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Spam Your Rights Online

AOL Wins One Over The Spammers 30

Posted by timothy from the one-down-386895384-to-go dept.
Cygnusx12 writes: "Looks like AOL has come out victorious in a spam related case! Notch one up for the good guys."
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AOL Wins One Over The Spammers More

AOL Wins One Over The Spammers

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  • What good guys? (Score:5, Funny)

    by aozilla ( 133143 ) on Wednesday April 03, 2002 @02:29PM (#3278256) Homepage

    Notch one up for the good guys.

    Would that be AOL, the spammers, or the lawyers?

    • Would that be AOL, the spammers, or the lawyers?

      I think you were trying to post to a different Slashdot topic, "Which is the lesser of three evils?"

      --trb

  • Nice quote by AOL: (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    "The possibility exists in the future that we'll pursue this illegal activity on behalf of our members," he said.

  • lookit that pig out the window. It's got wings! (Score:4, Funny)

    by SuperguyA1 ( 90398 ) on Wednesday April 03, 2002 @02:51PM (#3278419) Homepage
    AOL is the good guys on /.?

    That's it. I'm going home.

    • In other news, Satan went before the Board of Hell to request an emergency expansion of their salt budget, for the (still new in many demons' opinions) snow-fighting budget for the year has been entirely spent.

      AOL is the good guys on /.?

      Even the greatest evil is capable of taking a good role, when the role is in its direct self interest.
  • what good guys?
  • Maybe they look like good guys if you squint and turn your head a bit....

    nope. They still look like Assholes On-Line.
    • nope. They still look like Assholes On-Line.

      *laugh* Reminds me of a story of a friend of mine. He used to call up the operator and just chat away. Social engineering, or just boredom, I don't know. But according to him, one MCI operator said, "You know what AT&T stands for? Assholes That Trace." And MCI? Money Comin' In.

      Josh

  • which day is it? i can never keep track of when we hate AOL/TW and when we don't?

    is there a $ cal -aol/tw that i don't know about?
    • Didn't you get the email?

      We hate AOL Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
      We like AOL Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, and we alternate Sundays.

  • AOL the good guys? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by CtrlPhreak ( 226872 ) on Wednesday April 03, 2002 @03:33PM (#3278685) Homepage
    There's no way that aol is the good guy when it comes to spam, they sell members emails for spam usage. I know mine was sold because I created a brand new screen name specifically to avoid spam (previous screen name gets like 10 spams an hour), and did nothing on it. AIM and web outside of aol itself and no chatting in it. And within 3 days I was getting spam. Now tell me my address was not stolen.
    • bad me, I meant to say sold at the end instead of stolen. that's what I get for not previewing =(
    • One question - was your AIM login showing up in the member directory? If so, there's no proof that AOL sold your e-mail address - somebody could have just as easily written a script that scans the directory for logins and sends e-mail to all of them, or a random smattering of them.
      • see, you're linking AIM and AOL together as if they're the same system. they are 2 separate things which are linked so that messages can come back and forth. The AOL directory only holds aol members who fill out profiles (I did not fill out a profile) and is not affiliated with AIM.
    • Same thing happend to me with Hotmail. I use Hotmailn and Yahoo mail as my spam accounts, the ones I use to signup for newsletters, and contest etc. address I know are going to get spammed, Well I got a new hotmail account when this XP .Net crap ame out and within a week the box was full or crap. I never used the account, but they got it. Also I jsut love how I cant set spam from MSN to go drectly to the spam mailbox.
    • There. I told you.

      Quite frankly - because aol is SUCH a common domain name, a number of spammers use a dictionary file to make up addresses - if they bounce, it costs them nothing.

      Did you use random letters/numbers, or were there common names/words/numbers in that email address - its very likely that if the latter is true, then it was just a random address generator.

      I OWN a domain of my own. I know I'm not selling the addresses on my domain to anyone, yet some of the addresses here get spam - even though they've never been used except for internal mail.
  • Or does the article not talk at all about the spammer or the settlement, and instead just talk about what spam is?
  • There's something seriously wrong when AOL is referred to as "one of the good guys" regardless of circumstances.

  • A couple lawsuit/settlement details (Score:3, Interesting)

    by daoine ( 123140 ) <`moc.oohay' `ta' `3101hdaurom'> on Wednesday April 03, 2002 @04:28PM (#3279151)
    The article doesn't say anything. There's a little more information in this CNet story [com.com] though. Turns out they nailed a Florida based company, alleging that the company offered incentives for 3rd parties to transmit spam.
  • . . . stops sending me those damn CDs in the mail, then maybe I'll get excited about them winning a case against a spammer.
    • I have called them not once but thrice asking them to stop sending me tose damn things. I told them (truthfuly) that I do not own a compatible operating system, yet they keep sending them to me. I should make thier tech support walk me through installing it on linux.
  • And exactly how does this differ from any other "Giant Corporation wins over Small Guy in court". I don't support the small guy in this case (the right people DID win), but I would hardly call it a surprising result. The trick is to get the Giant Corperations to fight on the side of the common good, which is what occurred here.

    -Sou|cuttr

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