Inappropriate Spam Reaching Children?

peeweejd writes "Wired has an article stating that four out of five children receive inappropriate spam e-mail touting get-rich-quick schemes, and almost half receive spam linking to pornographic materials. Should spammers be held responsible for the spams they send out? Can someone sue a spammer for offering to sell 'adult only' items/services to children?" There are more details from survey originator Symantec's press release - and yes, Symantec does sell mail filtering software.

Looking for people interested in First Posts!

Are you one of those go getters?!

Re:Looking for people interested in First Posts!

But spambots will just strip off the .inv. Besides, I'm sure [e-mail] likes getting all the email I sign him up for.

Re:Looking for people interested in First Posts!

No, use @example.com

@localhost would be even better. If the address is invalid and the spammer is using particularly crappy mail software, you might get the bastard's machine stuck in a mail loop with itself...one less spammer disturbing the rest of us.

Should spammers be held responsible for the spams

Should spammers be held responsible for the spams they send out?

Yes.

Re:Should spammers be held responsible for the spa

And obviously so. We've got to start coming down hard on these people, setting some prominant examples.

Re:Should spammers be held responsible for the spa

I agree.

I mean really, if the corner gas station attendent was selling cigarettes, beer, or pornagraphy to underaged children, would he be held responsible? The obvious answer is yes, he would. So, why would we treat spammers any differently?

Re:Should spammers be held responsible for the spa

The problem being there is no way to tell how old the person who checks the email address is. An email address is just an alias, the person who checks that box could be 8 or 80, there is no way to tell. Unless there is some way to tell how old the person who checks the mailbox is, there is no way to hold people responsible for sending emails inappropriate for children to that mailbox. You can send porn to a physical mailbox, and the person who gets the mail may be a minor, but you can't be held responsible for that minor seeing "inappropriate" material.

They should e charged for sending spam (where applicable) but trying to prosecute them because they are sending mail to an emailbox where a child has access is very slippery, because there is no way to know who the box belongs to.

Re:Should spammers be held responsible for the spa

The problem being there is no way to tell how old the person who checks the email address is.

Well, sometimes it's hard to tell if the person across the counter is 17 (too young for cigarettes) or 18 (old enough for cigs but too young for pr0n & b33r), or 25 (old enough for all of them). That's why the law requires checking IDs before selling it.

I don't have any kids (yet), but if/when my kid gets explicit e-mail, you can bet I'm going to hunt down the dirtbag down. If a lawsuit doesn't work, maybe a baseball bat will...

Re:Should spammers be held responsible for the spa

> I don't see the problem in them [kids] seeing these materials

Maybe you don't have a problem with it, but I sure don't want MY kids thinking teenage girls F*ing a horse is OK. That is the picture that arrived in a spam this week.

Re:Should spammers be held responsible for the spa

I dunno. Might be one way to discourage little Brittany from getting that pony she's been wanting.

As a collector of pr0n, I'll trade you two "shaved curious cheerleaders", a "hidden shower cams" and a complete set of "World's largest gangbang" messages for that one. :)

Re:Should spammers be held responsible for the spa

"Maybe you don't have a problem with it, but I sure don't want MY kids thinking teenage girls F*ing a horse is OK"

Why would an email convince them its okay?

I gave my daughter an email account on hotmail last year (at age 11). I told her that she will get some email that is disgusting and perverted, and that she should just delete it. If she's puzzled or concerned, she can call me to look it over. And never talk to anyone unless you've met them in person first.

I'm sure she got the spam that you speak of (most of the internet did). It didn't twist her because she has the *foundation* to know right from wrong at age 12.

Its like when she asked to see the Matrix movie (she's in 7th grade), I said "well, it has some rough language". She said "Dad, kids talk that way all the time, I don't use that kind of language". Its just what I wanted to hear and I let her see it.

By age 12, kids really do understand right from wrong. Hell, 100 years ago, 12 and 13 year olds were already married, so the idea that children are fragile is a relatively recent thought (since WWII).

Anyway, if kids think that email confers a degree of acceptability of an action, then I suggest the child has more fundamental problems and probably shouldn't have an unsupervised email account to begin with.

Re:Should spammers be held responsible for the spa

Well, let me ask you this... in the long run, what's more harmful for the child, out of the following choices:

1. The child sees a sexual act in a spam message, and you, being the responsible, intelligent and loving parent you are, explain to them what they're seeing, and how it's morally right or wrong.

Or...

2. The government steps in and makes spam e-mail illegal because there's no viable solution for checking the age of an e-mail recipient before sending the message. Given how government generally operates, it should only be 3-5 years before snail-mail junk is outlawed also, leading to several hundreds (if not thousands) of lawsuits within a year. After that, probably another 2-3 years until someone comes up with the idea that since they don't approve of some e-mail or snail-mail they're getting, it's offensive and unwanted, therefore, must be spam... leading to more legislation defining the term "spam" and "unwanted commercial e-mail", eventually leading to the breakdown of even more of individual's basic human rights, especially Freedom of Speech, Press, and (although not specifically mentioned in the Constitution), Privacy. (My sig has particular relevance here.)

Granted, I'm not going to run aroun showing dirty pictures to kids, but in the grand scheme of things, there are only 2 groups of people that can do anything about it -- government, and IT. We're the IT, so let's try to come up with a solution before the government starts.

Re:Should spammers be held responsible for the spa

Everyone here familiar with the federal 'Do Not Call' list for telemarketers? Wouldn't it be possible to create a similar product for the web? A 'Do Not Spam' list? Anyone sending say... 100 emails a day would have to cross-reference the recipients addresses with those on the list. And just maybe to support the thing... pay a dollar per account to get your name added... maybe... If you care enough about your kids to keep them from seeing pr0n, pay the buck, if not, don't pay the dollar. Kinda like a mixture of the preposed Public Domain Enhancement Act [eldred.cc] and the federal 'Do Not Call' list.

Re:Should spammers be held responsible for the spa

Are you suggesting that U.K. spammers should be beaten with a baseball bat if they send explicit material to an 18 year old in the USA, despite it being perfectly reasonable material for somebody of that age in their own country?

Well, at 18, not a baseball bat so much. I think they should be legally culpable for breaking the laws of the US, just as someone in the US should be culpable for advertizing Nazi memorabilia across the internet to someone in France (if I remember my google / ebay precedents right). [BTB, I agree with American policy there: it may be bad to sell Nazi memorabilia, but I don't think it's the government's call.]

I'm sure that in some countries, people would suggest that USA porno merchants be beaten with a baseball bat for daring to show women naked to anybody of any age. Should this also be carried out?

Very good question, actually. I started by thinking, "Well, anyone who sends that stuff to a seven-year-old is really fsck'd in the head. They're seriously morally reprehensible and such behavior shouldn't be tolerated." I think in our culture, most people would agree with me.

But pornography for adults is reprehensible and depraved as well -- not to the same degree, but it is. Why should I tolerate one, and not the other?

Especially since pr0n spammers aren't content to sit and wait for people to come to them, but actively seek out people, who may be trying to avoid it. Porn addiction is a real thing; there are many men who struggle with it, who want to quit, but can't. I've never been much tempted in that way, but I've had friends who are. Many pornographers know this: that's why they spam and put out teasers, because they know the bait works.

It'd be like a drug dealer, not willing to simply let people come to him, sending out "free samples" of heroin or coke in the mail, that when you opened it automatically injected you with something. It's preying on the weak-willed, just like casinos, and even credit-card companies (Are you paying off your bill every month? Let's raise your limit, so you're tempted to spend 'till you can't! I have like a $13,000 limit on one of my cards due to this effect.)

Or perhaps more apropos, like a liqour company sending out airline-size samples of their warez to random people, not caring, probably even knowing that some of the recipients were recovering alcoholics.

But getting back to your question: I live in a culture that takes a laissez-faire attitudes towards adults. If you want to pollute your body & your mind, we'll let you do so; it's your responsibility (once you're old enough), not ours. One advantage of that kind of a society is that when you do reject that crap, it actually means something: you're doing it because you want to, not because you must. And I think that makes the choice more valuable.

So no, I don't intend to attack the pr0n industry with baseball bats. Still, if you send pr0n to someone in Saudi Arabia, you should be legally culpable. =)

Re:Should spammers be held responsible for the spa

Bullshit. If you can't be sure that you aren't sending obscene materials to minors, then you have no business doing so. The crudeness of the internet is no excuse to ignore corporeal sensibilities.

If some other adult gave you some indication that it was acceptable to send such materials to a particular destination, that's another issue entirely. You would not be acting with reckless disregard of the foreseeable consequences of your actions.

This isn't just about legally obscene materials. Business proprietors should have a legal incentive to not act like total morons.

Re:Should spammers be held responsible for the spa

Unless there is some way to tell how old the person who checks the mailbox is, there is no way to hold people responsible for sending emails inappropriate for children to that mailbox. You can send porn to a physical mailbox, and the person who gets the mail may be a minor, but you can't be held responsible for that minor seeing "inappropriate" material.

Unless there is some way to tell how old the person who walks by is, there is no way to hold people responsible for posting pornographic billboards inappropriate for children on that street.

I'm sorry, but I just don't see your argument. 'Broadcasting' is no excuse for exposing children to this stuff. It's not acceptable out in public, nor on TV (unless you subscribe to something, in which case the control is on your side), so it sure as hell shouldn't be allowed on the Internet.

Why they keep porno mags behind the counter

Blocking the dirty spam is along the same lines as why video stores put the porn in a back room and why gas stations keep the porno mags behind the counter. Its inappropriate material that has laws concerning the age of the person who views it, and therefore MUST be treated differently.

Since the stores don't know the age of their potential customers, they have to keep those adult things seperated. Same goes for spam.

If I went to the post office and got 10,000 post card stamps and then printed a picture of some boobs on there, and mailed the cards out to 10k random people, I bet I would get my ass sued by at least 100 of them. Why can't the same thing happen to spammers?

They don't break down the age groups

From the underlying study:
The survey, conducted online for Symantec by Applied Research, a
full service market research firm, interviewed 1,000 youths
between the ages of seven and 18.

I wish they disclosed the breakdown of ages. There is a vast
difference in seventeen year old reading e-mail without their
parents and seven year olds.

I would like to know how many of the children in this study were
12 or under.

When asked how often they check emails, 72 percent of the
respondents said a few times a week to a few times a day. When
asked how important it is to always have mom or dad check emails
with them, nearly one in three said it is not important, 21
percent said they don't care and 16 percent said they don't want
their parents to check their emails with them. Furthermore, when
asked whether they get parents' permission before giving out
their personal email addresses to friends or even people and Web
sites with which they are not familiar, 46 percent of the youths
responded that they do not..

Again, this is highly dependant on the ages of the children.
Younger children would be more likely to ask their parents to
help them get their e-mail, while teenagers would be far more
likely to want their parents to just leave them alone.

It's difficult to infer anything meaningful from these numbers.

Indeed.

half of the kids surveyed reported feeling uncomfortable and offended when seeing improper email content...

...interviewed 1,000 youths between the ages of seven and 18.

Any teenagers in that half were so, so lying.

ah, humor

But in all seriousness, it was my experience while volunteering in a MS tech support chatroom (back when comic chat was sorta popular) there ARE teenage boys who don't want to see that shit. I've even had people drop in the room to ask where they could contact a trustworthy adult to report someone who had sent them something either via file xfer or url.

Something does need to be done, but I don't see how any of it can be fixed without changing the basic infrastructure of email communications.

Re:They don't break down the age groups

I wish they disclosed the breakdown of ages. There is a vast difference in seventeen year old reading e-mail without their parents and seven year olds.

My seven year old reads email on her own. Any email she receives that is not coming from someone on a whitelist that I maintain goes into a mailbox under her mother's account (this is after spam filtering, of course).

Her mom will drop it into her inbox or whatever when it's appropriate, and let her know that she got this mail, and usually ask me to add it to her whitelist.

(sorry for the confusing pronouns, this would be easier to explain if I had a boy).

Simple.

What is their to think about? Yes. If you are offering porn to my (or anyone's) children, you should held liable by either your or my state law.

Re:Simple.

Why? Why is it bad? Why is it criminal?

Why is offering porn to minors criminal? You need this explained? Imagine an old man standing outside a candy store, offering graphic pornography to small children. If that doesn't make you queasy, you're a sociopath.

pictures of naked people is required for minors via public education.

"Education", indeed. Keep in mind, nudity != pornography.

Re:Simple.

Sure it makes me queasy, but so would an old man offering anything to only small children outside a candy store. But that's not the case here. There's no malicious intent here. There's no targetting here (though there might be, more likely it's just a spamlist).

Furthermore, the reason that would make me queasy isn't because it's pornography, but because it's predatory.

Re:Simple.

There's no malicious intent here. There's no targetting here...

That would make it negligence, which is not as bad as the outright intent to send spam to children but it still should be illegal.

Let's change up the "old man outside a candystore" scenario with something more plausible: a vending machine outside a candystore. It's illegal to stock it with booze regardless of the intent, because you can't ensure that underage people won't have access.

Re:Simple.

Pornography is what we don't want innocent seven year old children looking at.

Utterly useless definition. Given a photograph, how do you determine if it's pornographic or not? Would another person determine differently? You offer a variant of the usual "I'll know it when I see it" criterion, which is not sufficiently well defined to use in a legal setting.

OK, this is where I think the whole of western society (and perhaps the United States most particularly) is sick and weird and different only in degree from the Taliban. We have a very sick, weird attitude to sexuality, and it underlies most of our social problems.

Sexual behaviour is normal behaviour. If it wasn't normal behaviour, we wouldn't exist as a species. Kids learn appropriate behaviour by observation. But western kids never learn appropriate sexual behaviour, because they're never allowed to see it. On the contrary, when they are exposed to images of implied sexuality it's very often in the context of action films where the sexuality is either co-ercive or manipulative.

If the argument was that children ought not to be exposed to images of sexual coercion or sexual violence then I would see the sense in that. If the argument was that children ought to be exposed to images of homosexuality only in the context of images of heterosexuality I would see the argument. If the argument was that children ought to see sexual behaviour only in the presence of a responsible adult who could explain what's going on that would seem sensible.

But childern can't learn appropriate sexual behaviour unless they can see appropriate sexual behaviour. Cutting children off from observing appropriate sexual behaviour between adults is how we breed our amazing zoo of sexual inadequacies and, in particular, our rapists. We'd live in a much healthier society if we didn't keep sexuality hidden from children.

Re:Simple.

It's called strict liability.

It doesn't matter that you didn't know that girl was only 15, you're going to jail for statutory rape. (You may have an out if she *said* she was 19, but that's acting in good faith, not ignorance).

It doesn't matter that you didn't know "soccrkid95" was only 8, you're going to jail for child abuse through exposure to images.

If you want to avoid going to jail, check ID. In other words...Opt-IN.

It's just *snapping fingers* that easy

Re:Simple.

Agreed 110%. Parents shouldn't be dropping their kids off at a strip club any more than they should be leaving them alone while on the Internet. If they can't handle that, they should get snipped/tied.

Re:Simple.

The problem here is distinction.

The internet is silmutaniously the worlds largest strip club and the worlds largest library/school/university all rolled into one.

Hmm... after typing that, I just realized what educators could do differently to raise my grades...

Anyway... You made the point that parent's shouldn't be dropping their kids off at strip clubs. The problem is, when the strip club is the school, that means you should no longer drop your kids off at school, either... if that makes sense...

Re:Simple.

If your child is too young to be viewing pornographic material and you provide them with their own unsupervised e-mail address, you should be held liable by state law.

Email is not a broadcast medium. What you are saying amounts to holding the parents of children specifically targetted with pornography responsible for fighting it off. If you are selling age-restricted materials, it is up to you to make effort to insure that those materials are not purposefully sent to a minor. This is the law with all age-restricted materials. You don't have any children, obviously, but if you did, are you aware that they would have a physical address? Should alchohol, tobacco, and pornography companies send their products to your (theoretical) minor child? Get your head out of your ass.

Re:Simple.

Email is not a broadcast medium, regardless of the attempts of SPAMMERS and their lackeys (such as yourself) to change this. If you could get arrested for snail mailing it to someone, there's no good reason NOT to arrest you for emailing it to someone.

Personally, I'd love to HAVE YOU ARRESTED for sending me bulk mail & corporeal spam of any kind.

Re:Simple.

If your child is too young to be viewing pornographic material and you provide them with their own unsupervised e-mail address, you should be held liable by state law.

Right. And if a 747 crashes into my house, the airline should sue me for building on THEIR flight path.

Bred to be a stud

Just imagine if you had started enlarging your penis at age 6.

whats worse

What's worse is those HTML emails that have porn already in them, with misleading subjects. So the even the kids that know to delete them but use the preview pane in Outlook will see it.

Should be illegal.

uhmm

I don't think you've seen a lot of the porn out there.

"Mommy, what's that lady doing to that horsie?"

We aren't talking about playboy and cheesecake here. Some of it is wildly inappropriate stuff.

Re:uhmm

Very young children shouldn't be reading email unsupervised. Period.

Flame on AC, I shall not respond.

Re:uhmm

remember the first naughty film/book/magazine you saw? You weren't 18, were you?

No but it wasn't some random email either. Usually kids first get a look at explicit material through their own curiosity and effort, or because one of their peers introduced it. It doesn't just show up at their doorstep, regardless of their maturity or interest.

Also, a lot of the stuff in emails is much more explicit than has been typically available in print - we aren't talking Playboy nudity or even Hustler here. It's really nasty disturning stuff, that requires some emotional maturity to handle.

This issue of kids seeking out sexually explicit material on their own interest is different from adults using deception to send it to kids.

Oh, and part of the process of being exposed to sexually explicit material as a kid usually involved being caught by your parents and having to deal with that.

Re:uhmm

And thus learning that sexuality entails shame. A lesson I'd rather my kids skipped.

Re:whats worse

Oh my god!!!! Junior saw a tit, he is sure to grow up being a serial killer/rapist/laywer/president

Human sexuality is shaped at an early age. Things that junior commonly sees with sex can, and often do, become neccessary associations. Kinks, if you will.

It's not at all far-fetched that irreparable harm is being done by exposing kids to a thousand adverts for Barnyard Antics, bondage fetish sites, so on and so on. And if the parent's not around and junior picks one of these as the first site to spend a little time doing his first-ever exploring, it will leave a long-term impression.

Re:whats worse

name one thing worse than porn

Riaa.com

Re:whats worse

You might be tied into outlook at work but give your children mozilla mail.

• The spam filter will delete *most* porns as soon as they come in
• To neutralize any html spam that slips past their filter you can choose to not: "load remote images in mail and newsgroup messages" (It has the added side benefit of protecting your kids from cgi scripts that track when they read their email messages)

Re:quit complaining

you gave her a cell phone whats to stop some creep from calling her and talking nasty and/or lurring her out someplace.

The law, jackass.

the internet is a similar place.. 18 and over seriously!

Yeah, what use could children possibly have for the most powerful educational tool in the history of Man? More thinky, less typey.

This explains a lot

I wondered why my 6-year-old was refinancing his mortgage.

"Inappropriate"?

"Inappropriate spam"? Ehm... is there any other kind of spam?

Re:hmmmmm...

that's like saying that Girls Gone Wild is offering anyone watching TV at night, despite age, and should be punished.

A Girls Gone Wild commercial contains no nudity, no graphic descriptions of sex acts. It airs during the late-night hours, when children are likely to be in bed. It does not air on childrens' television stations. There are rules governing content like that, in order to lessen its exposure to minors. In other words, your analogy is crap.

hate spam and wished it would die, but people need to take responsibility for their own actions

And what actions would those be? Receiving unsolicited porn email? Yeah, I say hang 'em! Nice one, champ.

If I were a parent, I'd be horrified

I receive some really raw spam, and not just words but pictures. If I were a parent, I'd be in favor of flaying alive anyone sending this kind of stuff to my kid. I can't imagine how parents cope these days.

Yes, hold them responsible

This is why I run my own mail server. With SpamAssassin, nearly all spam is nuked. There's still a very small amount of stuff slipping through, but none have reached my daughter's mailbox (yet). When one does, I will definately go after the company responsible if they are US based (not much I can do about the foreign based companies).

Re:Yes, hold them responsible

Exactly the reason I use it.

Some time back I had suggested a feature be added to SA for email accounts used by children. Basically, I wanted some way to penalize "porny" words even more given the setting "juvenile = 1". The idea was rejected because of the difficulty implementing dual rule sets.

I still think it was a good idea, even if it isn't technically practical.

Sending porn spam to children is a felony

I someone was caught trying to sell children a dildo in the street that person would probably serve jail time for that. Cant see how offering dildos to kids through the internet is different.

Re:Sending porn spam to children is a felony

What about cucumber-shaped massage tools? Make that kid has terrible muscle tension!

In all seriousness though: the difference is distance. The dildo-salesman might be in a different country, and can certainly not be sure that the 'person' they're selling the dildo to is a child. They certainly cannot target the child, and they certainly aren't near enough to the child to kidnap/harm/intimidate/rape them.

Pornography

Most pornographic e-mails that I get contain hardcore graphic images inline, that load just by clicking on the message.

With titles like "re: what's up?" and stuff, I *have* to open them because it might be someone I sent a message to a while back...

In the U.S. it is illegal to show pornography to minors...so you'd definately have a case.

This could actually be good

This may well be the only issue where 'just think about the children' will result in something good.

And now anti-spam legislation will be SO much easier to sell to congress/general(dumb) public (if it CAN be any easier to sell...)

So what??

When I was a kid I wanted porn spam...


I've been a proud surfer of internet pr0n since the 5th grade.(college freshman now)

Wow...

"win a Playstation,"
"meet singles online,"
"lose 15 pounds in two days,"
"buy herbal Viagra online,"

Damn, they're that coherent? Mine don't make nearly make that much sense. Why, here's a sampling of subject lines straight from my Hotmail inbox:

"hard vertilde suvereniteetti"
"Att: a gargantuan thing ffx"
"Ssrt life skillss rrewaarrdded - whhy waiit"
"embrafeable stronlhold"
"Kimberly said you"
"bending moment"
"pebble ruimnaalden orrella nnthayer"
"How is it applied?"
"varnish-treated"

I don't know what an embrafeable stronlhold is, but I know I've always wanted one. Varnish-treated.

ISP Signups

Don't you have to be over 18, or have permission from a parent/legal guardian to purchase an Internet account? Shouldn't it therefore be the account-holders responsibility what a minor sees using their account?

time to fight back

Spam has long been out of control. Where I work currently, spam consists of about 81% of all incoming email. This is at a company receiving over 1 million emails a day.

There are laws existing to protect children from exposure to 'adult' materials. These permit their parents to control, to some extent, the exposure of such material to their children.

Spam is getting away with breaking these laws. I can't see any parent, no matter how open minded, wanting their child to see breast enlargement, penis enlargement and watch this teen fuck barnyard animal emails.

When they see this stuff, they start to form opinions. Without guidance, these opinions can be off base by a large margin. Seeing the enlargement ads, children could well get the idea that they need to have 44DD breasts or 14" penises (penii?) in order to 'fit in.'

Exposing kids to the hard core images in these emails surely must be against some laws and if not, they should be expanded to cover it.

Also, Spam email should be part of the telemarketing crack down. There should be an opt-out email list to keep from getting unsolicited email.

These adjustments to law would go a long way to reducing wasted bandwidth on the net, as well as improving the moral growth of our nation's children. Sheesh, I sound like Jerry Falwell, but I'm far from it.

how'd you like to have your son ask you...

"Daddy, what's a penis enlargement?" when he's 6...

What about this one, "Daddy, why do girls suck on guys dicks?"

Spammers are just the scum of the earth, along with the RIAA, MPAA, Congress, Senate, MS, etc.

my son can't even read yet, but gets spam

When my son was born, I setup an email address and web page for him. The web page to announce his birth, and the email address so people could send him notes to read later in life.

The only place his email address is posted is on his web page. His birthdate is on the same page, so it is obvious he not even two years old yet.

He already receives spam for credit cards, porn, penis enlargers, etc.

I would love to sue these spammers, if only for the time I spend keeping my son's mailbox clean of this junk.

One more question to ask.

Since nine times out of ten the spam is sent across state lines, should the penalties be a Felony?

Dolemite
__________________

erm, this is Slashdot

Should spammers be held responsible for the spams they send out?

s/'be held responsible for'/'be made to print out and eat'

this is an excellent angle

don't get me wrong, sexual hypocrisy is a problem in the world, especially in the us.

but everyone can support a legal measure that insists on a hands-off attitude towards children and sexual overtures from adults... from sexual conservatives like john ashcroft, who has to cover up naked breasts [usatoday.com] on statues behind him on stage (snicker), to righteous liberal sex-advice columnists, like dan savage [villagevoice.com]. nobody likes pedophilia, period. no slippery slope here folks.

now, since spammers spew indiscriminantly, they have no way of knowing if the account they are sending to is owned by a child. meanwhile, responsible email mass-mailers have means of knowing who their audience is and can easily avoid this pitfall.

result? a legal weapon against spam everyone can get behind. it can be mercilessly enforced, with moral and righteous indignation. no grey areas, no controversy. pedophilia is evil, period. jail time anyone?

this is an excellent development. bravo symantec.

Change the mail protocol.

I don't have that big of a problem with spam. You know why? Because:

1. I give out my address only to thoughtfully selected individuals. I check mail here several times a day.
2. I have a second address, which I call my "public" address, which I give away freely (and check about once or twice a week).
3. For both addresses, I set up a whitelist which includes all the people that I have given the address to. All other messages get filtered to the trash. I empty the trash occasionally, quickly perusing the "From:" lines in the list of unread messages before doing so.

   Very few "wanted" messages end up in the trash. My "wanted" message traffic is pretty high, too.

I have an idea to extend the whitelist policy: Each person would set up a "deposit" sum on their email address. This deposit could be any amount you want, from a few cents to billions of dollars. Each person's email address would be tied to some sort of payment system. If you want to send a message to someone whose whitelist you're not on, the system will charge that person's deposit fee to you. If that person accepts your message, your deposit is refunded. If that person rejects your message, they get to keep your deposit. Get paid to reject SPAM mail! What do people do who don't have credit cards, bank accounts, etc.? They'll deposit some sum of money (like a hundred bucks) with their mail service provider, and deposits will be deducted from that amount. People in the spam business will be out of business, really damn quick. Yes, this would require changes to the mail protocol. People who continue to use the old protocol will continue to receive spam and will be unable to send mail to people with the new protocol unless they're on their whitelists.

Guinness. Because friends don't let friends drink Bud Light.

seriously

if there were ever an angle that would justify the legal wrangling that would be required to pass a law that would ban spam, (and the Internet anonymity that spam relies on), this would be it.

"won't somebody please think of the children" pulls any American's hearstrings a lot louder than "right to privacy" or "right to free speech" or "right to make lots of money". (but not necessarily "right to bribe congressmen").

The spam problem, at it's root, is born from Internet anonymity. Internet anonymity is a powerful rights issue. As long as Internet anonymity exists, spam will exist, whether it's banned or not.

This is a very sticky issue - and it became a sticky issue when the Internet was changed from a network of academic and scientific interests to a commercial enterprise. It was not a well-thought-out plan. This was unforseen fallout.

Clearly, there have been huge benefits to humanity at large from this transition. But these are some very thorny issues to work out. In the end, it just doesn't make sense to combine the Information Superhighway that will educate and enlighten with the freewheeling Las Vegas style business environment it's become. How do we reconcile it?

It's not as simple as quoting Zappa; "Protecting the children is a good way to raise a generation of kids that can't stick up for themselves."

I have young kids, and I do not let them surf the internet or read email unsupervised for this very reason. And probably won't until they're 16. It becomes a VERY time-consuming task for a well-meaning parent. I'm certainly not afraid of explaining homosexuality to my kids. I'm not afraid of my 9 year old son seeing a breast. I'd be worried about him watching a film of a guy getting it on with a donkey. I'd be especially worried about my daughter watching a "BDSM scene" castration mpeg. Most adults can't handle watching that stuff.

This is just a symptom of a bigger problem

The spammers like to claim that all the email they send out is opted in for. Where this true children wouldn't be getting this stuff.

The problem is that spammers lie. I know I never asked to recieve ads for child porn, yet I get it. And I can't make it stop.

Spammers must be forced to post real contact info, which I don't think is going to happen.

My 14 year old neighbor is always coming over here to use the computer, work on her website and use our high speed connection. She is very upset by porn spam. She isn't requesting this stuff either.

I think the only thing to to is make legit businesses see how much spam hurts them. I get email from 4 or 5 companys that I actually requested and want. Most of the time I don't get these mails becuse of the strict spam filtering I have had to use to stop the 300+ messages a day I was getting. If big business gets pissed then perhaps we will see some action.

I'd rather be allowed to hunt and kill spammers, but that's me.

If it hurts spammers...

I for one don't think inappropriate e-mail will hurt kids one bit as long as there's a parent around to explain stuff. I for one cycled through a part of the red light district of the city I lived in to get to school from the age of 12 and as far as I can determine I'm as sane as the next guy.

But if there are influential people who see the fact that inappropriate spam reaches children as a reason to seriously start fighting spam I'm all for it.

POPFile

I can't recommend this open source program enough for stopping spam. Anyone can set it up, and while no heuristic based spam stopping program can be 100% foolproof, this will certainly stop a large amount of inappropriate spam from reaching your children. It works by matching unique words in mail, and you can constantly train it. After just going through a few pages of mail and training it I get absolutely NO mortgage, porn, penis enlargement, or viagra spams at all.

Download it here [sourceforge.net]

There's nothing wrong with spamming kids.

It's like going to a playground and pushing viagra, drugs, porno and taking their lunch money while saying you'll be right back with a 100$ loan for them. Or if an old man came on the playground and started talking to your 10 year old kid about enlarging his penis, would you really have a problem with that?

Joking aside, I dont see spamming kids with this info as being much different than asking them verbally.

Interpreting Stats

From the article:

"Four out of five children receive inappropriate spam e-mail touting get-rich-quick schemes, and almost half receive spam linking to pornographic materials."

This only tells me that one out of five children do not have an e-mail account, and that nearly half of all children are able to use spamassassin much better than I can.

Use this as the battle to kill spam.

A very smart women once told me that you must choose your battles. Some battles are not worth the cost of winning.

I think this is as true for spam as anything else in life.

I think we need to look at the battle to kill spam and reduce it in scope a bit. This idea of simply 'spam bad, kill it' is actually too broad.

It leaves open too many issues, like companies that allow opt-in lists and the like.

I can't wait for the first time that some kid decides to send an email to every kid in his school and the kid or the school gets sued under some spam law. That would prove the validity of my point.

However Porn (yummy) is a fight worth winning.
It is so clear and concise. How can you argue against it?
Playboy and Penthouse have some fascinating articles in them sometimes (or at least they used to, I haven't read one in years). Would you have a problem with me giving your 12 year old a copy of Penthouse just because I thought some article in it would interest him?

I just don't see how any reasonable person can find any circumstance where putting porn in the hands of kids is acceptable.

If the companies say that they don't know how to tell the difference between a 12 year olds email address and an adults I think we should just agree with them that that is a real headscracther.

It just might not be possible to spam porn.

The hardship in this fight needs to be squarely placed on the shoulders of the porn industry. There is no reason to force kids to register special email addresses, that is what they porn industry would ask for and they need to be denied it.

Tell the porn industry this. If someone pays you money to access your sight then you can spam the email address that is tied with that account.
That way you got the industry in a trap. If some kid stole daddies card and daddy finds the porn in the kids mailbox later on then the porn industry is still at fault for distributing porn to a minor.

This is news how?

As a male, Ive been recieveing "enlarge your breasts now" spam for quite some time...

and damnit, Ive been on a diet to reduce them!

Suing

Someone can sue a spammer any time they want IF they can find out who the spammer is. That's the problem.

If spam is getting to inappropriate people (i.e. children) that's just yet another potential illegality among many that have been continually perpetrated, among many that the authorities on virtually every level seem uninterested in enforcing.

I keep saying over and over, the spam problem is not one that needs new legislation. It's one that needs state, local, national and international authorities to enforce the laws already on the books that are currently being broken. People need to start asking questions of each new elected official as to whether or not they're going to prosecute spammers or continue to ignore the laws they break.

Maybe this particular crime's political incorrectess might finally motivate the authorities to actually pursue the spammers? One can only hope, but since almost every spammer already breaks numerous federal laws, it's a crap shoot to determine if anything will be done.

Is this surprising?

It should be obvious that a kid with an unrestricted e-mail account is going to get load of the same damn twisted porn spam everybody else gets. We don't need Symantec to tell us that. Anyone who lets their underage child get unrestricted e-mail is setting them up to see some seriously twisted shit. The only way my kid is getting e-mail is if it's whitelist-only. Even a whitelist would be risky with header spoofing, which I predict will become more of a problem once challenge-response systems start gaining popularity.

Create an inclusive filter patch.

Well, we are talking kids. And I have kids. My youngest is twelve. What I do is create an inclusive email filter. It's just the opposite of
Sendmail's SPAM filter. My kids need to submit the email address of tose they want to recieve email.
Everthing else gets rejected or directed to me so I can go after the Spammers.

Too Easy

If ever there was an easy question asked on Slashdot... Yes. They should be held responsible. When you are peddling in porn you have a responsibility to not advertise it to kids or give it to them.

Spamming using dictionary methods is beyond inappropriate for porn vendors. If Abercrombie and Fitch can get sued for sending their questionable catalogs through the mail to under-age people, porn vendors are in no better position.

Some of you have said, "But there's no way to know the age of the kid." No, but you make a reasonable effort. If you or one of your trusted partners has thier credit card number, either the email address is legit or you have been the victim of fraud. Heck, if someone has simply clicked, "Sure, I'm 18" on your website, you have at least done some filtering. There are ways of at least trying to determine the age of the people attached to the email address. People who deal in porn are responsible for taking those simple steps.

The problem is with dictionary spammers and those who buy the generic large lists. They are advertising porn to children and many are sending them samples. I have to believe this is illegal and if it isn't it damn well should be.

Finally I have to say that I hope this is in the YRO catagory because the rights of kids are being violated. If there is serious concern about the rights of pornographers to spam us, we have real problems and need to look inward.

turn off inline HTML

You will keep your kid from 95% of this crap by turning off inline html in mail messages. Most of the porn spam now is just an image and no text.

Re:What's the problem?

Somebody want's to put up porn on their website for free, more power to them. Somebody wants to force me to wade through 30-40 emails advertising "barnyard sex", they should burn in hell. There's a BIG difference between giving people what they're looking for and forcing something on them they never asked for. Exposing yourself in public is unlawful, despite the fact that nobody is being forced to look. Shouldn't offensive spam also be illegal, even though though you can just delete it?

Apply this test to the spam: If someone sent that same image to a child via the post office, could they be prosecuted under federal statutes? In many cases, the answer to the question is "yes". Why, then, is spam treated any differently from regular mail?