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Spam America Online Government The Courts News

AOL Files First Spim Lawsuit 234

Posted by CowboyNeal from the we're-not-gonna-take-it dept.
Iphtashu Fitz writes "CNet News is reporting that 4 major internet providers - AOL, Earthlink, Microsoft, and Yahoo, have filed another bunch of lawsuits against spammers. What makes this round interesting is that AOL has filed the first ever lawsuit against against spam that targets Instant Messenger clients, or spim. So far spim has only affected relatively small numbers of users but the problem is growing, which is why AOL is targeting it now."
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AOL Files First Spim Lawsuit More

AOL Files First Spim Lawsuit

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  • Spim? (Score:5, Funny)

    by neonfrog ( 442362 ) on Thursday October 28, 2004 @05:32PM (#10658400)
    Is that Italian Spam?

  • I never had a problem with spim (Score:5, Funny)

    by riceboy50 ( 631755 ) on Thursday October 28, 2004 @05:33PM (#10658410)
    It's kind of a cool MIPS emulator, but maybe AOL just couldn't figure out how to work it. :-)

  • Hmmm? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Emperor Tiberius ( 673354 ) on Thursday October 28, 2004 @05:33PM (#10658412) Homepage
    Is Spim the low fat version of Spam?

  • Must...overcome...AOL...prejudice... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by YetAnotherName ( 168064 ) on Thursday October 28, 2004 @05:35PM (#10658425) Homepage
    When *@aol.com first started appearing on newsgroups I thought AOL would just be a minor nuisance, like a hangnail. Then I got *@aol.com in my email box like there was no tomorrow, and nuisance turned into genuine pain in the neck, like a cancer.

    But slowly and surely, AOL has done much to both transform themselves and the user populace into better Internet citizens ... and I can't help but think that they've affected the genre tenor of the Internet as a whole in the process.

    So now that they're taking a pre-emptive strike against spim, I have to applaud.

  • Glad to see they're acting now (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Mike Rubits ( 818811 ) on Thursday October 28, 2004 @05:35PM (#10658428)
    All I have to say is THANK GOD. ICQ was destroyed by spam for many people, and AIM is heading down that path.
    • Now that everyone uses AIM and MSN, spam on ICQ is virtually gone. I probably haven't gotten a single spam in atleast a year and half.

    • I agree that it's heading down that path, perhaps at a quicker rate soon. But I fail to see how exactly that's a "THANK GOD" thing. I live in the US and haven't ever encountered a friend who uses MSN, ICQ or Yahoo, with the exception of some European exchange friends I had in high school. AIM is still by far the easiest IM protocol to implement (I've done it, OSCAR is quite simple and has been documented pretty thoroughly by third parties) - though I've admittedly never looked at Jabber. Sure, I could be id
      • ICQ was really big back in 1994, because well, it was free, AIM was still undocumented, and people were still learning about this thing called the Internet. These days, I recommend the free client for Trillian [ceruleanstudios.com], which simultaneously supports AIM, ICQ, IRC, MSN, and Yahoo messaging. One application, keeps a running .txt history for every chat mode (my pet peeve is accidentally hitting escape in AIM and missing what was sent to me), you can Skin it, no advertisements loading in the corners... very nice.
        • Whats wrong with GAIM? I am serious. It supports AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, Groupwise, IRC and Napster - has tons of plugins, has txt as well as HTML logging....

          No adverts....

          And its GPL.

  • buyer problem (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Coneasfast ( 690509 ) on Thursday October 28, 2004 @05:36PM (#10658434)
    the real problem lies in the fact that spammers have an incentive to send spam. if nobody would buy penis enlargement pills, accept online mortgages, and order medicine online, we wouldn't have this problem.

    one way to combat this problem is look from the other end, we should educate the public and discourage people from doing any business with online sellers. consumers should be suspicious when such emails appear. i personally think this would help reduce spam

    • Re:buyer problem (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Thursday October 28, 2004 @05:47PM (#10658532) Homepage Journal
      **if nobody would buy penis enlargement pills, accept online mortgages, and order medicine online, we wouldn't have this problem.**

      not really, that's false.

      all you need is an ILLUSION, a THOUGHT, someone just needs to _believe_ that it would work, then we're going to have the problem.

      so.. someone starts to spam, for whatever reason, like there's no tomorrow.. if he makes money or no doesn't matter for some other scumbags to believe that "hey, he must be doing money, otherwise why would he have done this? I GOTTA GET ON THIS BOAT!" and the circle is sure to continue. like the biggest chain letter of all time.

      I'd be very surprised if spamming worked for other than like 1 % of the spammers. like mlm, 99% are just going to end up loosing money.

      • Re:buyer problem (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Migraineman ( 632203 )
        I agree, but I think the situation is even worse. Some doofus (call him "Bob") with a limited advertising budget is looking to get the most bang for his advertising buck. Most advertising channels have restrictions - either legal or imposed by the BoD (i.e. a magazine for pregnant moms won't carry penis enlargement ads.) Email, however, has little restriction. The spam solution is appealing to Doofus Bob because he gets a gazillion "eyeballs" for the product he's pimping, and he can report to his boss t
      • Actually I think the spammers probably do well for themselves, since most of them just sell a service (spamming). The bussinesses on the other hand may not be getting many sales. However they still pay the spammers to do it, so doesn't matter if they make sales, the spammers get money.
      • I really think that the only people who consistently make money off of spam are the people who sell the tools of the trade to the spammers -- ie the people who sell e-mail lists, rent proxies, etc.

      • Re:buyer problem (Score:3, Informative)

        by TomServo ( 79922 )
        I actually have to go with the parent poster, because the vast majority of big-time spammers and the like use every method of tracking available to them. After being condemned to a marketing department at a .com for a couple of years, I learned all about conversion rates, bounties, etc etc. Spammers make their money more often these days via conversions, not eyeballs, so they track how many people actually sign up off a given e-mail.

        The sad part is, it takes far less than 1% of spam victims to respond

    • Re:buyer problem (Score:2, Interesting)

      by gphinch ( 722686 )
      While good in theory, this really can only go so far. It's the same problem as infomercials and telemarketers, only on a grander scale and lower cost. At the same time, sending out, say, 5 million spam messages costs not much more than 500. Even if they got a return of .01%, thats still 500 people buying their penis-enlarging mortgage widget at the low cost of only $39.95. Do that every day and it's hard not to see the incentive for spammers. They can probably afford lawsuits now and again (or to go hide in
    • the real problem lies in the fact that spammers have an incentive to send spam. if nobody would buy penis enlargement pills, accept online mortgages, and order medicine online, we wouldn't have this problem.

      Alright, I guess it's time i fessed up. I apologize for buying everything that I find in my inbox. OTOH, I now have a 14" penis, am buying my 9th home, and keep getting these packages in the mail filled with wonderful little pills...

      • Re:buyer problem (Score:3, Funny)

        by nizo ( 81281 )
        I now have a 14" penis

        Never again will you be able to wear shorts or swimming trunks in public! Unless of course you buy the new PenisPocket(tm) to help conceal your ungainly organ, only $19.99 (or two for $35.99)! My new website on a server in Russia will be coming online for you to visit soon, and if you forget don't worry I will send a few hundred reminders into your mailbox tomorrow.....


    • I fear that we are facing a losing battle until and unless BigCorp.com consortium picks up the ball and starts running Radio/TV ads educating the general public.

      Many of us here get over 100 POS emails per day since we tend to either have websites or long-existing email addresses that would be impractical to abandon.

      For the casual web user though, spam is probably just a nuisance and not a plague and I bet that a lot of the clueless clickers (owners of Zombified machines) are just lonely people opening e
    • one way to combat this problem is look from the other end, we should educate the public and discourage people from doing any business with online sellers.

      I wouldn't want to discourage online business - after all, that is proving to be a more and more common business practice. What I would like to teach people is the difference between going to a serious store like e.g. amazon.com, bhphotovideo.com or similar that you know from real life, brand or web ad, compared to spamvertized products.

      Getting spam is
    • Yea, I got a spam advertising a local business today, which is the first time thats ever happened. What can I do short of throwing a can of spam through their window?
      • You didn't by chance drop your business card in one of those "win a free lunch" fish bowl things did you? That is where most locally oriented spam comes from. If efforts to get your name off their list fail and they send an obnoxious amount of spam, a can of spam through the window just might do the trick. At least that is a lot more than you can do to some spammer working out of their trailer in central Arkansas and relaying their spam through a Korean proxy.
    • I don't buy this argument, most spam nowadays attempts to break through bayesian filter so they come out with random messages, sometimes with no links.
    • one way to combat this problem is look from the other end, we should educate the public and discourage people from doing any business with online sellers.

      This sort of educational can prevent rational adults being taken in by spam, but what about the rest of the customers? What about naive teenagers, non-computer savvy old people, the mentally handicapped, the insane, people from a non-English speaking background who may have trouble distinguishing well-written spam from legit email, people with a low IQ
    • "one way to combat this problem is look from the other end, we should educate the public and discourage people from doing any business with online sellers. consumers should be suspicious when such emails appear. i personally think this would help reduce spam"

      Keep in mind that very nearly 50% of people are more stupid than the average person. Even after lots of education, the very stupid 0.1% at the bottom will still buy things from spam. And that's all it takes for spamming to become profitable.

  • spim spam (Score:1, Informative)

    by kaptink ( 699820 )
    spim is instant messenger spam for anyone confused.
  • Wow, I was totally clueless to the worldwide spim problem. The large corporations must have been putting so much span on this story that we weren't even aware of the real truth!

  • Related: SMS spam suit in 2001 (Score:3, Informative)

    by tgeller ( 10260 ) on Thursday October 28, 2004 @05:37PM (#10658445) Homepage
    Technology industry pioneer (Genuity, mailorder.com) Rodney Joffe talked about filing a class-action suit against an SMS spammer way back in 2001 article 1 [com.com] | article 2 -- search for "Joffe" [bankrupt.com]. Very similar.

    I don't know whether he ever actually filed papers, or what became of it. Anyone?

  • Minty Pythin's Flying Circis (Score:5, Funny)

    by Bloater ( 12932 ) on Thursday October 28, 2004 @05:37PM (#10658448) Homepage Journal
    Spim, Spim, Spim, Spim, ...

  • AOL sue for.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 28, 2004 @05:41PM (#10658475)
    junk? How SPAM/SPIM/SPEM/SPOM/SPUM (and sometimes SPYM) much different than them sending millions of AOL CDs in the mail every year?

    • Re:AOL sue for.. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by gujo-odori ( 473191 )
      Because AOL pays for the CDs and their delivery. You, the recipient, do not. That is the difference between all spam and snail junk mail.

      Even with "legitimate" UCE where the sender has paid for bandwidth, servers, rackspace, etc. and sends it in the clear, you still bear some of the cost because it's coming in over your connection that you pay for every month and on your equipment that you bought for your purposes, not the spammers' convenience.

      When an AOL CD is delivered, you bear no cost except the ef
      • the sender has paid for bandwidth, servers, rackspace, etc. and sends it in the clear, you still bear some of the cost because it's coming in over your connection that you pay for every month and on your equipment that you bought for your purposes

        Much like my telephone, a problem that has been going on for far longer, and still no relief in sight. Spam I can just delete, or use filters. But when the phone rings, and I think it's someone I'm hoping to hear from, and I get out of the tub to get it, and it's

  • In One Day... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Duncan3 ( 10537 ) on Thursday October 28, 2004 @05:41PM (#10658481) Homepage
    This is AOL's stats, so far today - and it's only 3PM here on the west coast.

    SPAM Blocked Today:
    846,170,968

    This month:
    33,661,697,872

    Instant Messages
    Sent Today:
    1,151,202,297

    Members Online Now:
    2,410,612

    You can watch the numbers on http://www.corp.aol.com/

    • Re:In One Day... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Do they account for the enormous amount of legitimate messages that they filter? :P
    • I'm not sure how much I'd trust that data. I've been watching it for a little while now, and the ``Instant Messages Sent Today'' stat dropped from 1,658,399,962 to 617,224,149 in about five minutes. That doesn't quite seem right to me.

      I would think that maybe it's a sum of the messages sent in the last 24 hours, but that would imply that a billion messages were sent in about five minutes...or it rotated (which would make sense since that was about midnight east coast time). If that's the case, then the

  • Spim? (Score:5, Funny)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) * on Thursday October 28, 2004 @05:41PM (#10658482) Homepage Journal
    Who do I talk to about these stupid names? It should be imSpam

    imSpam, spam i am
    i'd like to sell you
    c1al1s and a s3x cam

    • That Spam i am, that Spam i am,
      I do not like
      That Spam i am

  • fools, r-t-f-a.
    I've never seen more people correcting a mistake that never happened here on /. ..hey how about that for a ./ article, the top 10 most mis-commented-on /. articles...

  • Its spim, dont argue. (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    if any of you read the full artical you would note that are the bottom of the artical it defined spim as "spam that targets Instant Messenger clients" not a spelling error, and he didnt make a mistake, stop griping.
  • what about the damn spam on /. submissions
    i'm seeing the same crap that still leaks through with the mail

  • It's spim, not spam (Score:4, Informative)

    by spuzzzzzzz ( 807185 ) on Thursday October 28, 2004 @05:46PM (#10658525) Homepage
    Anyone who accuses the authors of misspelling spam is officially a fool and deserves to lose their geek license. Spim is a word, people. Look it up. [wikipedia.org]

    • Re:It's spim, not spam (Score:2, Informative)

      by dubstar ( 565060 )
      When did wikipedia become an authoritive source regarding what constitutes a word in the english language?

      ...And does this mean I can throw a page up on wikipedia and start referring to unsolicited physical junk mail as Spasm?!? (think snail mail)
      • OK, you've got me there. My post was aimed at the people who read the title of the article and automatically posted stupid replies like "haha editors mispellled SPAM. What a looser its spAm not spIm". Spim is more of a slang term than an official word but my original point stands.
    • While I agree, that the summary made it clear what was meant by Spim, and that it is therefore not an editorial mistake, it is not justified as a real word just by being in wikibloodypedia.

  • spim? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dotgod ( 567913 ) on Thursday October 28, 2004 @05:49PM (#10658546)
    why do we have to make up nicknames for everything? can't we just call it instant messenger spam? jeez.

  • Two Wrongs.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Tsali ( 594389 ) on Thursday October 28, 2004 @05:58PM (#10658608)
    What makes this round interesting is that AOL has filed the first ever lawsuit against against spam

    Okay - against against spam? Are we in Newspeak now where it is double-plus ungood instant messenging? Is it for spamming now?

    It's AOL, so I'm not sure which side of the marketing wagon I should be riding on.

  • Sue Themselves? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ranger ( 1783 ) on Thursday October 28, 2004 @06:07PM (#10658658) Homepage
    AOL will not sue themselves. After all AIM is loaded with their own unwanted advertising and popups.
    • I decided to look through the AIM EULA to see if there was any section regarding acceptance of advertisements, when I noticed something far more irritating than the little advert box I haven't seen for the past few years: the latest version of AIM (5.9.3690) installs WeatherBug for you by default! Granted, you can uncheck the box very easily, but I personally dislike the idea of having to opt-out of software "extras" (another example being that Macromedia Shockwave installs Yahoo! Companion by default).

      Also

      • PS: I use an older version of AIM (5.2.3292), so YMMV with the hosts file. If the servers have changed any, I've found it's pretty easy to figure out where AIM's getting adverts from with this nifty utility [sysinternals.com].

      • Re:Sue Themselves? (Score:3, Informative)

        by AnyoneEB ( 574727 )
        Or you could use Gaim [sourceforge.net] instead of the official client and not get any ads. You'll also get support for Gaim's plugins, contact aliases, and tabbed IMs, but it doesn't support some of the AIM features like video and voice IM (they're working on it). Also, there are other unofficial clients including Miranda [miranda-im.org] and Trillian [ceruleanstudios.com]. Or you could use an AIM hack like Middle Man [krunchsoftware.com] (or one linked from their list of other AIM hacks) that remove the ads and add other features like logging.
  • AOL duking it out against spammers? This is great news! If we're lucky both sides will annihilate each other in a war of attrition, good news for all of the internet-using world.

    That is, unless the rest of us get caught up in collateral damage resulting from reduced privacy or cloggage of internet.

  • Point:

    So you're telling me that with all the access control features in IM - warnings and blocks in AOL, and the user acceptance feature in Yahoo - there are not effective user level tools for combating spim already?

    I used to receive spim on ICQ all the time, to the point where I had to get a new address and stop using my old one on public lists. That was bad.

    The fact that I have received no spim to date on any other medium testifies to the fact this would be a hard adoption.

    Counterpoint:

    It would suck

    • The main difference in IM would be that IM clients do tend to give you the ability to block people who aren't on your list.

      I suppose, though, that this really just replaces the problem of dozens of instant messages, with receiving dozens of requests to be added to people's contact lists. And if clients end up allowing a way to see the requester's "reason" for being added, then you've effectively replicated the "BlueJack" on an instant messenger. :-/

  • How To (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RichM ( 754883 ) on Thursday October 28, 2004 @06:42PM (#10658928) Homepage
    This'll probably get me modded down, but I was once asked to create a spim Perl script for somebody (for money) and here's the source:

    #!usr/bin/perl
    if ($ENV{'REQUEST_METHOD'} eq 'GET')
    {
    @pairs = split(/&/, $ENV{'QUERY_STRING'});
    }
    elsif ($ENV{'REQUEST_METHOD'} eq 'POST')
    {
    read (STDIN, $buffer, $ENV{'CONTENT_LENGTH'});
    @pairs = split(/&/, $buffer);
    if ($ENV{'QUERY_STRING'})
    {
    @getpairs = split(/&/, $ENV{'QUERY_STRING'});
    push(@pairs,@getpairs);
    }
    }
    else
    {
    print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
    print "Use the POST or GET methods."; }
    foreach $pair (@pairs) { ($key, $value) = split (/=/, $pair);
    $key =~ tr/+/ /; $key =~ tr/+/ /;
    $key =~ s/%([a-fA-F0-9][a-fA-F0-9])/pack("C", hex($1))/eg;
    $value =~ tr/+/ /; $value =~ s/%([a-fA-F0-9][a-fA-F0-9])/pack("C",
    hex($1))/eg ;
    $value =~ s///g; if ($formdata{$key}) { $formdata{$key} .= ", $value";
    }
    else { $formdata{$key} = $value; } } 1;
    print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
    print "Sent message from $formdata{'sendername'}, to
    $formdata{'recipient'}!";
    use lib '.';
    use Net::AIM;
    $aim = new Net::AIM;
    $conn = $aim->newconn (Screenname => $formdata{'sendername'},
    Password => $formdata{'password'});
    foreach my $i (0..4) {
    $aim->do_one_loop || last;
    sleep 1;
    }
    $aim->send_im ( $formdata{'recipient'},$formdata{'message'});
    sle ep 1;
    print "";

    It takes the following variables:
    $sendername, $password (for AOL login), $recipient and $message by either POST or GET.
    I kinda regret doing it now but it paid the rent at the time...

  • SPAIM? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by robdeadtech ( 232013 ) *
    You would think AOL would rather it be called it SPAIM.

    Nothing like Brand recognition when your talking about Spam.

    Oh wait... Hormel's already got that one cornered.

  • Simple Solution... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by SpookyJim ( 826267 )
    It's always a hand full of people that make things more difficult for the rest of us. AOL incorporated image verification in their account creation process, which cut the amount of spammers down tremendously. Why don't they incorporate it in every initial IM? This way a user has to pass the image verification to send an instant message, but the person on the other end doesn't and both will be able to talk freely, until the IM window is closed. Something a bot obviously can't do.

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