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Spam Government The Courts The Internet Your Rights Online News

Spamford Wallace Draws A Restraining Order 165

Steve Rock writes "According to an article in the Associated Press, a temporary restraining order has been issued by a judge against Stanford Wallace and his companies. The case marks the first anti-spyware action taken by the Federal Trade Commission, and while there is some argument about permitting unsolicited commercial e-mail because of free speech it appears a tougher approach will be taken with alleged spyware distribution."
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Spamford Wallace Draws A Restraining Order

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 23, 2004 @05:57PM (#10611009)
    I've got some great spam here on cheap legal services.
    • You can't fix a social problem with legislation. Spam won't as long as there will be idiots who buy products advertised by unsolicited email.
      • I know FCM is a known troll and all, but he has a good point here. The reason spam continues is because it's profitable. If it wasn't, people would stop doing it. This is the same principle that makes the "War on Drugs" impossible to win.
    • by turnstyle ( 588788 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @06:24PM (#10611078) Homepage
      Really, how does somebody decide to become a bad guy? Do you wake up some day, and say, I'm going to be a spammer, a scammer, a credit card thief?

      Do they even know that they're bad guys, or do they have themselves fooled?

      • In what world is a credit card thief anything but a bad guy?
      • Do they even know that they're bad guys, or do they have themselves fooled?

        I'll just need your email address, and I'm sure that these poor, confused gentlemen can explain themselves to you.
      • by dhoonlee ( 758528 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @07:11PM (#10611344)
        Nobody believes they are the bad-guy.

        Even the most heinous criminal has a way of justifying their actions to themselves.
        • Nobody believes they are the bad-guy.

          Even the most heinous criminal has a way of justifying their actions to themselves.

          That implies the criminal in question has a functioning conscience. Such criminals exist but there are also those without, i.e. psychopaths. They know their actions are bad, and they either don't care or like it that way.

        • Bio [annonline.com]. Spamford didn't start his life of evil selling spyware. He got his nickname from being one of the early big spammers, but he'd been evil before that. The reason you don't get inundated with junk faxes is that Spamford was also one of the early big junk faxers, and this annoyed enough people that Congress made a law against it. It hasn't gone away entirely, but it's at least a relatively well-defined problem, and the economics at the time were such that a law could make it relatively uneconomical.
      • Define "Bad"... (Score:2, Interesting)

        by NoMaster ( 142776 )
        It's all in how you define "bad", and your own personal moral compass.

        Take me, for example : Despite a sense of outrage at the way the world runs, it seems people consider me to be a little too moral. Hell, I know I do - I could never deliberately hurt a friend, and when I do accidently, it causes me great guilt. Hell, I still feel guilty over minor little incidents that involved nobody else! when I was a kid.

        However, there's a guy here in Australia who's currently in the news because of a share "scam" -
      • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @07:54PM (#10611545)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • by dubl-u ( 51156 ) * <<ot.atop> <ta> <2107893252>> on Saturday October 23, 2004 @09:38PM (#10612062)
          If you want to blame me, fine. Sadly, I have bigger concerns than the morality of unsolicited email, giving someone a tool to spider popular websites and search engines (complete with auto-correcting open proxy support), amongst other things.

          Yes, I do blame you. To get a few hundred bucks in your pocket, you're helping create tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs to other people. Heck, if you're working for a big spammer, the trouble you help make could cost others millions.

          I have a lot more respect for the crackheads who steal stuff out of cars in my neighborhood. Why? Well A, they're in the grips of a drug addiction; you're doing this with a clear head. And B, they're selling the stuff they steal for maybe 20 cents on the dollar, whereas your waste/profit ratio is 1-3 orders of magnitude worse.

          The only reason you and your employers aren't in jail is that the laws haven't caught up with you yet. But they will. A fine example of this comes from Con Man: A Master Swindler's Own Story [amazon.com]. Many of the things he pulled happened to be legal at the time he started in the 1890s. But they're all illegal today precisely because people like him took advantage of the gap between "wrong" and "illegal". And I look forward to the day you and your kind end up, like him, in prison.

          If you really have "bigger concerns" than the waste of millions of dollars and the annoyance of millions of people, you'd better be the leader of a medium-sized country. Otherwise, you're just a sad loser who can't even be honest with himself about the harm he's causing.
        • The faceless nature of a corporation does not care who you are, your aspirations unrelated to the workplace and your current situation. They merely want your skills and labor. This is a concept that trickles down the management chain, unfortunately less by force but by those who want to "succeed". Personally, I'll take a heaping helping of poverty over that kind of success.

          Hmm...good for you. Standing up to those evil corporations. I'm glad to see your sense of morality is intact...

          I have gotten my "

          • So what's wrong with that? I photograph anyone wearing anything... or nothing. I see nothing wrong with ta nude human body.

            (of normal weight distribution mind you- I've seen some very scary ones while walking around the mall...)
        • Not Scalable (Score:4, Insightful)

          by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Saturday October 23, 2004 @11:52PM (#10612572) Homepage Journal
          First off, you're bidding against guys in India and parts of Eastern Europe where $200 is a month's rent. The buyers are well aware of this and drive the price down to far beyond minimum wage. I've done a couple projects which equate to cents on the hour, but again, food on the table.


          Cents per hour? Are you nuts? WalMart is paying $9.50/hr for a cashier.

          For each cent you're making you're costing everybody else hundreds.

          Write some open source in the evenings to keep your resume hot and you'll have a real contracting job soon enough.

          The problem is what you're doing is not a scalable behavior. As yourself, "what if everybody did what I'm doing?" Think that through and you'll see your behavior is not ethical.
        • I turned to various online freelance places

          I'm curious, which ones did you have good experiences with?

          • eLance, probably - they've limited the shit bidding where you would be competing against Eastern Europeans willing to bid $5 or what have you. It's a bit expensive to get in though - and more so if you want to move up in the higher tier. But they've cleaned up the act some, setting minimum bids and so on.

            That's kind of a non-issue in some cases though - not all the project submitters go with the lowest bidder. The trick is to appear as the most qualified bidder - you really don't wanna work for the ass
        • The faceless nature of a corporation does not care who you are, your aspirations unrelated to the workplace and your current situation. They merely want your skills and labor. This is a concept that trickles down the management chain, unfortunately less by force but by those who want to "succeed". Personally, I'll take a heaping helping of poverty over that kind of success. I left when the disgust was far beyond what I could stand.

          ...

          They give me a project, I don't ask what they're doing and I really do

        • Ahh yes (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Sunday October 24, 2004 @06:12AM (#10613408)
          "Food on the table," always the refuge of those breaking the law that think it's ok. Of course, it seems that usually "food on the table" means "Quality food on the nice teak dining set in my tastefully appointed 3 bedroom house in a good neighbourhood with a new Audi and Subaru parked out front."

          To quote Chris Rock: "Please cut the fucking shit."

          There are many, millions in fact, people in this nation that put food on the table and sustain themselves doing menial jobs, often for minimum wage. I've done that before. There are plenty of low level jobs doing construction, washing dishes, etc out there. If you need work to feed yourself, it is always available. For that matter, there are plenty of social services available that will get you fed as well.

          So let's not play this game. You got out of a job, probably because your ethics are in the shiiter and you aren't very good at what you do. I mean who wants to hire someone who has crappy work eithic and general eithics where it's ok to break the law so long as it puts them ahead?

          So you turn to spam, something which was clearly immoral and receantly became illegal. Why? Not because you need to eat, as I said, there is ample oppertunity out there to get shit work that'll give you money enoug to get food and shelter, but becuase you think you're special, and deserve more. You seem to think that you ahve a right to make lots of money doing computer shit and if you can't do it legally, well than dammit doing it illegaly is justified.

          Give it up, you have no moral high ground here.

          The really funny thing is I know many people in It who are in a position where they hire other people. Nearly all of them are looking for people to hire, that's right, they want to give more people a job. The problem is, they can't find people qualified for the job. They find many people who's skills just aren't up to their talk.

          So get off it. Also, you might want to update your homepage, if you truly are in the grips of unemployment. Gabbing about how spam is what you must do to put food on the table while proclaiming to have employent with a large chain on your page doesn't help your stance.

          • You know employers who can't find people with the right skills?

            Like what?
            • The one that first comes to mind is a senior MSSQL developer. They want someone who's done this before, in a large-scale enterprise type environment because they really don't want to be training someone. No dice last I taled to my friend. They got a bunch fo applicants that think that messing with MySQL on a small website qualifies them and some people who would actually be qualified for a junior position, but none who would qualify for a senior position.

              My friend's opinion is that they aren't offering eno
        • This guy's experience is obviously not as reflective of the "landscape" as he wishes. Most likely troll or an attempt at sympathy

          My room-mate from highschool has recently become a spammer, and he has described his income from it as "pretty good". He didn't give me an exact figure, but told me his two-man operation had a revenue of $100,000 in one month. And yes: who the hell works for 50 cents an hour? Give me a friggin' break.
        • What your post boils down to:

          I don't like working for companies.
          I decided to work for myself instead.
          To make this personal decision work, I do some jobs for people who suck up bandwidth to annoy everybody with crap.
          To justify myself to myself I commit petty acts of sabotage, and have rationalized it all with a survival argument.
          So don't blame me, I have no choice.

          Bull. Shit. I wouldn't say "get a job at a gas station" or something sillier, but I would say grow the hell up and accept responsibility for your personal decisions. Like somebody said above, nobody thinks they're bad. They always find a way to justify themselves. You're a classic case.

          In my 25 years in IT, about half as a contractor and half as an employee, I've worked for plenty of places that were not run by greedy bastards who screwed me out of raises or made me work 80 hours a week, or any of the other complaints I hear constantly from my peers. I have worked for some crappy places too, and have had dream jobs pulled out from under me because somebody's plans changed. But my personal solution has always been to keep looking, and not to walk the fence of "I know I'm creating shit for other people to step in, but I just can't help it. I have to put food in my fridge. I'm trapped." Like many other talented people who cop out, it's your own version of reality that you've trapped yourself in.
        • Anyways, I'm done justifying myself. Consider this informative of the landscape that you are encountering. The "evil" people aren't writing these applications, the hungry are. :)

          That's just your excuse for being evil. If you must work as that, then move to India. They pay goes a long way there and the taxes are low!
      • Everybody wants to make money, they see it just as being another way to make a buck. greed drives a lot of people in the world.
      • It's all about the benjamins baby.

        Ok, yeah... people are greedy.
      • As far as he's concerned, he's just your average joe trying to make a living. -- now, yeah, his job leaves some people upset, but -- hey! So does Bill Maher [www.cbc.ca].

        (for those of you who haven't figured this out, I'm speaking this as devil's advocate, not someone who agrees with him).

  • by Sein ( 803257 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @05:59PM (#10611012) Journal
    When will Gator and WhenU be similarily restrained?
  • You cannot fix social problems with legislation. Spam will never end as long as there will be fools who buy products advertised by unsolicited commercial e-mail. Period.
    • I cannot agree more. Prosecuting offenders one-by-one will never solve the problem as long as there is a supply of fools that spammers make money off of.
      • by Anonymous Coward
        There will always be so-called "fools" who buy products spammed, for the simple reason that, while unsolicited, spam is still advertising, and sometimes advertising hits the mark. That is to say, if I'm in the market for a product, and a spammer is advertising a good deal on said product, I'm going to buy it regardless of the method by which the advertising reaches me.

        Trying to get people to -not- buy products advertised in spam would be as effective as trying to abolish all advertising altogether.
    • When statistics show that the great majority of spam comes from a select few spammers, legislation CAN help fix the problem. When you put the big dogs in jail and out of business, some smaller ones may take their spot, but there will be a big dent in spam distribution.
      • The Hurricane Fix (Score:2, Interesting)

        by TFGeditor ( 737839 )
        Interestingly, I noted a significant decrease (75 percent, roughly) in SPAM for a week or so after the series of hurricanes disrupted power et al in Florida. What's that stat, something like 90 percent of spam sources from one or two people in Florida?

        If a hurricane can do it, so can a jail cell.
    • by stewby18 ( 594952 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @06:27PM (#10611097)
      Exactly. Same with things like muggings, too; so long as the social problem of poverty exists, there will be muggings, armed robbery, etc. Clearly they shouldn't be illegal either.
    • You can fix social problems with laws; just enforce the law of natural selection.
    • As soon as there is a method in the infrastructure to know who is spamming, we will be able to make spam go away.

      Blacklists, etc, don't work now because of address forgery. Take away the forgery and you can implement blacklists, address blocking, punitive mail bombs based on blacklist history, or whatever method is decided.

      • >>Blacklists, etc, don't work now because of address forgery

        I assume you're talking about address/domain-based blacklists? Those would be the only one affected by "address forgery." I've not seen an address-based or domain-based blacklist in a very long time.

        Most current blacklists are IP-based. Those can't be forged if you realize how the email system works. Yes, false IP addresses can be injected into the Received: headers, but this is not news. Every correctly configured mailserver puts the IP ad
    • by Anonymous Coward
      Actually, you can. The best example of this is the pure food and drug act of 190x, which was passed in response to patent medicines which didn't disclose their ingredients, usually narcotic.

      This seems to be in the same genre, in that the software doesn't do what it claims to do, and in fact does something bad.

      Food and medicine products to this day, have ingredients listed.
    • by pipingguy ( 566974 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @06:49PM (#10611195)

      If spam is such a problem for networks and humans (and definitely it is, and getting worse), then why aren't we seeing TV/Radio PSAs explaining why it is inherently a bad thing? Since everyone universally hates spam, this lack of public service information seems to be an implicit blind eye to the problem. Intel, AMD, Apple, etc. could bump up the corporate goodwill by publicly denouncing that which 99.9% of all email users consider to be a scourge of the internet. What would it cost, a few dozen millions in order to saturate the popular media for a few weeks? That's peanuts to these guys.

      I have a feeling that spammers make a huge amount of money selling lists to other would-be spammers.
    • by schon ( 31600 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @07:08PM (#10611328)
      Umm, legislation is pretty much the *only* way to fix social problems.

      Just like any other form of fraud, you can't eliminate it completely, but you can certainly slow it down.

      Spam will never end as long as there will be fools who buy products advertised by unsolicited commercial e-mail.

      No, spam will never end as long as there are fools who *THINK* that people will buy products advertised via spam.

      The spammers making money *aren't* doing so by selling products, they are making money by getting fools who have products to pay them to spam.

      Looks like they've suckered you into believing their lies.
      • You're perfectly right--and the only way to stop terrorism is to...

        A better way to stop spam is to have intelligent anti-spam filtering.

        I set up all my mail servers to block spam at SMTP time, so the spam doesn't even waste disk space.

        Saying we need to use the government to stop spam seems like saying we need the government to tell us who to let in our front doors with because we can't figure out a way to determine if the guy outside is a salesman or not.

      • Spam is a social problem, but it's fundamentally a business. It's a social problem because the business depends on the availability of suckers and the willingness of spammers to exploit suckers and annoy non-suckers, but the spammers aren't doing it for fun, they're doing it to make money. The ROKSO list of the Top 200 spammers isn't filled with those small-time fools - it's mostly filled with people who are really making money. If you can cut off the money, you can cut off most of the spam; otherwise y
    • by Anonymous Coward
      The pure food and drug act of 190x, was passed in response to the patent medicines that were being sold, usually containing narcotics, or other unknown, or even harmful ingredients.

      Food and medicine products have since had the ingredients lists.

      The situations seems very similar, with the software not being what it was sold as, or totally ineffective.
      -jhines
    • by bcrowell ( 177657 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @07:20PM (#10611400) Homepage
      Spam will never end as long as there will be fools who buy products advertised by unsolicited commercial e-mail.
      There are some of objections I'd make to your argument:
      1. Junk paper mail will never end as long as there are fools who buy products advertised by paper mail. But that's not a problem, because postage costs limit the amount of junk paper mail I'll get.
      2. A lot of spam is criminal: it's sent by zombie machines, or the spam itself is a trojan. No, you cannot fix social problems with legislation, but yes, you can discourage crimes against property with legislation.
      3. I don't think most spammers actually have a product to sell. The Nigerian scammers don't have a product to sell. The people sending me trojans pretending to be from PayPal don't have a product to sell. The spammers who crapflood anti-spam activists' mailboxes don't have a product to sell.
    • Social Problems (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Thu25245 ( 801369 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @07:24PM (#10611410)

      Taken a sociology class lately? Almost every problem is a social problem. Crime is a social problem. Poverty is a social problem. Discrimination is a social problem. But we still create laws against crime, welfare programs, and anti-discrimination laws, even though we know we'll never eliminate these problems. Legislation can never completely solve social problems, but if enacted and enforced well, it can reduce them. Not by stopping each and every spammer or malware creater on the planet, but by taking out the big fish and keeping the small fry intimidated enough that they never grow too big.

    • You cannot fix social problems with legislation.

      In other words, since robbery is a social problem we shouldn't have legislation against it?

      Spam will never end as long as there will be fools who buy

      By the same measure burglary will never end as long as there are fools who buy stolen merchandise.

      Hogwash.

      Spam is a criminal activity that involves theft, harassment, intrusion, invasion of privacy and, usually, fraud. What is needed is a combination of legislation (written by somebody who understands spam

    • You cannot fix social problems with legislation. Spam will never end as long as there will be fools who buy products advertised by unsolicited commercial e-mail. Period.

      Which is why you should send this to everybody you know: http://www.boulderpledge.com/ [boulderpledge.com]

      In case of a ./ing here's basically the only thing at that link: Under no circumstances will I ever purchase anything offered to me as the result of an unsolicited e-mail message. Nor will I forward chain letters, petitions, mass mailings, or virus w
      • I will (Score:2, Funny)

        by Pan T. Hose ( 707794 )

        Which is why you should send this to everybody you know: "Under no circumstances will I ever purchase anything offered to me as the result of an unsolicited e-mail message. Nor will I forward chain letters, petitions, mass mailings, or virus warnings to large numbers of others. This is my contribution to the survival of the online community."

        That's a good idea, I will. I'll also tell them to forward it to everybody they know, to spread the message. Thanks!

    • You cannot fix social problems with legislation.

      Ridiculous. DWI is a social problem, but it has been greatly curtailed due to stiff penalties. In fact, this is like saying nothing the legislature does can fix problems, since almost all of what they do is attempt to fix social problems.

      Spam will never end as long as there will be fools who buy products advertised by unsolicited commercial e-mail. Period.

      The article is about spyware, not about spam.

      Anyway, you are wrong about this too. If the state
    • You cannot fix social problems with legislation.

      This is true. But spam is not a social problem. It's simply trespassing. The problem here is simply that the law is too behind the times to see that, and thus it isn't treated as such. It's a property-rights issue, simply put. Spammers are tresspassers and thieves, and should be treated as such.

      Spam will never end as long as there will be fools who buy products advertised by unsolicited commercial e-mail.

      Idiots who buy from spammers are a big problem, ce

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by nurb432 ( 527695 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @06:06PM (#10611038) Homepage Journal
    "Free speech" only applies to the extent that you have the right to speak freely, it does not extend to the point that you have a right to be heard, as you dont.. Nor does it allow that I have to pay to hear your "free speech".

    Same reasons fax-Spam is illegal. It costs the recipient.
    • by bleckywelcky ( 518520 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @06:50PM (#10611203)
      Exactly. Here's how I see it:

      This is my computer, you can not bother me on it unless I allow you to. If I visit your website, spam all the pop-ups you want. If I give you my email for the purposes of marketing, spam me all you want. But if I am just sitting here and you spam me with pop-ups through some spyware program or send me unsolicited emails, then you should be punished (assuming laws are in place to make such acts illegal).

      You can compare the situation to your property. People are not allowed to just walk on your property and put a lawn-sign in your yard. Nor can they can come up and talk to you if you've told them to stop trespassing (or through a restraining order, etc).

      Why should the two venues be considered any differently? They're both my property and I decide who can come, who can go, and what happens on my property. Simple as that.
      • The founding fathers would probably have frowned at the suggestion that someone had a right to walk up on your porch, take your stack of paper, your quill, and start writing whatever they wanted on it and post it to your house, in the name of "free speech".

        As usual, their rights end where they intrude on yours.

        Of course, they can stand in the road and talk all they want (to the extent that they're not disturbing the peace), but that's a website, not spam.
      • I agree with you on some points, but I don't think just because they have my e-mail address means they can spam it.
  • WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by enginuitor ( 779522 ) <Greg_Courville&GregLabs,com> on Saturday October 23, 2004 @06:06PM (#10611039) Homepage
    "...while there is some argument about permitting unsolicited commercial e-mail because of free speech..."

    Now that's a new one...
    What if somebody argued that graffiti was free speech?
    My point here is that nobody should legally be able to flood your email account with messages you don't want. It wastes the resources both of the systems across which the messages travel and of the people who have to go through them. In addition, it has been repeatedly shown in studies that unsolicited email is not an effective advertising strategy.
    In summary, free speech is the right to express your views, not to shove them in someone's face without their permission.
    • Re:WTF? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by dameron ( 307970 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @08:36PM (#10611764)
      What if somebody argued that graffiti was free speech?


      I agree with your point regarding spam, however graffiti is a bad example. Graffiti has often been used as an anonymous way to question the established authority or show defiance. While it's not protected (and rightly shouldn't be, as there is a very low signal to noise ration in graffiti), it has shown some social and political value in the past.

      Spam hasn't.

      Until there is a spam equivalent of the "V" for victory from WWII I'll give graffiti a little more play than spam.

      But yes, in general you are right.

      -dameron

      • Re:WTF? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by divot2001 ( 758678 )
        quote: "and rightly shouldn't be, as there is a very low signal to noise ration in graffiti." An intrinsic part of the free speech is that you cannot infringe a person's right to free speech because it was inarticulate or unintelligible due to the ignorance or lack of education in the communicator. To do so allows groups to silence the minority when they try to voice an unpopular opinion. Graffiti is illegal because it is destroying either public or private property, not because of any message inside.
  • by ShatteredDream ( 636520 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @06:26PM (#10611089) Homepage
    With physical mailing systems like the USPS and Fedex, the bulk mailers have to pay to send you their printed spam. In the case of the private services, they are paying for the cost of sending and receiving the communication, and with the USPS not only are they paying postage, but they are paying taxes that subsidize the USPS. With physical spam, they are paying for it.

    Online spammers, however, are not paying for their usage of my email server. Most of my email is delivered to my website's hosting service, which I pay a monthly fee for. Any spam that is sent to me costs me money in the form of infrastructure that my hosting service has to maintain to keep the QoS acceptable. They are thus, even if only indirectly, burdening me with part of their cost. We are not paying into a subsidized system.

    At a minimum, I have a right to refuse all of their communications, and the only thing that keeps me from supporting massive litigation and regulation is the ineptitude of the legislatures to craft workable legislation that won't turn into another big lawyer feeding fest. Still, though, the Internet, unlike the USPS, is a totally private service, at least in the US. As such, if I choose to "censor" the spammers, that is my right as a paying user, especially since the government isn't doing it for me.

    I think the solution to spamming might be to give a right of private action to infrastructure providers to fine the big guys for imposing cost on them. Seriously, let the hosting services and telecoms sue the pants off them for imposing the burden of supporting more bandwidth and hardware just to provide an adequate QoS.

    And as for spyware, I think the best thing that could be done would be to amend the federal anti-cracking laws so that any software that is bundled that acts like spyware must inform the user on installation or the company that made it is guilty of federal anti-cracking law violations. Make every individual at Gator responsible, from the software developers to the CEO for criminal violations that could get them locked up for a few years if Gator as a corporation is found guilty.
    • ...and with the USPS not only are they paying postage, but they are paying taxes that subsidize the USPS. With physical spam, they are paying for it.

      Not only that, the rates they pay for their junk mail subsidizes regular mail. If it weren't for junk mail, first class postage would be considerably higher.

    • they are paying taxes that subsidize the USPS.

      The USPS gets no subsidies from the US Government. Well, not directly anyhow (They do not pay taxes, and have other exemptions as well)

      But it is not true that Congress hands out our tax money to the USPS.
  • by The_Mystic_For_Real ( 766020 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @06:26PM (#10611093)
    I have always considered seeing if one of the owners of a computer that was rendered unusable by spyware that I know would be interested in launching a civil suit. I would imagine that sneaking something onto someone's property and causing damage that could at least be measured in hundreds if not thousands of dollars would merit a court case.
    • Count me in. Maybe James Sokolov would be willing to do some pro bono work after winning all of that money in mesotheleoma lawsuits.

      My kids installed a bunch of spyware on my computers. I hope that means the spyware companies never had a legal right install. The spyware companies stole my cable link, my computing resources, my privacy, and much of my time trying to remove the nasty stuff.

      One of those stupid programs left an lsp running after I removed the program, which caused DNS and DHCP to stop work
  • by OverflowingBitBucket ( 464177 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @06:26PM (#10611095) Homepage Journal
    Really? Well, me personally, I'm not so sure what the problem with spyware. It's just another legitimate way of doing business. They did agree to the EULA allowing it after all, didn't they?

    Take me for example. I sell preassembled computer systems. As part of the package I include a short, 83-page EULA that fires up when they first boot the system. After accepting the EULA (which they don't see until after I've cashed their cheque btw) I drop around to the customers house and install a series of automatic pop-up rock flingers in their front garden. At 3am the rock flingers pelt their bedroom windows with small rocks... generally not enough to break the glass, but I'm working on it. When they come out to see what the problem is, a hidden speaker blares out "Buy computer hardware from OverflowingBitBucket Inc!".

    Thankfully the supplied EULA allows me to do this, so it's all legal. In fact, I'm anticipating an increase in business, as several customers have called me _personally_ and said they'll be dropping around to see me real soon now.
    • Take me for example. I sell preassembled computer systems. As part of the package I include a short, 83-page EULA that fires up when they first boot the system. After accepting the EULA (which they don't see until after I've cashed their cheque btw) I drop around to the customers house and install a series of automatic pop-up rock flingers in their front garden. At 3am the rock flingers pelt their bedroom windows with small rocks... generally not enough to break the glass, but I'm working on it. When they c
      • I need a new computer, can you show me a price list?

        You need a new computer? That's great! Price lists are so 1990s btw. Just spec out the machine, give me your bank account details, and I'll draw out the appropriate amount from your account. I can then send you the legals, and if you accept them I will send you your shiny new PC!

        Can I interest you in a free quote on lawn-mowing?
  • No..... (Score:2, Insightful)

    In my experience, most people who get spyware don't even know how they got it. Should you really have to read through a huge 20 page EULA everytime you install software (or an ActiveX control) just so you can find one sentence where it mentions "this will install spyware". Thats absurd to expect people to do that. Some of it even installs itself on to your computer by taking advantage of a security hole in the browser, so their is no EULA. Of course legislating spyware won't stop it totally but at least it
    • I'm seeing a lot of "EULA" talk during this discussion, and I've been wondering myself... What would the effectiveness be of having legislation that required, in the case of an EULA, a much shorter, to the point, EULAS-- End User License Agreement Summary. Something that is required to point out certain "must-reads" from the EULA itself?

      I'm talking mainly things that your day-to-day joe user would have to worry about. How many computers you have license to put this software on, what programs are agreed
  • by Black Art ( 3335 )
    People claim that Unix does not have spyware.

    We do.

    We just call them "rootshells".

    There is not much difference between an app designed to steal your surfing habits and one designed to execute foriegn code.

    Part of the total cost of 0wnership...
    • There are even keystroke logger [thestar.com] programs.

      Suspicions were raised a month ago when the school noticed unusually high levels of traffic on the computer network. Security specialists from Sun Microsystems were called in to investigate the problem and found spying software, known as a keystroke logger, had been running on the machine since March 25.

      Now, if it had been a Windows box and a team of MCSEs, many people would have just assumed that it was infested anyway (from the extra traffic).

  • Ban the EULA (Score:2, Interesting)

    Nobody reads it. In essence, it's an end-run around the legal system.
    • Nobody reads it. In essence, it's an end-run around the legal system.

      Indeed. EULAs that are truly on the up and up boil down to these simple clauses:

      1) Do not illegaly copy our software.
      2) Do not reverse engineer our software.
      3) Our software is provided AS IS. ABSOLUTELY *NO* WARRANTIES WHATSOEVER!

      Why do you need pages and pages and pages of boilerplate lawyerspeak to say the above? It isn't necessary!

      One thing you might want to watch out for are pre-installation EULAs that you can only read on scr

      • So how does that prevent malware?

        Why not standardize the EULA, so companies could pick from a few that meet their needs or create their own, this might allow people to know what is said without having to read it more than once.

        Kinda like this. [gnu.org]

  • *** THERE IS NO GODDAMMED FUCKING FREA SPEACH ISSUES WHEN IT COMES TO SPAMMING. ***

    Spamming is *** FUCKING TRESPASSING ***, it is *** THEFT OF COMPUTER RESSOURCES THAT DO NOT BELONG TO THE SPAMMER ***, it simply boils down to *** PROPERTY RIGHTS, NAMELY THE RIGHT OF A NETWORK OWNER NOT TO HAVE HIS COMPUTER RESSOURCES STOLEN BY A GODDAMMED FUCKING SONOVABITCH SPAMMER ***.

    What part of *** MY OWN GODDAMMED FUCKING NETWORK, MY OWN GODDAMMED FUCKING RULES *** don't you understand???

    • by Sein ( 803257 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @07:26PM (#10611419) Journal
      They don't understand the bit where it says "Congress shall make no law restraining the freedom of speech".

      Okay, that's a bit disingenious - they do understand it, they just hope you don't. It's why they try to make it sound as if Congress passing laws dealing with a specific mode of theft of services (spam, spyware, trackerware, thiefware and other commercial malware that does not also violate other laws such as phishing and ID theft) is somehow "Restricting commercial free speech".

      No such goddamned thing - it's congress putting the assholes on notice that "You! Yes, you. The laws of theft of service applies to you too."

      However, spyware/thiefware (Gator/Claria, WhenU, and Spamford in this instance) is even worse - they specifically set out to steal the revenue from other affiliate/content providers/merchants and they also steal the computing resources neccesary to do this from you.

      Bayesian filtering and such can to some extent stop spammers. Ad-aware and Spybot can to some extent deal with hijackers. But neither is a solution to corporate interests legally stealing resources from others, is it?

      The next spam mail you get in your email, you can send a "Fuck you very much" to the Direct Marketers Association in the USA who spent more money lobbying for an opt-out regime than the rest of us will see in a lifetime.

      Their Canadian counterparts in the Canadian Direct Marketer's Association on the other hand has adopted a strong support for opt-in and preferably verifiable/double opt-in as the industry Recommended Best Pratice.

      The CDMA understood something the DMA failed to get: in the long run, it's Bad For Business to piss off your potential customers.
      • Question: If all / most of us geeks out here would forward our daily recieved spam to the DMA would that be enough to possibly educate them on the policies of opt-out marketing? Or would it be viewed as a form of DDOS (bad karma)? Something to think on....
  • "Spyware" describes a broad category of software that can be installed through unsafe e-mails or Web pages. It sometimes is bundled with other software that consumers download and install, such as file-sharing programs that can be used to download music and movies illegally.

    That statement makes it appears as if only people doing illegal things are at risk from spyware. If that were the case, then I doubt that this kind of government response would be such news.

    The article's journalist might have done b
  • spam is not the issue, it's the damn idiots who don't protect their 'puters' from being Zombied. The proliferation of high speed internet is the contributing issue in Spam, but, not to sound to much like a zealot, it's the unedgumacated people with that brand new $400 HP from 'Bestbuy' with the 3 years of AOHell Broadband, that are the real issue.

    Now I hate Spam as much as the next geek but the facts of the matter are that there is no way to prevent Spam unless
    a) People are educated, and are shown the er
    • a lot of computer users don't have the knowledge to avoid this stuff, and they don't WANT to learn all this security stuff.

      While all of us /.ers sit in a dark room eating twinkies and guzzling Mt. Dew while we download porn and Futurama episodes, some people out there actually have "girlfriends" (i'm not sure what those are, but I've heard that if you have one, you can do some of the stuff on those porn thingies) - and they have other things to do besides study the Windows API.

      Not all spam is bad by the

    • a) People are educated, and are shown the errors of their actions, IE: if they respond to spam, beat them to a pulp

      I think it's funny that you could've stopped at:

      a) People are educated, and are shown the errors of their actions, IE

      and it would basically be half the problem right there. ;)

  • The problem with spam is that it's so cheap to send and will get SOME results - if I send 3 million spams and one in every hundred thousand people responds, I'm doing ok. This guy was even worse though, infecting 'puters with spyware and then selling the remedy - why didn't I think of that...
  • by SidV ( 800332 )
    http://www.theunionleader.com/articles_showa.html? article=45988 Because it points out his address.
  • His name is Sanford Wallace. No "t".
  • From the article (Score:3, Insightful)

    by techno-vampire ( 666512 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @10:26PM (#10612265) Homepage
    Wallace's lawyer, Ralph Jacobs of Philadelphia, said Wallace wants "to use the Internet for advertising in lawful and proper ways."

    So why doesn't he?

Keep up the good work! But please don't ask me to help.

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