Spammer's Porsche Up For Grabs

gaurab writes "Anti-Spammers would love this. In this news piece, the BBC reports that AOL is putting up a Porsche it seized from a spammer last year in a sweepstakes. What next -- 'Spammer's House' in another sweepstakes? Is this the sign of things to come? From the story: 'Internet giant AOL has ratcheted up the war against unsolicited e-mail with a publicity-grabbing coup -- an online raffle of a spammer's seized Porsche. AOL won the car -- a $47,000 Boxster S -- as part of a court settlement against an unnamed e-mailer last year.'"

Re:Wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

you can turn AOL's ads off via Keyword: Marketing Preferences

Re:Why the Porsche?

[sjlutz]

IANAL, but my roommate is. The Porsche was probably part of the liquidation of assets. If they guy didn't have enough hard cash to pay the settlement/award to AOL, AOL can then start liquidating his assets to get all the money they were awarded. I don't know who gets to choice which particular assets get "disposed" of, but I guess AOL worked with the government to just keep the Porsche as a Porsche and not convert it into cash. The spammer probably made out on the deal also, as I believe the cost of turning assets back to cash would have been charged to the spammer. So instead of converted the $40K Porcshe into $30K cash or whatever someone would have bought it for minus the cost of selling it, the spammer probably got the full 'value' out of it.

Re:hmm

[JoeBar]

I thought you could fit 8 characters on license plates here? 8 works in New York.. I got "F0RMAT C" on my 911 ;)

Re:hmm

[Mr Guy]

From NC DOT [state.nc.us] For an additional annual fee of $30.00, most plates issued by the Division may be personalized. The plate may bear up to 8 spaces made up of letters, numbers and/or special characters.
INBOXSTR works here. Don't know if those rules are nationalized or state by state though.

Re:Can't just join?

[sapbasisnerd]

Uhm, is this legal? Since a purchase is required for entry, this ceases to be a promotional contest and becomes gambling, does AOL have a casino licence?

Re:Wait...

[EvilAlien]

Wildly tossing out over-broad labels of "spam" does not help the cause, and hinders it. Are you sure you didn't sign something? Are you sure that these clumsy marketing efforts weren't part of the previously established prior business relationship between you and your ISP?

There is a hell of a difference between what you are describing and real spam. Real spam in involves privacy violations, harvesting of addresses, messages sent to randomly generated lists, etc.

Check out The Definition of Spam [spamhaus.org] (according to Spamhaus) and What is spam? [abuse.net] (according to spam.abuse.net). The term was originally coined to describe the crap spewed onto USENET. It most certainly was not intended to describe marketing spewed by your ISP, television, newspaper, or the ad boxes on /.

You missed the point

[Anonymous Coward]

The point isn't that the spammer had a Porsche (note that nowhere does it say the spammer purchased the Porsche using the proceeds from spamming) but rather the spammer's business doesn't produce enough income to allow him not to have his property seized.

Spamming doesn't pay. At least not for the spammers themselves. That's why they file for bankruptcy a few weeks after testifying to Congress about the vast riches they make spamming.

Re:Symbolic Value

[ljavelin]

I own a Boxster, not an "S".

It's a great car... excellent handling, great looks, and very reliable. Plus, it makes a great daily driver even in the crappy weather. I don't recommend you take a '73 Carrera out on salted, wintery roads.

You're right, the Boxster is a concession. Happily, it was something that I could afford. My non-S Boxster was bought new for about $45,000. For a Porsche, that's cheap.

Don't get me wrong - I'd love a '73 Carrera too. Just not as my daily driver. And since I have a boxster, it'd be hard to justify the Carrera.

OK, I have to go to work now! Yay! Too bad 34F is too cold to put the top down... hopefully this weekend.

Re:Does it come with a CD Multiplayer?

[Verteiron]

AOL spams snail mail at their own cost. Spammers spam e-mail at the cost of those who operate the mail servers.

Re:hmm

[GTRacer]

State by state... Last time I checked in Florida, it was a max of 8, BUT for 8 total, at least one had to be a space or dash. Otherwise you could use 7 or fewer alphanumerics.

GTRacer
- Was going with QKSILVR or QUICKAG for my spiffy 280ZX...

Re:hmm

[EricWright]

Which just goes to show that, for anything you can legally sell on eBay (and some things that aren't legal), you will find someone dumb enough to buy it. If you're lucky, you'll find more than one idiot and sell it for twice FMV!

how to enter the contest...

[The Lynxpro]

The article didn't mention where to enter the contest at once on AOL. You have to type in "Keyword: SPAM" to even find it. The contest does not appear on the Welcome *splash screen* once you logon AOL. You do have to be an AOL subscriber, but I'm sure that's not a problem because collectively, there's probably a few million AOL discs out there amongst all of us Slashdotters...

it's one of Dr Fatburn's pals

[frankie]

It's from AOL's lawsuits in April 2003, which means the Porsche belonged to one of George Moore [geocities.com]'s affiliate spammers, possibly Michael Levesque [google.com].

Definitely didn't belong to Moore. He's here in Maryland, and his front men got a bigger cut than he did (example: on each $29 bottle of "herbal viagra", Moore paid $18 commission to the spammer)