Spam me will ya?!

jegs2 · Post by **jegs2** » 2003-11-24 11:23pm

From this story:

Male enlargement ads prompt spam rage

SAN FRANCISCO, California (Reuters) -- Call it spam rage: A Silicon Valley computer programmer has been arrested for threatening to torture and kill employees of the company he blames for bombarding his computer with Web ads promising to enlarge his penis.

In one of the first prosecutions of its kind in the state that made "road rage" famous, Charles Booher, 44, was arrested on Thursday and released on $75,000 bond for making repeated threats to staff of a Canadian company between May and July.

Montcalm · Post by **Montcalm** » 2003-11-24 11:32pm

I recieve those type of spam in my E-mail,and i simply flush them don`t waste time reading them.
I guess he felt insulted thinking they said he had a small wiener.

SyntaxVorlon · Post by **SyntaxVorlon** » 2003-11-24 11:34pm

I know you can do that without repercussions from telemarketers, well maybe not death threats but asking for sexual favors. Gets you on a list pretty quick.
This is a dangerous precident.
Oh and since you asked so nicely:
postcount ++

Vertigo1 · Post by **Vertigo1** » 2003-11-25 01:33am

Heh, I don't even get spam in my inbox anymore. Good ol' Mozilla nukes it before I even see it.

Dorsk 81 · Post by **Dorsk 81** » 2003-11-25 01:44am

Whatever happened to making spam illegal?

Vertigo1 · Post by **Vertigo1** » 2003-11-25 01:46am

Dorsk 81 wrote:Whatever happened to making spam illegal?

The problem with the nation-wide law is that its MUCH more lax than the ones already in place by several states, which in turn makes them null and void since national law superceeds all.

Post by **Gandalf** » 2003-11-25 01:50am

Also, couldn't people from other countries just spam the US?

Now awaiting the War on Spam.

Vertigo1 · Post by **Vertigo1** » 2003-11-25 01:51am

Gandalf wrote:Also, couldn't people from other countries just spam the US?

Now awaiting the War on Spam.

Yes, and thats where most of it comes from.

Post by **Gandalf** » 2003-11-25 01:56am

Vertigo1 wrote:
Gandalf wrote:Also, couldn't people from other countries just spam the US?

Now awaiting the War on Spam.
Yes, and thats where most of it comes from.

I figured, I just found it silly to have anti-spam laws when they'd be so easy to get around.

Nathan F · Post by **Nathan F** » 2003-11-25 02:01am

Meh, I just keep good filters on my inbox. When it comes to junk snail-mail, I just write 'return to sender' on the letter and stick it back in the box. When it comes to telemarketers, I say something like, "Hold on a sec, will ya?" and then either A) put them on infinite hold, B) set them next to a speaker and turn up the most grinding music I have, or C) say "Hey, Bob, put up the crack pipe and quit shooting up heroine, I think the cops are at the door!" Those ALWAYS work.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-11-25 03:04am

Gandalf wrote:
Vertigo1 wrote:
Gandalf wrote:Also, couldn't people from other countries just spam the US?

Now awaiting the War on Spam.
Yes, and thats where most of it comes from.
I figured, I just found it silly to have anti-spam laws when they'd be so easy to get around.

It wouldn't be hard to shut down most spam if people were serious about it. Even if the spam comes from offshore, it's generally an American business which is paying the spammers to do their dirty work. If you simply extended vicarious liability to the people who purchase this type of advertising, you would virtually eliminate the viability of the "offshore server" escape route. For those businesses which are completely offshore (both purchaser and spammer), I suppose one would have to consider State Department pressure (they're willing to do it for corporate interests, they should be willing to do it for the public good).

That, and legislating extremely stiff penalties for abusive practices, such as jail terms.

TrailerParkJawa · Post by **TrailerParkJawa** » 2003-11-25 06:45pm

Last week we had an incident with Email Support where a customer never received our replies to his queries. Due to a false positive hit on the replies he never received the email. The customer became very upset at what he thought was poor service and we were perplexed at his inability to read his own email. Once the situation was cleared up everyone was happy but it is a great example of how Spam is not harmless and it is not as simple as "just delete".
Spam can harm legitimate commerce.

The Kernel · Post by **The Kernel** » 2003-11-25 08:12pm

It's really a problem of having to rewrite the code for email distribution. Most of the internet protocols were established decades ago in the old ARPANET and no one seems interested in creating standards for a new protocol. It's going to be a mirror of hacker games against copy protection unless the protocols get changed.

Vertigo1 · Post by **Vertigo1** » 2003-11-25 11:31pm

Yeah, no kidding. Its rediculously easy to impersonate someone because SMTP was written so poorly.

Howedar · Post by **Howedar** » 2003-11-25 11:35pm

Vertigo1 wrote:
Dorsk 81 wrote:Whatever happened to making spam illegal?
The problem with the nation-wide law is that its MUCH more lax than the ones already in place by several states, which in turn makes them null and void since national law superceeds all.

Not unless the national law specifically allows spam. State laws can be more restrictive than national laws, but not less restrictive.

The Kernel · Post by **The Kernel** » 2003-11-26 12:17am

Vertigo1 wrote:Yeah, no kidding. Its rediculously easy to impersonate someone because SMTP was written so poorly.

Not to get off topic, but it isn't that it was written poorly, so much as it was written for some very specific uses. Remember TCP and SMTP were all developed on very small university grants by one or two people and are now used to run the global internet structure. Obviously they were not designed for this kind of purpose, and they have worked pretty well considering the limited applications they were designed for.