AOL Sues Five Spam Companies 256
sugapablo writes "AOL has filed lawsuits against five spamming companies, seeking damages in the millions for unwanted email. As the AP reports, AOL hasn't actually figured out who all the defendants are though, filing the lawuits against some "John Does" and attempting to "subpoena service providers and others to try to track down the spammers"."
AOL should sue themselves (Score:5, Funny)
Re:AOL should sue themselves (Score:5, Funny)
Re:AOL should sue themselves (Score:3, Informative)
Re:AOL should sue themselves (Score:2, Informative)
Re:AOL should sue themselves (Score:2)
Re:AOL should sue themselves (Score:2, Insightful)
Someone should point this out to AOL's marketing dept. (just don't tell them you can slap a blank label over the top, ok).
And it'd be more environmentally friendly.
I love it when a plan comes together!
Re:AOL should sue themselves (Score:5, Insightful)
So can I sue AOL for spamming me with all those frigging CDs?
That depends. Does AOL make you pay shipping and handling for those CDs? No? Then it's not spam.
Direct marketing (i.e., junk mail, paid by the sender) may be odious, but it's a different issue from spam (essentially free to the sender, burden to pay on the rest of us, including AOL). AOL is not really being hypocritical by fighting one and using the other, no matter how funny it may seem to claim otherwise.
Re:AOL should sue themselves (Score:2, Insightful)
I'll stick with the more accepted definition of spam - direct mailings which you have not asked to receive. There are plenty of other more acceptable ways to advertise a product. Marketing droids just n
Re:AOL should sue themselves (Score:4, Insightful)
And since the CD's at least probably end up in a land-fill your great-great grandchildren may still be paying a price (of sorts) in a hundred years.
Is it just me who thinks this is all screwed up?
Re:AOL should sue themselves (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:AOL should sue themselves (Score:5, Interesting)
Recall that I never said that junk mail was good; just that it's different enough that AOL can fight spam and send CDs without being hypocrites.
Another key difference: although you shouldn't have to opt-out of junk mail, you can, and it mostly works. I contact the Direct Marketing Association [dmaconsumers.org] every few years to tell their members to cut it out, and the only junk mail I get for the most part is crap my family actually requests. I haven't seen an AOL CD in years, to be honest.
Junk mail sucks, and I'd love to see it abolished, but it follows some rules we can work with, if we bother to. Spam is an uncontrolled mess, and needs to be slapped down hard. AOL isn't being hypocritical by doing that.
Re:AOL should sue themselves (Score:3, Insightful)
Junk mail subsidizes the post office. Without it, there probably wouldn't be a post office, or stamps would cost a whole lot more than they do. A post office is only cost effective with a certain threshold of volume. If junk mail didn't exists, it would cost more money to send the same non-junk mail.
With electronic spam, the more they send, the more it costs the receiver and the casual users of the system.
The more volume in physical mail, the cheaper i
Re:AOL should sue themselves (Score:2)
The same article discussing this change pointed out that fully 60% of postal mail is now bulk mail, and the proportion continues to grow. First class mail is only 30% and shrinking.
Re:AOL should sue themselves (Score:2)
I enjoy this payment scheme since it encourages recycling and more thought on how much stuff we do consume. I hate it because I pay for all the junk mail. That's why I like credit card companies which provide a postage paid envelope so I can send their offerings back to them.
Yes, we do pay for AOL's spam (Score:2)
In a sense, we all pay for those CDs. The taxpayer, that is.
You should read this [msn.com] article. The latest "bailout" of the postal service means that we're going to increase the Federal Deficit and perhaps wind up with a massive pension crisis in a few years, all because Congress can't abide raising rates on bulk mailers like AOL.
Re:AOL should sue themselves (Score:2)
Superglue + AOL CDs = (Score:5, Interesting)
(Yes, I DO use a few CD sandwiches on the tree each year, they compliment the old family silicon wafers... Which are actually a lot nicer than you'd expect. They were rejects from a testing facility that had a tendency to oxidize the wafers in really colorful patterns. My family started using them just after my parents got married and they were both working in IC process development and didn't have anything else to put on the tree.)
Re:AOL should sue themselves (Score:3, Interesting)
Go AOL! (Score:2, Flamebait)
Re:Go AOL! (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a rather broad brush that you're painting with. Some people here may be using AOL out of necessity. There are a lot of rural and small-town places I know of around here where no ISPs have POPs other than AOL.
Re:Go AOL! (Score:2)
During arguement at town meeting:
Who said that!?!?!?!!?!?
Crowd reveals one little guy standing alone
Little guy in same voice as before: He did. Get him boys!
You cannot defend AOL!!! Or you are one of them! At least in a cartoon sense.
Re:Go AOL! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Go AOL! (Score:2)
AOL isn't just some ISP though. AOL Time Warner is a corporate leviathan, and according to AOL, the AOL legal department [aol.com] has over 60 lawyers worldwide, presumably plus anything they can pull in from the parent company.
Spammers.. be afraid. Be very afraid. :)
Re:Go AOL! (Score:4, Funny)
That's okay - I'm sure they still respect you, 1337 h4x0r.
King spammer (Score:2, Funny)
Quickly, mail them the name and the physical location of that one king spammer who recently found himself subscribed on several bulk mailing lists and didn't like it at all.
Maybe their lawyers should ask me (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Maybe their lawyers should ask me (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Maybe their lawyers should ask me (Score:2)
Re:Maybe their lawyers should ask me (Score:5, Informative)
In the local sage mailing list, someone mentioned that he hadn't gotten any spam that day. His email address was in the list list of stuff I rejected several times.
Re:Maybe their lawyers should ask me (Score:5, Funny)
Holy crow.
Now, if only I hated humanity enough to actually put this plan into action...
Re:Maybe their lawyers should ask me (Score:2)
Overseas spammers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Back to the drawing board huh guys?
Re:Overseas spammers? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Overseas spammers? (Score:2)
Wouldn't it be kinda funny if all the John Does trned out to be in foreign countries?
Why? AOL can sue them there.
Re:Overseas spammers? (Score:2)
Without either ISP or government cooperation, you won't even know if there's a genuine connection between the sp
Hate em all you want (Score:5, Insightful)
So where is Sanford Wallace these days?
Re:Hate em all you want (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hate em all you want (Score:3, Interesting)
This whole spam thing seems to me a long drawn process of killing the medium sized gorillas and forming an unholy association of the larger ones. To top it all, there's a big spin on spam originating outside the US!
Re:Hate em all you want (Score:4, Interesting)
I had an NT box cracked and a proxy put on it. (read about the filters in another post) The people who did that were out to spam in a big way. Had my server worked they way they had planned, it could have sent out a billion messages in less than a week. My own email address was in the junk they were attempting to deliver spam to and that consited of 10 messages or so. Considering I'm only getting 50 spams a day, if one spamer can generate 20% of that, I'll be happy with nailing 5 spamers if they are big spamers.
Of course the person who rooted the NT box can get caught, I've alos go logs where they tried to hack other boxes includeing
Re:Hate em all you want (Score:2)
Re:Hate em all you want (Score:5, Interesting)
They're just fighting it because it isn't AOL advertising. I had to use AOL to check my e-mail when I was over a friend's house once and holy sheep shit batman. Right when you log on you get assaulted with tons of banner ad spam. AOL just wants an exclusive market for their spam instead of sharing it.
Re:Hate em all you want (Score:2, Funny)
Maybe, but you can turn all that off with one checkbox in the preferences dialog box. If I could turn off spam with one click I know that I would be happy.
Re:Hate em all you want (Score:5, Insightful)
Please keep your terminology straight. Spam is unsolicited bulk e-mail sent postage due. Annoying as they are, banner ads are not spam any more than commercial breaks on television. Not only are they not e-mail but they are actually paid for by the advertisers and you are soliciting them by logging on to the AOL service that includes these ads, i.e. you have the option not to do so, just as you can turn off your TV.
Comparing spam to banner ads confuses the issue by making spam seem more legitimate than it really is. It cannot be repeated enough: spam is theft of service, parasitic traffic living off of bandwidth and manhours paid for by others. This is the message that needs to be hammered into those that matter in the grand scheme of things, so that the appropriate laws get passed to throw the perpetrators [spamhaus.org] in jail where they belong.
Re:Hate em all you want (Score:4, Interesting)
You can easily turn off all the AOL banner ads and most of the other offending material, just go to preferences\marketing and set everything to off.
Also, I'd like to point out that AOL is one of the very few ISP's that offer dialup from almost anywhere, with no extra charges for out of towners. Back when I travelled all over the country this was of great importance to me.
Recently, since the spam blocking feature was implemented in 8.0 I've noticed much less spam going to my open aol account. Sure, I still get a good bit, but I can tell it's dropping, I used to get hundreds of spams/day, now I only get about 25 or so. Also, I have another screenname where I use the built in blocking tools, sure they aren't great, but I NEVER get spam to that email address, if only because it blocks everyone I don't accept.
My AOL account is used by 4 people in 3 different states. AOL has never even questioned this, please tell me of another ISP that wouldn't freak when different users logged in from different states. My parents use it and a couple of my friends use it for email and some web browsing. Oh, and even though they likely don't know it, you can minimize the aol window and use whatever browser you choose. I will also point out here that AOL does not kick you off for inactivity anymore, or even pop up a msg telling you you've been idle (ok, the buddy list msg pops up, but that's it). That hasn't been part of AOL since about version 4.0.
And about all those cd's they send out, there are tons of uses for them. I've always got plenty of coasters, even though I rarely get an AOL cd in the mail anymore. I really like the cases they use now too, toss the cd and I have a new cd case to use with cd's of my choice.
I proudly admit to having an aol account for at least 10 years. The only problem I have ever had with AOL was back when they had the huge surge of users and I kept getting busy signals, but hey, sometimes business is better than you expect. It only took them a few months to get enough lines up in my area and I haven't seen that problem since then.
As to your point about AOL advertising to it's users, well, yeah, duh, they are in the business of making money. I see nothing wrong with this. They offer a channel for their users to buy things, if a particular user doesn't want to use those channels they can turn them off, easily.
Sorry for the rant, but I just don't get why so many people just bash AOL because 'AOL users suck'. Maybe it's the same thing with Wal-Mart, they are hated because they are successful, both started out as small, individually owned companies and have grown into enormous intergalactic corporations.
\sigh\ If I didn't know that this post isn't going to get read I'd feel like I were committing karma suicide by admitting that I actually like AOL.
OH THE HUMANITY (Score:3, Insightful)
At least AOL has lawyers and money and might actually be able to do something here. It DOES cost them money not to mention the negative stigma of knowing if you ever sign up for an AOL account, your email will be prefilled with 1000 spams before you even log on the first time.
Its not that other ISP's don't do anything, they are just more concerned about shielding their customers from it rather than eliminating the source of it. My "Earthlink Spaminator" cuts my i
Re:Hate em all you want (Score:5, Informative)
According to this article [annonline.com], he now runs a non-spam autoresponder service [smartbotpro.net]. But there are a good 150 hardcore spammers [spamhaus.org] who took his place.
Re:Hate em all you want (Score:3, Interesting)
As if that's a bad reason! Or do you need reasons of a higher ethical caliber to go after a burglar who breaks into your house, costing you valuable time and re
eh (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:eh (Score:2)
Keep in mind, if it actually does happen that service providers are forced to disclose private data, then we are looking at a problem with government, not a problem with AOL. Only gover
the power of public opinion (Score:2, Insightful)
I wonder what the impact would be, in the cases where AOL cannot track down the spammer without violating individual rights, if they were to simply contact, or if needed, publicly identify the ISP that knowingly hosted the spammer, and then let the flood of complaints begin.
If somebody told me that stack of spam was coming from *ISP-name-here*, and that *ISP-name-here* had been informed
Re:eh (Score:2)
And if the
This defines irony... (Score:4, Interesting)
I find this such utter hypocrisy as their "Free CDs" are spammed to everyone
Not that they should stop going after the spammers, they just need to let up on the CDs
Re:This defines irony... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This defines irony... (Score:4, Interesting)
And this comment within itself outlines how one can deal with the problem.
Simply put, you're not paying the postage...AOL is doing so pre-emptively. That means that you can mark all of your AOL CDs as "Return to Sender", and cost AOL even more money.
Keep it up. They'll stop. They did for me.
Re:This defines irony... (Score:2)
Wrong. The CDs were sent via third class mail. This is the 'it gets there when it gets there' kind of delivery service. Subsequently, if they are refused or marked in that manner, they are usually just destroyed simply because it costs more for the postal service to do more processing.
Re:This defines irony... (Score:2, Interesting)
Not really the point is it? At $20/month for dialup, cost of each piece of spam is rather insignificant. Cost is not the issue, annoyance is.
I get at least 3-4 cd's a week at work. A couple at home. Annoying. Just like spam.
Re:This defines irony... (Score:2)
But how much does it cost to your provider in terms of bandwitdth and storage space (as well as processing time)? And as their costs goes up, the difference will get passed on to you.
Re:This defines irony... (Score:2)
Yes, yes, it is more complicated than my simple analogy...
As I said tho, you're right, its NOT the same thing, as I said in my original post. However, it IS in the same spirit:
Send out craploads of cheap "mail", if 1 out of 1000 bites, you win. Screw the other 999 who wasted time and effort dealing with your crap.
Would you suggest if they didn't have to pay the postage they would THEN care about the people who don't want their crap?
Its like a musician
Re:This defines irony... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This defines irony... (Score:2)
How do they know it's five? (Score:5, Interesting)
This did not happen (Score:5, Funny)
Re:This did not happen (Score:2)
Y'know, I think we've got a job for you after the war. As part of the terms of ceasefire, you'll be required to make good on just one of your pronouncements. Please, God, let it be that one. *g*
Re:This did not happen (Score:3, Funny)
"I speak better English than this villain Bush"
Not just spam. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not just spam. (Score:5, Insightful)
You can sue for garden-variety fraud under state law, but you have to have been actually defrauded (i.e., you actually believed some false statement and were damaged by relying on it). If you know you're being lied to, you haven't been defrauded.
not sure about wire fraud.... (Score:2)
I'm Confused (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I'm Confused (Score:2)
I personaly like having them around, they keep all the idiots on this planet away from good ISP's like the one I use for my servers. Small, localy owned, and easy to deal with.
If the stupid morons on this planet didn't have AOL, my friend adam (who's the sysadmin there) wouldn't have time to take care of my BGP issues, or write 4/1 RFC's.
One who isn't a John Doe (Score:5, Insightful)
They do know who at least one is: George Moore aka "Dr. Fatburn". Who is also being dragged into court by Symantec [internetweek.com] as well.
I wonder if his own actions to try to gag a web site turned him into a lawsuit magnet?
Who should be sued? (Score:5, Insightful)
You'd think that this means of advertising would actually destroy the "goodwill" of the product being advertised. I know I have less respect for companies that use this means.
Re:Who should be sued? (Score:4, Interesting)
Well the most obvious reason would be that a company's rivals could pay a scumbag to send out spam just to ruin their reputation and see them taken to court. I'm sure most of the pr0n/scam companies advertised in the spam have a pretty cavalier attitude toward keeping track of their finances, so it'll be difficult to follow an audit trail to prove guilt.
Re:Who should be sued? (Score:2)
Well the most obvious reason would be that a company's rivals could pay a scumbag to send out spam just to ruin their reputation and see them taken to court. I'm sure most of the pr0n/scam companies advertised in the spam have a pretty cavalier attitude toward keeping track of their finances, so it'll be difficult to follow an audit trail to prove guilt.
If there's no audit trail to follow, the innocent company will be found not g
Re:Who should be sued? (Score:2)
Re:Who should be sued? (Score:2)
As opposed to, say, Worldcon (uu.net), Verio, Rackspace, XO, and Level3. Nope, none of those fine upstanding companies would knowingly host spammers or have questionable accounting, no sirree!
(It's a lie! The SEC investigators are not in the corner office! Our glorious accountants have shredded everything! Our
Re:Who should be sued? (Score:2)
Because, as much as we might not like it, stupidity is not a crime.
Spammers are con-artists - the only difference between spam and bilking little old ladies out of their life savings is that spammers have two sets of victims - the people they con to pay them, and the recipients of the spam.
Should we also start suing the little old ladies who get caught by con-men pretending to be bank officers? It think this would have the same ef
Re:Who should be sued? (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, come on, that has to be the weakest argument I've read on /. in quite some time.
For the most part we're talking about companies that sell (among other things) "herbal viagra", penis enlargment, and cures for balding, using claims that are tenuous at best... for the most part, their own businesses are themselves cheap scams. You're expecting us to believe that they're legitimate businessmen being conned by what they assume are legitimate "internet marketing consultants"? Don't be absurd.
Even so, if a b
Re:Who should be sued? (Score:2)
Re:Who should be sued? (Score:2)
It stands to reason that spammers who use fraudulent claims, methods or unethical tactics are more t
the always needed simpson's quote (Score:2)
Mike
Double standard of community opinon? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Double standard of community opinon? (Score:5, Insightful)
In the RIAA vs. Verizon case RIAA was suing to get the subscriber information without ever proving that there were specific incidences of copyright violation (instead charging that P2P is ONLY used to steal music). In addition they did not sue copyright violators (as a "Jane or John Doe") and then use supoenas to get the personons name. Instead they sued Verizon to get the information directly. Verizon's argument from the begining was that that RIAA was skipping step one- 1) Show evidence of a crime and step two- 2) Seek to take action against said anonymous criminal (this may seem odd, but our legal system allows us to sue an unknown person/ group and fill in their name later). Instead RIAA sued the people who "facilitated" the crime and stated that all of Verizons customer records should be on display to the RIAA Nazi SS forces without proof or ponderance in court.
AOL, as stated, is instead going directly after the offenders and using the power of the courts to get specific information about specific crimes, not all customer information at will and on demand.
Just my $0.02
Re:Double standard of community opinon? (Score:3, Informative)
Huh? From my reading of this article [com.com], it sounds like the person whose information the RIAA was after had either shared or downloaded songs in violation of their copyright. Verizon's argument seems to revolve around the fact that the songs weren't being hosted on their servers, meaning that t
Re:Double standard of community opinon? (Score:5, Insightful)
RIAA wanted Verizon to turn over the the records without getting the courts involved. Verizon does not want to give this information out without a court order. AOL is going directly for the court order. Very different scenario..
What the RIAA really wants is to avoid the courts and use the DMCA for the inital step of information gathering so they can act faster and more efficiently for shutting people down. The disadvantage of this is that they are no checks and balances present without the courts involvment, the ability to request this information on a whim could very easily be abused and nothing in terms of real proof required that a copyright violation is truely occuring. What Verizon does not want is a precedent set where any company that feels a copyright violation has occured can request this information at will. This would be a great strain for Verizon to support this. They want a court order steps followed to limit these requests, kind of like a security deposit to prevent a flood of requests for user information.
The court battle they are in now is mainly to determine if organizations like the RIAA can request this information via the DMCA and without specific court approval. This is a much larger issue then RIAA vs. Verizon.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-982809.html
http
Hmm, maybe somebody else should sue spammers.. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Hmm, maybe somebody else should sue spammers.. (Score:2)
Here's their disclaimer.... (Score:2, Informative)
Huh? (Score:2, Funny)
(Pssst! Where's my rimshot?)
the campaign against CD's (Score:2, Funny)
see here to join in
http://www.theinformationminister.com/press.php?I
I never thought I'd say this... (Score:4, Funny)
{me, shamed, crawls under a rock somewhere...}
Seriously, how hard can it be to track them down? (Score:2, Interesting)
Dirk
You know what's funny? (Score:3, Interesting)
If they wanted to, of course. I doubt they will. Oh well. A boy can dream.
Sue the address forgers (Score:2)
Why I stopped hating AOL. (Score:5, Interesting)
They are the reason Netscape is still around, and just about all the money that went into developing Mozilla came from AOL.
They pay for the development of Winamp, and distribute it free of charge.
They created and maintain the single largest FREE Instant messaging client out there. AIM cost them money.
They have a simplified system that lets people new to computers and the Internet get online with little fuss. They are a decent entry level ISP.
They are one of the few competitors Microsoft has to take seriously.
They sue Spammers, or at least try to.
So why are they so hated?
Customer service sucks, is even predatory.
All those damn coasters they send out.
They're possibly the biggest ISP out there.
Lighten up. Someone out there started hating AOL and it's snowballed since then. If AOL dies Mozilla goes with it, as does AIM, Winamp and Netscape.
Mozilla might survive as a sourceforge project, but most of the developers will be gone. For all intents and purposes, it will be dead.
Re:Why I stopped hating AOL. (Score:2)
Don't forget ICQ (even though it is basically the same as AIM nowadays, but without AOL, ICQ would have died years ago).
Re:Why I stopped hating AOL. (Score:3, Insightful)
Because AOL gave millions of people who had no clue about the Internet access to the Internet. This is much akin to taking several million people who have no clue how to drive, giving them shiny new high-performance cars and dumping them on the freeways.
What AOL could REALLY do (Score:4, Informative)
<voice character="ED-209" [imdb.com]>Your customers are in violation of your terms of service. You will terminate them. You have 15 hours to comply.</voice>
And should they fail to comply, null-route those Tier-1's at AOL's border routers.
What do you think Exodus, Verio, and UUNet would do when they faced the very real possiblity of being blocked from AOL?
You hate aol users? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Great!! (Score:2, Funny)
Suuuuure.
Everybody gets a piece? (Score:2)
Pardon me for picking on you, but I find these kinds of comments troublesome; you aren't the first to make them.
Why exactly should AOL, a (fairly) normal profitable company, disburse lawsuit monies to its customers? They are suing the spammers because it is already costing AOL money to handle the spam. As big as they are, don't forget that they are in fact an ISP.
ISPs have a lot of costs, one of those costs that can even kill a smaller provider is spam. If AOL wins this case (and if they hopefully set