ...oh wait, maybe it's not so ironic after all :)

    Vorro
    ---------------------------
    A wise man speaks because he has something to say.
    A foolish man speaks because he has to say something.

  • This server has been slashdotted! Hooah!
  • I usually just filter them via pegasus mail, granted I might have to unban compuserve someday... ;)
  • http://www.brightmail.com is an excellent way to reduce the amount of spam that you recieve. They act as a gateway -- you set your mailserver to "mail.brightmail.com", your login to user%host.com (note the % and not an @), leave the pass the same, and check your e-mail.

    I've been using their service (it's free) for around a year, and the amount of spam that actually reaches my inbox has been reduced to pretty much zero! Check them out; no more spam =)



    .- CitizenC (User Info [slashdot.org])
  • Okay, I'm a dumbass! Flame away!
  • And if everybody talked, all the time, in a concert all, nobody would be able to hear the music. So all talking should be made illegal in concert halls.

    If everybody honked their horn, all the time, when driving, nobody would be able to hear police sirens and move out of the way. So honking automobile horns should be made illegal.

    I'm sorry, your hypothetical scenario is as ludicrous as the two above. You'll have to come up with a stronger reason why spam should be made illegal.

    I am not in favor of blanket approval of all spam, by the way, nor am I 'trolling' with this comment. I'm just pointing out that any 'ban' can be justified by raising extreme cases why it is needed.
  • But their spam was illegal in the first place so it seems unlikely that they would press charges.
  • >Honestly, for real, when you think about it, how is Spam a crime?

    Denial of Service is a crime. You deny service (ie. shutdown) service on many small ISPs with huge spam floods and hacked open relays.
  • Fluxrad writes:
    Most people who post about *spam* (both solicited email and non solicited email)

    Wrong. Spam is unsolicited. Solicited mail is not spam. Perhaps in casual speech, but you should recognize that difference in your "defense" of spamming.

    Even slashdot isn't free. The price you pay for the content is the banner ad at the top of the page.

    Naturally. Advertising is also one of the costs we accept for "free" services like television and radio broadcasting. But when someone spams me, I get no content; I get an ad. And I have to pay for it.

    Depending on the needs of the site ... It may be necessary to ask you if you want to recieve some other ads in the mail. If you don't...you get to click a button that says you don't want it.

    You have just described solicited mail. Solicited mail, strictly speaking, is not spam. You have not described spam in any way. Spam is not derived from a site a person has visited, nor have they been given an opt-in checkbox. Sometimes they are given an opt-out choice in the spam, but this is irrelevant for what is 99% of the time a one-time mailing.

    If you're against everything that "marketed email" stands for - then please. go home...throw away your TV and your radio....because that's how "free" content gets paid for. Advertising.

    Now that you've gallantly defended solicited e-mail advertising, do you have anything relevant to the discussion at hand, which is about spam?
    ----
  • Blah... at least when I get junk email it costs them between 20-30cents.. So, it really 'costs' them to anoy me. Unfortunately, with a free internet connection, it doesn't cost them any more money (which is none) to email 1,000,000 rathern than 1,000.
    Our friends over at userfriendly [userfriendly.org] painted the picture back in August of '99.
    Here's the link. [userfriendly.org] --

  • spam (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    spamrecylce.org no work for me but .com does. werd
  • Hit them back with the some legal precedents

    I used to get a lot of spam at my usa.mil (read .net) until I started putting the following at the end of every e-mail I sent out.

    It was written for telemarketing over phones, but has also been applied to e-mail. I have yet to collect any amount of money, but the spam has stopped completely.

    I've also gotten in a habbit of e-mailing the host where the spam was routed through... at the very least I can get the account canceled or get the company to pay better attention to their security.

    -- schmidbj@.usa.mil (.net)
    *******NOTICE**********
    Pursuant to US Code, Title 47, Chapter 5,
    Subchapter II, 227, any and all non solicited
    commercial E-mail sent to the address above is
    subject to a download and archival fee in the
    amount of $1000 US. Sending an E-mail to the
    address above denotes acceptance of these
    terms.

  • Ever stop to think about the people who have no choice other than MS IE to use as a browser? For example, at my office, my workstation is NT4.0 and I have an incredibly limited set of applications. They're all MS products, but what can I do? Does this make me an MS toadie? Guess so.

    It's ignorant people like you that make the rest of the world (and management, the people who make the actual decisions on where to spend money) think that Open Source is nothing but a bunch of free-software-loving hippies.

    Want to help out the Open Source movement? Try not to sound like such a lunatic.
  • It seems that www.spamrecycle.org has pre-emptively taken itself down to avoid being slashdotted!

    ---
    Epitaph
  • www.slashdot.org website has being opted-into our service. This is NOT a spam message, this is NOT a pyramid scheme, this is NOT an unsolicited email. This email has being solicited, opted-in and it contains legitimate information about getting money fast without doing any actual work while hot girls from our site will help you to relax and enjoy yourself. All YOU have to do is sit back and relax while you money make themselves. This is the BEST deal in town or even on the Internet. just call this number: 1-900-thisisnotascheme and you'll start earning money, credit and unprecedented amounts of love from our girls.
  • was that meant to be www.spamrecycle.com [spamrecycle.com]? .org doesn't exist.
  • .com -- of course. They're trying to make money out of this somehow. :)

    ---
    Epitaph
  • I'm going to try this out on Eudora Pro's filters and see if it works well there too. Has anyone else tried it using Eudora Pro? I'd love to filter out the "hot young naked girls want you" junk I get from who knows where given I'm female and straight. :)

  • MP3 version now online (Score:3)

    by RevT ( 86512 ) on Saturday May 13, 2000 @10:01AM (#1075184) Homepage
    Metallica has opened a similar site...

    Now starving artists can send in napster user logs to Lars Ulrich for free prosecution.
  • What you did with the 800 number is illegal in most states.

    It would be, but he is calling them to make a legitimate business request. When that request is not honored, he has the right to phone again, and restate the request. There is no legally mandated delay between such requests, and until he has an indication that the request has been honored (or at least acknowledged), he may continue to restate that request using whatever communications technology makes his task more convenient. The expense of receiving that request repeatedly is simply an inevitable consequence of ignoring the consumer's desire.

    -c.
    --

  • The main issue on spamming is not it's irritability factor, but that you, the recipient, has to pay to read the spam. You pay connect charges to your ISP, don't you? And some people still pay hourly rates to connect or have limits on their email inbox capacity.

    Also, the point about free speech disregards the idea that the recipient should be able to ignore whatever free speech being said if they choose to. (I don't have to listen to the million moms in Washington this weekend, but THEY still have a right to march.) With spam, how can you ignore it?

    For example, if someone called me on the phone today and started raving about black helicopters, I would have a very valid harassment complaint, wouldn't I? (Not about the message, but about it's means of delivery)

    I think the law should reflect the spirit of the following statement. If the private individual did not ask for the spam, that private individual should not recieve it.

  • CAUCE (Score:4)

    by myshka ( 143797 ) on Saturday May 13, 2000 @10:46AM (#1075187)

    CAUCE support has come to mean about as much as a TRUSTe banner. When you have an anti-spam group endorsing such obnoxious, unresponsive and lying spammers as FloNetwork [flonetwork.net], you know not to trust (no pun intended) it too much.

    Sadly, it seems that just like the maintainers of the RBL, CAUCE doesn't have the cojones to bring the fight to the larger corporate spammers. Sure, taking on the Sanford Wallaces of the world was commendable, but this isn't 1997. The internet has evolved and we are now faced with entities vastly more insidious than some entrepreneur in a Miami basement. And when major abusers such as FloNetwork client buy.com (I hope y'all liked their Spring spam run, especially those who never signed up for their opt in list) keep spamming without any response from CAUCE and other likeminded groups, you know time has come to reconsider who the "good guys" really are.

  • Thing is, you should be able to decide you don't want to listen to people telling you things. If there's a man in the middle of a shopping centre telling you to "embrace Jesus", then that's free speech. If he followed you home and started shouting it through your letterbox, then that's harrassment. I don't think that's an unreasonable analogy. Anyone can put what they like on a website I decide to go to, but I should be able to decide what comes into my inbox.

    And it doesn't have to be the government's decision to ban spam - they should allow the spamee to say thy don't want it. I realise I'm mostly preaching to the converted here (hmm, another religion analogy!)

  • You're forgetting that the defining trait of spam is non-solicitation. Nobody should talk in concert halls loud enough for those who do not want to participate (i.e. everyone) to hear. Do that, and someone *will* kick you out (and rightfully so).

    Horns are a special case; they're meant to be used in emergencies, when all sorts of laws can be ignored. Honk a horn as a signal of nothing and you *are* breaking the law. If everybody honked horns during emergencies, there would be no problem. If everybody spamed who had a product and an email address, email would become worthless to everyone everywhere. An emergency requiring spam? Feh.

  • Do NOT war-dial 800 numbers. (Score:5)

    by DHartung ( 13689 ) on Saturday May 13, 2000 @10:58AM (#1075190) Homepage
    It's illegal under federal law (Title 47, Sec. 223:

    "Whoever ... makes or causes the telephone of another repeatedly or continuously to ring, with intent to harass any person at the called number; or ... makes repeated telephone calls or repeatedly initiates communication with a telecommunications device, during which conversation or communication ensues, solely to harass any person at the called number or who receives the communication ... shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."

    This was passed in response to people war-dialing Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition 800 numbers. And don't believe you're protected by caller ID: 800 numbers are equipped with ANI (Automatic Number Identification), which gives the person you just called your name, telephone number, <b>and street address</b>. This is for the convenience of the retail operators of most 800 numbers (i.e. the people paying for the service), and is <b>not</b> blocked by whatever Caller ID service you're using.

    If you war-dial, they not only have the right to sue you, they know exactly where to deliver the subpoena.

    There's nothing illegal about each person getting a piece of spam dialing that 800 number, though. The only problem is the risk of giving up your home address for the purposes of junk mail or telemarketing.
    ----

  • I think spam is more akin to postal junk mail. Technically speaking, there is a "cost" involved of throwing away the stuff, namely your time. You could also argue that it requires you to buy trash liners more often, etc. But the cost is so minimal and theoretical (like e-mail) that the argument doesn't hold much water.

    The point is that it would be a bad idea to have the government regulating too much what people could send you postal mail. However, there are cases where even postal mail becomes harassment, and you can file complaints for that.

    The point is that we don't want to government to have too much power over what mail can or cannot be delivered between private individuals. We definitely want more power to be able to easily filter spam/junk mail, but I don't think we want full-blown bans.


    --

  • I get junk mail all the time in my postoffice box. I simply toss them in the trash can.

    At least with email, you aren't killing lots of trees!

    It really isn't that hard to delete it!!

    blarr...

    ---
  • Presuming of course that your representitive acutally reads their own email. Most probably don't and have a staff member read it. Have you been watching the congressional inquiry into the emails? Dan Burton obviously has never even used an email client in his life. At one point he was demanding an explanation into an email which did not contain a "to" header. The poor sysadmin was trying to explain to him that sometimes people press send before typing in an address. He just could not understand how such a thing could happen and was convinced that this was a part of a coverup. There is a line in the original Star wars movie.
    "Who is more foolish? the fool, or the ones who follow him.". Makes you wonder who Mr. Burton "represents".

  • Ever stop to think about the people who have no choice other than MS IE to use as a browser?

    No!

    It's my web-site! Who granted you permission to determine who may or may not access my web site?

  • Agreed... Hotmail does this quite well. One of the main reasons I set up a Hotmail account in the first place was for all those site and software registrations that require you to add an email address. Ones that I don't entirely trust or are going to be made public. Emails in Hotmail's "bulk mail" folder are automatically deleted after 30 days and having deliberately left mine to fill, it has now settled at around 320 emails - emails that otherwise would be finding their way to my main email address. Scary thought!

    Just those that arrived yesterday... lol

    For what its worth (146211)
    Everybody's Doin It!! Do The BEST!!
    Is Your Mortgage Interest Rate as LOW as 2.75...
    This is Adult Related Material - You must be ...
    Receive a FREE Brand NEW Pager ...
    Make MONEY on the Internet Explosion! (16951)
    Make MONEY on the Internet Explosion! (16951)
    BECOME DEBT FREE TODAY!!
    Want a University Diploma - Fast & Easy - No ...
    Ever Wanted a University Diploma - Fast & Eas...
    Ever Wanted a University Diploma - Fast & Eas...
    Mailers...15 Million Addresses on CD
    Homeowner Notice!
    Money Available to Homeowners!!!
    "LOWEST" Mortgage Rates Available !!!
    Want a University Diploma - Fast & Easy - No ...
    FREE YOURSELF FROM DEBT~TODAY!...

    Sadly no hot teens this time around. Oh well. All I need to do is find a way of running my car on spam rather than petrol - then I'll be sorted.

  • You send them your username and password to your mail account?

    That doesn't bother you?


    ---
  • The site is as useless as the spammers they want reported.

    Error Occurred While Processing Request
    Error Diagnostic Information
    WaitNamedPipe returned FALSE.

    Windows NT error number 121 occurred.

  • Well, first of all there's the fact that it's WEBMAIL...ugh.

    Secondly, are you subscribed to any mailing lists? When the only thing on the To: line is "bugtraq@securityfocus.com", then that mail will go into the bulkmail folder along with the spam. Now, a lot of the stuff on BUGTRAQ is about Windows and doesn't concern me :), but there are also lots of important security announcements that DO concern me. I don't want those shuffled into the "junk" folder.

    Also, this couldn't really work on a normal mail server (as a procmail rule, say) because you can have aliases (such as president@foo.com), and then the To: field will be that, rather than jtsidu3@foo.com. Oops.

    However, you probably could filter (with procmail) any aliases/lists into their own mail folders, THEN do the described filtering. That might be useful, though not likely doable on Hotmail.

    As for me, I have my own "spam-filtering" method...I have a throwaway webmail account :)

  • Interesting (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 13, 2000 @11:12AM (#1075199)
    [ac@localhost /] $ whois chooseyourmail.com
    EHI (CHOOSEYOURMAIL-DOM)
    162 North Franklin
    Chicago, IL 60606

    Domain Name: CHOOSEYOURMAIL.COM

    Administrative Contact:
    Oxman, Ian (IO318) Ian.Oxman@CHOOSEYOURMAIL.COM
    CHOOSEYOURMAIL.COM
    162 N. Franklin
    Chicago , IL 60606
    800-767-6606 (FAX) 312-236-4092
    Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
    Danner, Jae (JD10231) jdanner@IBLI.COM
    International Business List
    162 North Franklin St.
    Chicago , IL 60606
    312.236.0350 (FAX) 312.236.4092
    Billing Contact:
    Weiler, Sandy (SW6900) sweiler@IBLI.COM
    IBL
    162 North Franklin
    Chicago , IL 60606

    312-236-0350 (FAX) 312-236-4092

    [ac@localhost /]$ whois ibli.com

    162 North Franklin Street
    Chicago, IL 60606
    US

    Domain Name: IBLI.COM

    Administrative Contact:
    Walters, Gary (GW4941) jdanner@IBLI.COM
    International Business List
    162 North Franklin St.
    Chicago , IL 60606
    312.236.0350 (FAX) 312.236.4092
    Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
    Danner, Jae (JD10231) jdanner@IBLI.COM
    International Business List
    162 North Franklin St.
    Chicago , IL 60606
    312.236.0350 (FAX) 312.236.4092
    Billing Contact:
    Accounts Payable (AP6696-ORG) sweiler@IBLI.COM
    International Business Lists
    162 North Franklin Street
    Chicago , IL 60606
    US
    (312) 236-0350
    Fax- (312) 236-4092

    Wow what an amazing coincidence two domain, one for spaming another for killing spam same address, same phone, same fax. Gee, I wonder how they make their money!

  • Also, I think a lot of people need to think through the concept of "banning spam". There are significant free speech issues involved here. If the federal government restricts people's rights to send communications to private individuals, that is the "slippery slope" to the government controlling how individuals communicate.

    Freedom of speech has a sibling that you seem to be forgetting. I am free to write this, and you are free to ignore it. UCE bypasses my right to choose what speech I wish to hear/read. It also circumvents my right to control MY PROPERTY, specifically my machines and my network. I do not allow persons unknown to me to paper the walls of my house with flyers and advertisements, why would I want them doing so to my inbox?

    And, BTW, slippery slope arguments are utterly fallacious. There is no spoon, and there is no slippery slope. You have made no argument to support your claim that restricting UCE must lead to some draconian 1984 scenario.


    --

  • It's a shame (Score:5)

    by /dev/yuckf00 ( 175468 ) on Saturday May 13, 2000 @11:18AM (#1075201)

    It's a shame that more network administrators don't make use of Sendmail's built-in mechanisms that deny forwarding of SMTP requests by default.

    Simply stated, if you are mysite.org your mail daemon will not accept mail destined for someothersite.org from spammaster.com. You can use the M4 macro technique to create the sendmail.cf file.

    Mechanisms for precise tuning include:

    relay_hosts_only - Forces list of each host in domain.

    relay_entire_domain - Setting this feature allows relaying of all hosts within your domain.

    access_db - This enables the hash database /etc/mail/access to enable or disable access from individual domains.

    relay_hosts_only - enabled by default.

    blacklist_recipients - If set, this feature looks up recipients as well as senders in the access database.

    accept_unqualified_senders - Normally, sendmail will not accept mail from a sender without a domain attached.

    accept_unresolvable_domains - Normally, sendmail will refuse to accept mail that has a return address with a domain that cannot be resolved using regular host lookup.

    relay_based_on_MX - Setting this feature permits relaying for any domain that is directed to your host.

    So, sendmail is quite flexible, and will not inconvenience your users. Additionally, your access list is based on a database that you define. `;^)

    Have a look at my database driven web site. [kizzier.net]

  • IMHO a better solution would be this. Change the SMTP protocol to have a NOTSPAM bit. Every mail client in the world would then switch to setting the NOTSPAM bit before sending a message, and would by default automatically delete messages without the bit set. Anybody sending a spam with the NOTSPAM bit set would be guilty of fraud. People who wanted spam could recieve it. No new law would be required, not even a law demanding spammers announce that their message is spam, because we would assume be default that all messages are spam.

    Yeah. Whattaya think?

  • Not spam per se, so feel free to mod this as off-topic. Does anyone know what the deal is with freshmeat? I've put their ad server (ads.freshmeat.net) into my junkbuster blocklist, but the ads still keep appearing. Has anyone encountered the same problem?

  • I don't watch TV, or listen to the radio, and advertising is a big reason why.

    Also, trying to extend concept of a Slashdot banner ad to e-mail spam is ridiculous. I pay for my e-mail account. I pay for my bandwidth. The spam is not because I'm gettin something for 'free'. There is no service being provided to me.

    If micropayments were possible, I might actually be willing to pay for Slashdot. Maybe I could pay $15/yr (ala JenniCam) for a banner ad free subscription or something. *grin* The banner ads do annoy me, even though I ignore them unless they're a Linux company I don't know about yet. Some of the animated gifs actually cause Netscape and X to use a fair amount of CPU and take it away from mpg123, or setiathome.

  • So if, say, Linus happened to use IE a couple of times while working at Transmeta, that would exclude him from the Linux community, would it?
  • I thought you being on DALnet's #london was annoying enough, now I find you trolling on slashdot as well..... jeeez!
  • So if, say, Linus happened to use IE a couple of times while working at Transmeta, that would exclude him from the Linux community, would it?

    No. But it would exclude him from my web site, which is my perogative.

    You people seem to keep forgetting one minor detail: it's my web site!

    I can exclude anyone I wish!

  • If you started getting a lot of them, you could filter spamcop.

    Talk about you ironies...

    JK
  • What would I do when I am not a citizen of the US?
    Who does recycle my spam then?

  • hotmail's simple way to filter (Score:3)

    by kamal ( 106376 ) on Saturday May 13, 2000 @11:28AM (#1075210)
    Hotmail recently introduced their Bulk Mail feature quite recently.
    The filter is simple: any email that doesn't have you in the To: or Cc: is moved to the Bulk Mail folder.
    And since most spam use Bcc, you can rest assured some 99% of spam will never reach you.

    I use to report spams to spamcop.net [spamcop.net], but now with that feature, not anymore =)

  • I have a bad feeling about this... (Score:3)

    by D. Mann ( 86819 ) on Saturday May 13, 2000 @11:31AM (#1075211) Homepage
    Forward them my spam, and they do what with my email address?

    Compile a giant list and sell it to spammers? That's what I bet. :)

    Of course, I have no idea if this is a legitimate service or not... just my inner paranoid speaking.

    I think I'll just keep pressing "Delete" when I get spam.
  • The link works because one of the editors from the Slashdot gang saw one of these posts and changed the article to make it work. So, rather than wasting your karma on troll posts like that, why not put a little bit of thought into what you're saying?

    kwsNI

  • Re:Do NOT war-dial 800 numbers. (Score:4)

    by gilroy ( 155262 ) on Saturday May 13, 2000 @12:24PM (#1075213) Homepage Journal
    *Sigh* You're probably right about losing in court, but if you consider the proviso
    solely to harass any person at the called number or who receives the communication
    you see the glimmer of a way out. The original poster wasn't doing this solely to harass the spammer. He/she was following the emailed instructions for removing his/her address from the list. (I assume that the computer actually played a message, not just called and hung up.) So it could be argued that this was a legitimate approach.

    If the spammer countered that a single call would have sufficed, one might point out that the same could be said of the original spam: there was no need to send it every week. Since the spammer obviously doesn't trust messages to be delivered, why should the poster?

    Although the irony would be delicious, this probably wouldn't actually hold up, though.

  • Unfortunatly, some web-hosts won't give you smtp access for your domain. Jumpline.com and dibby.com are two that I know of. If you host www.mydomain.com with them, you get addresses like me@mydomain.com, but no smtp server to send mail. They tell you to use your isp's server, or use everyone.net (A web-based email service provider.) Dibby even claims that this is standard policy. The reason I used these hosts is that they're quick and cheap. I've ended up having to use sendmail on my dialup machine for smtp.
    P.S. Why does slashdot host ads for a Windows only free internet provider? Seems to not be targeted very well.

  • Re:in defense of "spammers" (Score:3)

    by fluxrad ( 125130 ) on Saturday May 13, 2000 @12:34PM (#1075215)
    Your post raises some good questions. But some are, perhaps, misguided questions.

    Most people who post about *spam* (both solicited email and non solicited email) have the attitude that advertisements in the email form are somewhere being near breaking one of the 10 commandments. They argue with the appearance that what these advertisers are doing is morally wrong. While they don't intend to sound as such, that's the way most come across.

    I believe that some of the tactics that email marketers use is blatantly abusive of the end user, but most are not. Have you considered suing slashdot, or perhaps andover for compensation for the bandwidth that it took to download the banner ad at the top of the page you're seeing now? if not...why? you didn't ask for the banner ad. It's a blantant infringement of your rights as an internet user.

    Most people who are violently against any type of advertisement in their email are the same who don't realize the way economics work. Nothing is for free. Even slashdot isn't free. The price you pay for the content is the banner ad at the top of the page. I am willing to dispense a little of my time, or my ever so precious bandwidth to support sites like slashdot. These guys have to make a living somehow. And to keep the site free to us (at least monetarily speaking) is to sell some of their space to advertisers. Depending on the needs of the site, company, or what have you, and the service it produces. It may be necessary to ask you if you want to recieve some other ads in the mail. If you don't...you get to click a button that says you don't want it. But for people to criticize a practice that keeps alot of the things i like free, is just, ill informed.

    If you're against everything that "marketed email" stands for - then please. go home...throw away your TV and your radio....because that's how "free" content gets paid for. Advertising.


    FluX
    After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network

  • 1st Amendment is *no* problem (with legal cites) (Score:5)

    by orpheus ( 14534 ) on Saturday May 13, 2000 @12:36PM (#1075216)
    No, spam does not present free speech issues. I am as ardent a free-speech advocate as anyone, but it is well established that a "No Soliciting" sign is not a violation of free speech, and that disregarding such a sign is actionable -- even by constitutionally protected groups, such as a religion [rickross.com].

    1. Not a public forum
    My e-mailbox is not a public space by virtue of connecting to the internet, any more than my driveway or front door are, by virtue of being accessible by public roads. Or even my USPS mailbox -- "[A] letterbox, once designated an 'authorized depository', does not at the same time undergo a transformation into a 'public forum' of some limited nature to which the First Amendment guarantees access to all comers." Justice Rehnquist in U.S. Postal Service v. Council of Greenburgh, 453 U.S. 114 (1981) [krusch.com] (skip down to Greenburgh)

    2. The paper 'junk mail' analogy demolished
    So how does paper 'junk mail' survive? Partly though lots of expensive lobbying, and partly through a special right granted to the USPS, whereby they have quasi-ownership of my mailbox. (The US is one of the few countries to have a "Statutory Mail Box Restriction") The USPS can even prosecute my neighbors for leaving a note in my mailbox that could have been mailed (18 U.S.C. 1725) even if I, as the owner of the mailbox permit and even welcome the hand-delivery. ("Greenburgh" and other cases) However, the USPS cannot 'choose' to deny delivery of "objectionable" bulk mail, per cases like Bol ger v. Youngs Drugs Prods. (1983) [cornell.edu] (though Judge Brandeis ruled they could 'choose' to refuse to deliver certain political newspapers in Milwaukee Social Democratic Pub. Co. v. Burleson, 255 U.S. 407 (1921) So much for freedom of the press)

    However, to bring this back to 'spam', I as a private recipient can ban junk mail from my mailbox [junkbusters.com], by filing a form with the USPS. This has been upheld by the Supreme Court, despite the First Amendment arguments by the Direct Marketing Assoc. The whole DMA "free speech" argument for spam is based on a premise that has long been defeated for snail mail

    3. Abuse of 'Opt-out' is a crime, and should be an additional charge
    Finally, even if Federal Law requires an opt-out address, any savvy user knows that much of the spam on the Internet at large contains fraudulent opt-out options [salon.com]. Not only would 'opting out' put you at risk for 'harvesting' (and hence more spam), but most spammers are fly-by-night operators who are long gone by the time you hit 'reply'. In fact, a recent article [salon.com] investigated and found that the bulk of spam reaches dead addresses even for those foolish enough to accept the offer being made.

    In short, such spam is useless to everyone, the sender, the potential customer, and the millions of 'innocent victims'. Most users never learn this, because they are conditioned to ignore the opt-out, after a few 'harvesting' opt-outs flood their e-mail with even more spam. Here one abuse (harvesting) creates a hospitable environment that supports another (fake opt-out), a cycle that repeats in many ways throughout the spam 'industry'.

    If your workplace puts a fake (or placebo) certificate where the elevator inspection card belongs, is that not a crime even more serious than failure to have a timely inspection (the former is willful criminal intent, the latter may be an accident)? If a con artist is caught in the act of trying to cheat a citizen, is it just 'free speech' until they actually walk off with the cash? Similarly, a 'fake opt-out' should a crime separate from 'failure to comply with spam regs'.

    As of April 19, 2000 at least 18 states [salon.com] had passed or were working on legislation to restrict or regulate spam. There are, of course, serious jurisdictional issues.

    _____________
  • Does http://spamcop.net/ do the same thing? I am trying to see who does a better job in stopping SPAMs. I get a lot as well even though I try my best to avoid them (i.e. filters, anti-SPAM newsgroup posting, etc.). I look forward to receiving a reply on this.

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday May 13, 2000 @12:37PM (#1075218)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Ant-Spam? :) I think you meant Anti-Spam. Why reject ants? [grin]

  • Not one single e-mail has ever reached the "Bulk Mail" folder in my Hotmail account, yet my inbox gets around 5 pieces of spam per day. Maybe Hotmail should consider implementing a more effective spam filter...
  • Spam Cop [spamcop.net] lets you paste your headers and text into a text window, automatically processes the headers, and gives you the option to send notification of the spamming to where it originated from. It's an easy way to fight spam, and I've personally helped get a couple of spam accounts killed with it.
  • I've had 90 accounts killed with it (that's specific notifications, not "we have taken action *handslap with a wet noodle* there, and don't do it again!")

    However, it won't stand slashdotting- lately nonpaying subscribers have often been unable to use the site because paying subscribers get higher priorities for running processes. Part of me is sad when this happens and the other part is delighted :) go spamcop!

    Also, does anyone know anything about this 'chooseyourmail.com' (in cooperation with 'F.R.E.E' and "C.A.U.C.E")? spamcop defaults to cooperating with them, but I'm still nervous of it. It claims several entirely dumb and redundant things (turn your spam into steak indeed! Have you no clue of my real motivations) but also claims to forward to 'the federal authorities'. Is that true or is it a lie or a hype?

  • I use to report spams to spamcop.net, but now with that feature, not anymore
    That's what bothers me most about the bulk-mail filters.
    I've got a yahoo account and a hotmail account - yahoo has an excellent bulk mail filter (only a few get by it, and only rarely) which I use, but I don't use the one that Hotmail provides, for reasons that other posters in this thread pointed out.
    The result is that I report all the spam that gets delivered to my hotmail address, but not the spam that gets sent to my yahoo address (as I just clear out the bulk mail folder).
    I love the convienience factor of automatically ridding myself of spam, but it seems to me that until everyone has a filter like this, spammers are going to find it easier to do their dirty work, since nobody will report them.

  • hmmm...

    For: spamrecycle.com

    • Registrant:
      Chooseyourmail.com (SPAMRECYCLE-DOM)
      162 North Franklin
      Chicago, IL 60606
      US

      Domain Name: SPAMRECYCLE.COM

      Administrative Contact:
      Oxman, Ian (IO318) Ian.Oxman@CHOOSEYOURMAIL.COM

      CHOOSEYOURMAIL.COM
      162 N. Franklin
      Chicago , IL 60606
      800-767-6606 (FAX) 312-236-4092

      Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
      May, John (JM29529)
      john.may@CHOOSEYOURMAIL.COM

      CHOOSEYOURMAIL.COM
      162 N. Franklin
      Chicago , IL 60606
      312-236-0350 (FAX) 312-236-4092

      Billing Contact:
      Weiler, Sandy (SW6900) sweiler@IBLI.COM

      IBL
      162 North Franklin
      Chicago , IL 60606
      312-236-0350 (FAX) 312-236-4092

      Record last updated on 17-Apr-1999.
      Record expires on 16-Mar-2001.
      Record created on 16-Mar-1999.
      Database last updated on 13-May-2000 09:12:16 EDT.

      Domain servers in listed order:

      AUTH00.NS.UU.NET 198.6.1.65
      AUTH60.NS.UU.NET 198.6.1.181

    From a press release at: http://www.messagingdirect.com/press/chooseyourmai l.html

    "Included in the Execmail Web application is direct access to ChooseYourMail.com, a privacy sensitive, anti-spam company that delivers money saving offers via email to consumers. Unlike other email marketers, ChooseYourMail.com delivers their offers without collecting any personal information or revealing customers email addresses to anyone."

    "In our program, the user is in complete control," said Oxman. "They say what offers they want, they say how often they want them and when they want them delivered. If you want to find Internet bargains without mortgaging your privacy or exposing yourself to spam then ChooseYourMail is the program for you."

    "Founded in 1998 as responsible marketing alternative to "spam," ChooseYourMail.com is an ethical, private, "opt-in" e-mail marketing company that acts as a private sector infomediary between e-mail marketers, netizens and ISPs. ChooseYourMail.com also works with public interest groups and legislators at the state and national levels to craft and promote sound, effective, "anti-spam" legislation. As part of their anti-spam efforts, ChooseYourMail.com is a founding member of the Spam Recycling Center consumer assistance website at http://www.spamrecycle.com."

    So, the parent company is in the spam business, it's just spam you've asked for!

    t_t_b

    (Hey! how come <pre> and </pre> aren't allowed tags?)
    --

  • Please...

    "Have you considered suing slashdot, or perhaps andover for compensation for the bandwidth that it took to download the banner ad at the top of the page you're seeing now? if not...why? you didn't ask for the banner ad. It's a blantant infringement of your rights as an internet user."

    Wrong, buddy. I do nothing, and I receive spam. It's completely passive on my part. It's like a telemarketting call: they initiate it, and enter my private space. With telemarketters, I can just ask them to never call again lest I persue legal action against them. I can't do the same with spam.

    With banner ads on slashdot and the like: that's accepted when I choose to load the website. Being a proactive person, I installed Internet Junkbuster [waldherr.org] years ago, and continue to reap the benefits today. Again, a completely easy and legal way of avoiding unwanted advertisements -- something spam does not provide.

    Perhaps you'll also claim Kuro5hin [kuro5hin.org] is somehow evil, too. When we do bring in ads (eventually), anyone with a user account has to opt in. If you don't have an account, you get a mixed-bag of ads. But I will personally (as an admin of the site) ensure that IJB has an updated blocklist containing the URL for the K5 ads so people can opt out even without an account. Something which Spammers don't even think of providing.

    And if you do choose to opt-in for ads (supporting K5), you get to choose the advertisement classes you see. No more adverts for random things you don't want!

    So before you paint everyone who doesn't like advertisements as some sort of evil person who wants to freeload: realise that they probably (like myself) dislike advertisements you cannot opt out of, like those wonderful advertisements positioned right above urinals. Captive audience, anyone?
    ---
  • lol - first off. i initiated "the discussion at hand", so i'm willing to bet i know what it's about. Basically, it's about the major difference between *spam* and email advertising. Unfortunately, being that i didn't explicitly state this, i generated a shitload of responses.

    Just to reiterate - I am trying to defend email marketers who aren't sending to ill gained addresses, or what have you. The reason for the original post is that the vast majority of the internet going public has no idea of the difference. As for you, you seem to have a pretty good grasp on the situation, aside from an earlier comment about sending through open mail relays:

    the great majority of all email goes through these relays. They are out there on the internet and available for use by anyone that needs to use them (i.e. email way-stations). While spam sucks, i wouldn't classify their use of these mail relays as part of their "immoral" actions. more of a by-product. I'm not too concerned how *spam* gets to me anyway...i'm pissed that it gets to me at all.


    FluX
    After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
  • Error Occurred While Processing Request
    Error Diagnostic Information
    WaitNamedPipe returned FALSE.
    Windows NT error number 121 occurred.

    I'm easily amused

  • Flux wrote:
    As for you, you seem to have a pretty good grasp on the situation, aside from an earlier comment about sending through open mail relays: [But] the great majority of all email goes through these relays. They are out there on the internet and available for use by anyone that needs to use them (i.e. email way-stations).

    Perhaps once upon a time, RFC821 and all that, but not for years. Today most e-mail is transferred via direct SMTP connections between the sender and recipient. (I don't count e-mail transferred via relays within organizations.) Relays served an important purpose when many internet connections were dial-up and non-permanent, but they have little need in this day and age, and great potential for abuse, in the form of spammers. Since 1999 with RFC 2505 closing mail relays has been labeled a "best practice".

    Do I know what I'm talking about? I just spent several days cleaning up after someone else's mistake: a spammer discovered that the mail server for the company I work for was left open, and began sending reams of crap through it. If you count my time at billable prices, this problem caused our company approximately $5000 in my work alone, not counting lost productivity and delayed mail.

    But thanks for asking. ;-)
    ----
  • You people seem to keep forgetting one minor detail

    We're not forgetting that. It's irrelevant. What's relevant is that various folks (e.g., me) think that your position is stupid and gives the Linux community a bad name. To which opinion they, er, we have just as much right as you have excluding people that use IEeeeeeee.

    What's relevant is that you seem to think that if somebody uses IEeeee, then that magically excludes them from "The Linux Community". Would you be happier if I told you I'm running IEeeeee under WinNT under VMWare under Linux? Would that somehow validate me in your oh-so-judgemental eyes? If so -- I doubt it, but if so, well, I'm so pleased.

    Has it occured to you that you and Microsoft are using similar tactics? They (allegedly?) include HTML/Java/JavaScript on their web pages that crashes Netscape. You exclude IE in a more direct manner. You have become your enemy.
  • Oops, minor /. hiccup -- #187 was a reply to #177, not #173.
  • on that topic, ask the post office how much cheaper your mail would be if there wasnt so much junk mail floating around. the price would probably be the same (as with the ISP). But think about it. For the billions of junk mail delivered every day you need extra mail trucks, bigger/more delivery vans, more sorting capacity to handle the extra load, etc. This raises the required post office capacity. Although with email the effect is the same (more bandwidth, more capable email servers, etc, the cost is not nearly as great. I dont like spam. But I dont have a huge problem with it either. I prefer spam to junk mail. What I DO have a problem with is spam that pretends not to be spam. Spams with subjects like 'Re: That cool web site you told me about', 'Haven't seen you in a while', 'Hey, did you get the memo?'. Open a web email account and let it sit for a month. You will have nothing but spam if you dont tell anybody about it. At least 3 out of 5 spams will have fake subjects. This is what I hate about spammers. They're dishonest! I believe the solution is to have a 'spam' tag in email. Spammers would be allowed to spam as much as they wanted as long as every message had its spam tag flipped. Thus, the user can simply tell his email program 'autodelete all spam' and every new spam goes straight to the recycle bin. Then there needs to be something like spamrecycle.com. When people get un-tagged spam, they forward it to the recyclers. If enough people complain then I believe the spammer should have to pay at least $20 to each user they spammed. Obviously the payment would require some kind of central authority, but the basic idea would work. Spammers could spam away without fear of litigation and users wouldnt have to deal with it. The other good thing is ISPs could set their email servers to autoreject spam. Thus reducing customer cost.
  • Hello there.

    How can you defend spammers? How can any "email marketing firm" be doing the "right thing", when the whole idea of using *my* bandwidth, without paying me for it, is wrong in itself?

    Or are there email marketing firms out there, that pay the people they send emails to, upon request?
  • As a system administrator for a local ISP, spam is a big time waster for us.

    I don't care if it's illegal right now. What I do care about is that it's my job to make sure our customers can get their email in a timely fashion, that they can get their email without being worried about their children getting junk from the latest kiddie porn spammer. When our customers call and wonder why they are getting this junk in their mailbox, they want to know what we're going to do about it.

    Well, we maintain mail filtering for those who want to use it, but I have to spend a significant amount of man-hours maintaining the filters and other tasks associated with keeping the mail system in shape.

    In short, spam is a money-waster for ISPs. I could be spending more time doing the myriad of other tasks that need to be done to keep our customers happy. Spammers are cost-shifting their advertising onto us; every byte they are using on our internet connection and our mail server is costing us money. Our SMTP banner says "NO UCE." If we say we don't want it, it should be illegal.

  • Spam is theft. (Score:4)

    by DHartung ( 13689 ) on Saturday May 13, 2000 @11:52AM (#1075234) Homepage
    There are several simple arguments against spam.

    First, spam is a theft of service for the recipient. You are the one paying for your e-mail address, you are the one whose time is taken up deleting/sorting the spam, you are the one whose ISP fees go up if they have to buy more disk space or bandwidth to deal with all the spam they get for all their customers. This is a cost borne by the consumer, in other words, not the advertiser.

    Second, spam is almost always a violation of an Acceptable Use Policy for the spammer's ISP. ISPs don't like dealing with spam any more than recipients, especially because the spammer is more than likely using a throwaway account and will not be a continuing customer. This single short-time customer might be the source of 75% of the administrative work for the ISP during this period.

    Third, spammers rarely use their own paid-for accounts, but find an open SMTP relay server to send their mail through. When they do this, there are two effects: theft of service and denial of service. The theft occurs because they have no contractual relationship with the manager of the relay server, yet they make the relay do all the work (expanding a CC list to hundreds of destination servers, for example), stealing the bandwidth, server disk space, server uptime, sysadmin labor, and other resources of the hapless victim. Second, the bandwidth and disk space taken up by the spammer are denied to the server owner, and if the server crashes under the weight of spam, the server owner's people have no mail server to use. Hence, theft of service AND denial of service.

    While some people use "spam" generically to account for all kinds of unwanted e-mail, technically it refers first of all to unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail.

    The kinds of solicited mail you speak of (forgetting to uncheck that "notify me of new products" box, for instance) are easily demonstrated by legitimate operations (who probably have to do it periodically). This kind of harassment is another nasty denial-of-service secondary effect of spammers: upstanding customers get raked over the coals for no good reason. Anyway, anybody who gets that kind of mail deserves it. But a legitimate bulk e-mail is also easy to unsubscribe from.
    ----

  • Ordinarily, I wouldn't mind spam so much... (Score:4)

    by Brian Kendig ( 1959 ) on Saturday May 13, 2000 @11:53AM (#1075235)
    If junk email offered useful services with legitimate terms, I wouldn't mind it so much.

    I throw out most of my junk postal email, but every now and then I get good coupons for pizza or free samples of interesting stuff, and the rest of my junk postal email is relatively innocent and irrelevant to me, so I don't have much of a problem with the amount of junk postal email I get. (I'll make an exception for the junk mail that tries to look more important than it really is, such as magazine subscription ads that look like invoices, or credit-card applications that try to look like they've annotated by hand or that come with faux newspaper clippings. And every time my bank sends me a letter stamped 'Important: Account Information Enclosed,' I know to ignore it.)

    But I have two serious problems with junk email:

    (1) I have NEVER received junk email that's even remotely useful to me; moreover, I don't think I've ever gotten any junk email that even looks legitimate. All of it looks like too-good-to-be-true deals by fly-by-night companies that will be all to glad to take your money and skip town overnight with it. The services themselves are even shady -- the majority of my junk email is for things like "get your neighbor's credit history!" or "buy now and get a list of free XXX web site passwords!" or "buy this list of email addresses for advertising; it's been pre-screened!" or "I tried this pyramid scheme, and it REALLY WORKS!"

    (2) What's worse, the spammers lie blatantly about the nature of their spam. For example:

    "Hey Dave, here's more info about that great real-estate program I was telling you about last night! Say hi to Margaret for me!" (Making it look like I'm the accidental beneficiary of some choice information.)

    "This email is NOT SPAM. You are receiving this email because you have contacted us or one of our subsidiary companies in the past." (I get this sort of spam sent to the email address in my InterNIC domain record, which I've never actually used to send anything.)

    "You are on our OPT-IN marketing list. If you would like to be removed, please opt into the removal process by sending your email address to ..." (They hope that the magic word 'opt-in' will get me off their backs.)

    "Make money fast! This is NOT a pyramid scheme!" (That's the best tipoff that it is.)

    "A prime-time television special tried our multi-level marketing scheme, and not only did it bring them sixty thousand dollars in two days, but they also discovered that there are absolutely no laws against it!" (Note that they never mention what TV show they're talking about.)

    All in all, it's not the amount of spam that bothers me so much (although I would like to get rid of it entirely, and I support CAUCE). It's the shady, thieving nature of the stuff that really irks me. For every million spam emails that these crooks send out, they're going to find at least a few dozen people who really believe that they can earn $50,000 a month by stuffing envelopes at home, and these people will gladly kiss $70 from their own pockets goodbye.

  • Sometimes laws are meant to be broken. Kudos to you.


    ...................

    ... paka chubaka

  • Think about it. If you're in the paper-based junk mail business, you would
    not want those pesky email-based spammers to be eating into your customer
    base. IBLI is a natural enemy of spammers, and would probably be happy to
    sponsor an anti-spam effort.
  • There's an additional reason to sign up- being a free user of spamcop myself, I know that the site prioritizes paying users higher for processes. So if you're a free user you can keep using it (and contributing to the lists of hosts and their spamcounts), but if things are busy you'll be asked to try again later, all processes are busy. That's cool :)
  • Spam is commercial soliciatation or advertising. It has nothing to do with free speech advertising has always, and rightly so, had many restrictions. The problem is that there isn't enough restrictions for spam right now.

  • 47 USC 227 is, in fact, the junk fax law. IANAL either, but my reading of the section (backed up by a course in software law decades ago) says that a computer, analog modem, and printer, coupled with appropriate software, meet the definition of "fax machine" for the purposes of the law. (I'd have to re-read it to see if DSL would count.) (Cable modems are right out.) Anything of a business nature sent unsolicited to a "fax machine" is illegal, and is, in fact, worth $500 a pop, recoverable in the courts of either the sender or the recipient. Treble damages apply.

    Now, it's worth noting that I've never heard of a spammer being succesfully sued under this statute, although I have sent some threatening emails with this clause in there, and gotten good results (i.e. blessed silence).

    It would certainly make things simpler if we could get together a test case and set a precedent...

    --
    All bad precedents began as justifiable measures.
    -- Gaius Julius Caesar, quoted by Sallust

  • Most people who post about *spam* (both solicited email and non solicited email) have the attitude that advertisements in the email form are somewhere being near breaking one of the 10 commandments. They argue with the appearance that what these advertisers are doing is morally wrong. While they don't intend to sound as such, that's the way most come across.

    Spammers are violating one of the 10 commandments, should you happen to have the christian worldview. Spammers are STEALING my bandwidth, disk space, and time, to get their message across to me. I get NOTHING from them for that privledge.

    I believe that some of the tactics that email marketers use is blatantly abusive of the end user, but most are not. Have you considered suing slashdot, or perhaps andover for compensation for the bandwidth that it took to download the banner ad at the top of the page you're seeing now? if not...why? you didn't ask for the banner ad. It's a blantant infringement of your rights as an internet user.

    If Slashdot used my email address to send me ads without my permission, and sold that address to others, I would gladly sue Andover.

    Your comparison between advertising graphics, and emails, is invalid. When I download an ad, I am making an active effort, to make a connection to slashdot.org's server, to download the ad. When I receive an email, though, that was something *sent* to me by the advertiser, without my knowledge or consent.

    Besides, I have slashdot's ad server in my junkbuster block list, and I browse without images anyway!

    Most people who are violently against any type of advertisement in their email are the same who don't realize the way economics work. Nothing is for free. Even slashdot isn't free. The price you pay for the content is the banner ad at the top of the page. I am willing to dispense a little of my time, or my ever so precious bandwidth to support sites like slashdot. These guys have to make a living somehow. And to keep the site free to us (at least monetarily speaking) is to sell some of their space to advertisers. Depending on the needs of the site, company, or what have you, and the service it produces. It may be necessary to ask you if you want to recieve some other ads in the mail. If you don't...you get to click a button that says you don't want it. But for people to criticize a practice that keeps alot of the things i like free, is just, ill informed.

    Why don't you stick to the issue at hand, unsolicited emails? Arguing about advertising in general is off the topic. I never said anything against ads in general; only against unsolicited emailings.

    Besided, what are those emails funding, pray tell, that I am using? Making money fast? Take CmdrTaco's example: ads for toner, when he doesn't even have a printer. Or the ads I always get, offering to "give my web site credit card accepting ability". What is that funding, that I am enjoying?

  • Users don't like spam, and ISPs definatly don't like the waste of resources, why can't someone write a mailer that checks for mass amounts of identical mail? If over 100 users are on some Bcc list or if the same piece of mail keeps going through the system then shut it down. Make it suspend their account and inform the administrator.

    If ISPs did this the only ISPs sending spam will be ones that approve of it and we could simply collect their domain names and put them on blocks and killfiles.

  • why? (Score:5)

    by TheTick21 ( 143167 ) on Saturday May 13, 2000 @10:02AM (#1075248) Homepage
    Why would I want to stop those informative e-mails? Just yesterday I was informed that I may have already won a free cruise. And another message (which assured me it was not a pyramid scheme by the way) made me aware of the fact that I could easily make $50000 a month IN MY OWN HOME! I have also been made aware of the fact that there are lots of hot teenage women who would love to be with me. I mean honestly...this so called spam is the only hope I had left. I thought I was a luckless geek making $8.00 an hour who hates his job and can't wait to graduate from college just to get a boring also underpaying job and I would probably never get to go on a cruise. Just some thoughts.


    My Home: Apartment6 [apartment6.org]
  • "Forward them your spam, and they will prosecute the spammers for you, giving you time to do other things" ...while they get a few bucks from the lawsuit
    I was just thinking - they must have a really good deal going with their lawyer!

  • Spam, per se, is not illegal. Irritating, but not illegal. I think the recent federal law only requires that they give you a method of opting out.

    Also, I think a lot of people need to think through the concept of "banning spam". There are significant free speech issues involved here. If the federal government restricts people's rights to send communications to private individuals, that is the "slippery slope" to the government controlling how individuals communicate.

    Just for the record, I think the federal law should require unsolicited e-mails to include an identifier in the subject like "unsolicited" or something.


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  • Despite what they say on their website, Flonetwork is NOT a CAUCE member. See http://www.cauce.org/orgmember/org_list.shtml [cauce.org] and you'll note that they are NOT listed!

    Yes, I sit on CAUCE's Board of Directors [cauce.org], BTW, and it irritates us to no end when people like you jump to conclusions without bothering to ask us our side of the story.

  • I used to get that Toner Spam from Benchmark Industries about once a week. The interesting part was that they didn't BCC the email list. This was nice because you could pretty easily figure out where they got the list from (obviously it was also bad because any of those other people on the list could use it for their own spamming purposes.)

    Anyway, after reporting them to spamcop [spamcop.net] for months and filing complaints against them with the Better Business Bureau [bbb.org] (both good resources for this) I decided to actually look at the email. At the bottom they included two different 1-800 numbers for customer support and to remove your name from their list.

    Now, obviously I'm not going to tell them which email is active, because they'll just send me more, so I had my computer call them up over and over and over and over again leaving long messages (at their expenses, thank you 1-800) telling them to remove all email addresses from my school (everyone on their list was from my university). They were never there in person, always had a machine answer the phone, but I think they eventually got fed up with paying the 1-800 bill and eventually stopped sending me spam.

    It was some work, but it eventually got rid of them. So remember, first use spamcop [spamcop.net], second use BBB [bbb.org], third spam them back... always check for that 1-800.

  • Re:It is not free speech (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It's not akin to snail-junk-mail at all. For every peice of junkmail that arrives in your physical mailbox, they have paid the post office a considerable amount to deliver it. You don't own your mailbox, the post office does; so start to end, the person who is junkmailing you is paying (a not inconsideable amount) to the postoffice for the privelidge of using the system. You are not paying anything. With spam, the person who pays for the bandwidth to your mailbox is YOU - and it's not theoretical - ISP's pay for every byte that goes in and out of their network, and they get reimbursed for that from the money you are paying for your account. When someone spams, you foot the bill, and they don't pay anything. It's theft, plain and simple.

  • Good grief, quit bickering and look it up (cite) (Score:3)

    by orpheus ( 14534 ) on Saturday May 13, 2000 @02:36PM (#1075269)
    I won't list the whole thing, which can be found at this link [house.gov] (at the US House of Representatives website -- official enough for ya?)


    TITLE 47 - TELEGRAPHS, TELEPHONES, AND RADIOTELEGRAPHS
    CHAPTER 5 - WIRE OR RADIO COMMUNICATION
    SUBCHAPTER II - COMMON CARRIERS
    Part I - Common Carrier Regulation
    Sec. 227. Restrictions on use of telephone equipment

    (a) Definitions
    As used in this section -
    (2) The term ''telephone facsimile machine'' means equipment which has the capacity
    (A) to transcribe text or images, or both, from paper into an electronic signal and to transmit that signal over a regular telephone line, or
    (B) to transcribe text or images (or both) from an electronic signal received over a regular telephone line onto paper.

    So *that* definition checks out, anyway. Let's see what the law prohibits:



    (b) Restrictions on use of automated telephone equipment
    (1) Prohibitions
    It shall be unlawful for any person within the United States -
    [...]
    (C) to use any telephone facsimile machine, computer, or other device to send an unsolicited advertisement to a telephone facsimile machine;


    Now, I'm sorry for the ugliness (can we please have the preformatted text tag back? Pretty please?) but you can check for yourself that this is indeed the proper nested reference.

    Good news:
    1) a computer that has a printer (and modem) is a 'telephone facsimile machine'
    2) Spammers *can't* use a computer to send spam to my 'telephone facsimile machine'

    Bad news:
    If you back up a couple of nested levels, you see items like
    • Title 47 TELEGRAPHS, TELEPHONES, AND RADIOTELEGRAPHS
      • 47 USC 227 Restrictions on use of telephone equipment
      • 47 USC 227 (b) Restrictions on use of automated telephone equipment


    So yes, if the spammer is using a dial-in to the internet, they are surely breaking the law. This probably applies to a lot of small-timers (a good chunk of the more clueless spams, but not necessarily a large percentage of total spam)

    Unfortunately, if the spammer has a network link, instead of a dial-up account then the courts may not see this as an appropriate law to apply. You really can't blame them -- the word "telephone" could hardly be more prominent. As far as deciding what constitutes a telephone -- Three words: Technology. Judges. Barf.

    But what if you use a dial-up ISP? Well, it could easily be argued that *he* didn't send the spam over the phone line, *you* did. He had no idea that you would choose to access your inbox via telephone. He addressed the e-mail to your inbox. [analogy: if someone mails you an advertisement, and you tell your secretary to fax your to the branch office where you're working this week... then YOU faxed the advertisement, not the advertiser.]

    I suspect your case would be only slightly stronger if your entire domain was connected to the internet via modem or DSL. They could argue "lack of intent" and "unusual circumstances" (or similar concepts). You could argue "reckless disregard" or (or similar concepts). It's a pissing match.

    That's why I chose to argue (elsewhere in this thread) from 'postal' mail principles, rather than telephone. Since I made that post, I actually found a substantial body of law supporting an anti-spam position. It turns out that we have far more (court approved) anti-junk mail power than we generally use (because it's too inconvenient as a practical matter). However, it's great precedent, and in the e-mail arena, unlike snail mail the whole process can be automated.

    _____________
  • We would greatly appreciate your registration and feedback about our program.Joining ChooseYourMail is absolutely free and can be stopped at any time.

    This sound like the way I got on so many spam-lists to start with..

    -

  • Whether it is or not, it should be (Score:4)

    by Pentagram ( 40862 ) on Saturday May 13, 2000 @10:16AM (#1075277) Homepage
    I think the most basic test you can apply as to whether spam should be allowed is this: what would happen if everyone did it?

    There must be millions of businesses with email access and if they all spammed a million addresses once per week, the net would grind to a halt.

    No-one would be able to use email because rather than just looking through a few dozen spams each day, we'd have to sort genuine emails from thousands of messages.

    Spamming is an antisocial act and should be outlawed. And I don't think any free speech ideal should be attached to it either; people should have the right to free speech, but I should have the right not to listen.

    Although I suppose you're just a troll.

  • This company [spamrecycle.com] does not prosecute your spam, they only send it to your state representative [chooseyourmail.com]. They also have an extensive list of spam [chooseyourmail.com] that they want to to sign up to receive!!!

    A (major, I'm guessing) partner in this is Choose Your Mail . com [chooseyourmail.com], which let you decide what spam to get. Yeah right...
  • I'm not going to post that i love getting spam in my email. Unsolicited email is a pain in the ass...but not all of the ads i get in my mail box are what i would classify as "spam"

    I know of alot of people who complain about getting "spam" in their email box from some company they bought something from, but either checked, or didn't think to uncheck that nice little box that says "notify me of other products." Fly by night email advertisers who gain gobs of email addresses by illegal means, or who illegaly use properly obtained email addresses should be prosecuted. But there *ARE* email marketing firms who are trying to do the right thing. They don't over pressure their "customers", and they don't try to screw people in the name of the almighty buck...*cough*double-click*cough*

    While the majority of what just about every slashdot reader gets is spam (because, while many appear to have a preoccupation with hot grits, they are vastly more internet savvy than the general populous), most people are just not internet-wise enough to know where/where not to click to recieve/not recieve targeted email. I'm afraid that this is going to put alot of good people out of work for no reason but to get rid of a couple of emails in your inbox that you opted to recieve.

    is it hot in here? i think i'm about to get flamed.


    FluX
    After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
  • I know how the service I'm using, SpamCop, makes money.

    There's a service (of which I'm a satisfied customer) called SpamCop [spamcop.net], that parses spam headers (including addresses hidden in JavaScript, decimal IP's, etc.) for you and makes it painless to report spam. Sites hosted by legitimate ISP's referred to in a spam to me have a life expectancy measurable in minutes from the time I receive the spam. There are both metered subscriptions and a free (with a 4 second JavaScript countdown nag) one available.

    <humor>BTW, spamrecycle.com has an anti-spam petition [chooseyourmail.com] . I hope it doesn't involve forwarding the petition to ten friends, who will forward it to ten more, and . . . </humor>
  • I think the recent federal law only requires that they give you a method of opting out.

    There is no "recent federal law". The one the spamscum routinely put in their messages is a bill that did not pass (in part because people got wind of it via the Net and complained).
    /.

  • The reason I like "unsolicited" rather than "adv" (for advertisement) is that the former covers more ground. I would find Greenpeace spam just as annoying as toner spam.


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