Spam, Spam, Spam, Dole & Spam

seniorcoder writes "Check here for an article on CNN about the senate campaign of Elizabeth Dole being taken to court in North Carolina for the princely sum of $80 ($10 per piece of spam). My best regards to Ken Pugh, I hope his action is successful." $10 per email sounds fair, now I can start planning my mansion.

I'm gonna sue me up a mini-van

[rw2]

Here's my mail log [wellner.org].

Everything above 5 on the graph is better than 99% likely to be spam.

I'm rich!

(BTW, I use spamssassin, it's wonderful)

Re:I'm gonna sue me up a mini-van

[0x20]

So you only have 1 real email in all of that?

Re:I'm gonna sue me up a mini-van

[rw2]

That graph shows almost 30K spams and probably 5-10K legit emails.

Within the 30K spams I estimate (based on sampling) that there are probably about 30 legit emails.

Re:I'm gonna sue me up a mini-van

[ceejayoz]

Out of curiosity, how'd you generate that graph? I've got SpamAssassin on my server and would love to get that kind of graphical idea of what's come through...

Re:I'm gonna sue me up a mini-van

[rw2]

I used gnuplot to graph and procmail to manage SA.

My procmailrc contains something like this:

LOGFILE=$HOME/procmail.logfile

SUBJECT=`formail -xSubject: \
| sed -e 's/[;\`\\]/ /g' \
| expand | sed -e 's/^[ ]*//g' -e 's/[ ]*$//g'`

FROM=`formail -xFrom: \
| sed -e 's/[;\`\\]/ /g' \
| expand | sed -e 's/^[ ]*//g' -e 's/[ ]*$//g'`

# Backup the last hundred messages. :0 c
backup :0 ci
| cd backup && rm -f dummy `ls -t msg.* | sed -e 1,100d` :0fw
| /home/wellner/bin/SpamAssassin/spamassassin -P -c /home/wellner/bin/SpamAssassin/rules

SPAM_STATUS=`grep X-Spam-Status |cut -d' ' -f3|cut -d'=' -f2 |sort -n`
MESSAGE_ID=`formail -xMessage-ID:: \
| sed -e 's/[;\`\\]/ /g' \
| expand | sed -e 's/^[ ]*//g' -e 's/[ ]*$//g'`

DATE=`date +"%m/%d/%y %H:%M"`
nada=`echo $DATE $SPAM_STATUS $MESSAGE_ID >> $HOME/email-scores` :0:
* ^X-Spam-Status: Yes
caughtspam

and my gnuplot file is:

set timefmt "%m/%d/%y %H:%M"
set format x "%m/%d"
set title "Distribution of spam values"
set xlabel "Date mail arrived"
set ylabel "Hit value"
set nolabel
set xdata time
set terminal png color
set yrange [-10:50]
plot '/home/wellner/email-scores' using 1:3 with points 20, 5 with lines 3, 7 with lines 7, 10 with lines 5

have fun.

Re:I'm gonna sue me up a mini-van

[GoRK]

I would also like to know how you generate that graph or at least collect the data points. That graph gave me a great idea to do FFT's and generate a spectrogram of the data.

I wonder if you'd see a face in there just like in spectrograms of Aphex Twin's Windowlicker!?

~GoRK

Nice to make the point...but there's no case here

[mr_teem]

Am I missing something, or is this a no-brainer? The Dole campaign's electronic mail is non-commercial, therefore the law doesn't apply.

Here's one location of the text of the law... [spamlaws.com]

Re:Nice to make the point...but there's no case he

[Timinithis]

Oh, boy, I finally get to use the *IANAL* bit.

The law defines "Commercial Electronic Mail" as having the principal..not *sole* purpose. Since a politician 'serves' the public, they are offering services in a sense.

Even non-profit groups offer a service when you get down to it. Service can be as little as donate '$10.00' to help keep the trails clean, to donate to help plant a tree, or help the local keep-alive shelters for animals.

I view any unsolicited email as spam. Unfortunately my friends sometimes send me 'spam' in that regards, but with as few friends as I have, the one or 2 'junk' mails a day doesn't compare to the number of male/female enhancement/enlargement offers, insta-weightloss, or get-rich-quick offers.

If the politician wins, then this will open the door for every 'non-profit' group to spam, and all it will take, is to set up a dummy non-profit company and spam for donations.

I hope the Dole campaign has to fork over $80.00.

*dibs on that patent, or you can optionalyl send me $1.00 and I will give you the rights to that idea*

Re:Nice to make the point...but there's no case he

[neitzsche]

>>If the politician wins, then this will open the door for every 'non-profit' group to spam, and all it will take, is to set up a dummy non-profit company and spam for donations.

Don't look now, but they are getting away with that now on the unsolicited telephone call/telemarketing side already.

Decorate the mansion

[Unknown Poltroon]

with furniture made from old AOL cds!!!

Easy money-making ideas

[lithiumcloud]

How about a slashdot class action?

ow! that was my programming finger!

[diesel_jackass]

i wish i could $10 each for every spam i get. then i could stop waiting for the goddess of compensation to come bless me.

oops... the wind (hard hat taken off and dropped off of a roof) - TKITH

Dole will win this one.

[bmasel]

Political speech gets a higher level of 1st Amendment protection than commercial speech.

Fer instance, municipalities may prohibit commercial signs on your front yard, but not "vote for" signs.

Re:Dole will win this one--BUT

[Silent_E]

I was about to post your comment! But, there is still the issue of the "unsolicited" part of the spam. I wonder whether a creative trial judge wouldn't issue an injuction for unsolicited e-mail, but not a monetary punishment?

Now Amazon is spamming

[Keith Owens]

You think politicans are bad? Now amazon.fr are spamming mailing lists. This appeared on linux-xfs.

Received: from mm-outgoing-101.amazon.com (mm-outgoing-101.amazon.com [207.171.188.101])
by oss.sgi.com (8.12.5/8.12.5) with SMTP id g99HuQtG004395
for <[e-mail]>; Wed, 9 Oct 2002 10:56:28 -0700
Received: from mail-ems-102.amazon.com by mm-outgoing-101.amazon.com with ESMTP
(crosscheck: mail-ems-102.amazon.com [10.16.42.229])
id KAA-21335150-16130; Wed, 9 Oct 2002 10:19:15 -0700
Received: by mail-ems-102.amazon.com
id AAA-21335150-25209,3530; 9 Oct 2002 19:18:31 +0200
Message-id: <.AAA-21335150-25209,3530.1034183911@mail-ems-102. amazon.com>

Faites-vous plaisir!

Ok2mail.com vous offre un cheque-cadeau de 7 euros, a depenser illico sur
Amazon.fr!!!

Valable sur tout le catalogue Amazon.fr:
Livres, Musique, DVD, Video, Logiciels, Jeux Video.

....

I'm a rich politician, so I can do what I want...

[Sylver Dragon]

In an August 26 letter to Pugh, the Dole campaign said that its e-mails are not commercial and thus do not fall under the anti-spam law.

As much as I would love to say Bullshit, spam is spam is spam, I know that I would be ultimatly proven wrong. This law was probably written and enacted by politicians, and I doubt that they would have been so allturistic as to stop political spam Though one possibly good outcome of this legal battle will be publicity. Let the world know that E. Dole is a supporter and user of spam. Maybe it'll even get some sort of backlash against the whole idea, but that is probably just wishful thinking again. And maybe, just maybe, this will raise a bit of awareness in our congress-critters, that we the people really hate spam. (By way of quick disclosure, I usually find myself voting Republican, but this type of thing is a good way for a cadidate to alienate me real quick.) In a way I now hope that Dole loses and this incident is cited as a part of the reason for it.