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The Courts Government Microsoft Spam The Almighty Buck News

Microsoft Sues Spammers 304

Posted by CowboyNeal from the cut-it-out dept.
mclearn writes "Microsoft has filed seven more lawsuits against spammers, this time targeting those who violate the 'brown-paper wrapper' provision of the CAN-SPAM law, which sets rules for sexually oriented e-mail solicitations. Apparently these are a small part of over 120 spam-related cases Microsoft is currently litigating. With Microsoft's deep pockets, can they effectively send a resounding message to spammers?"
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Microsoft Sues Spammers More

Microsoft Sues Spammers

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  • How Microsoft can end Spam (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 03, 2004 @12:49AM (#10982970)
    By getting into the spam business themselves!

    Now, hear me out. Microsoft can become the exclusive spammer of Hotmail, and then they can strong arm other ISPs and mail providers into only accepting Microsoft(tm) Spam. Once this is done, they can quickly buy up the other spammers that haven't gone under. Finally, once this is accomplished and they're the only spammer left, they can quietly shut down the operation. Tada, spam is over.

  • Message? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by CRC'99 ( 96526 ) on Friday December 03, 2004 @12:50AM (#10982976) Homepage
    With Microsoft's deep pockets, can they effectively send a resounding message to spammers?

    Yeah... Don't spam XXX material... just the regular garbage... Anyone who thinks this is going to make much difference, is either nieve or stupid - possibly both.

  • Amazed! (Score:5, Funny)

    by ReeprFlame ( 745959 ) <kc2lto@SOMETHINGgmail.com> on Friday December 03, 2004 @12:50AM (#10982977) Homepage
    I for one am flabergasted. Amazed.Yet confused... There is no way to describe it. Or am I dreaming? [too much coffee?] Is Microsoft actually trying to HELP the standard Internet user? hmmm... thats a new one for sure!

    • Re:Amazed! (Score:4, Funny)

      by ImTheDarkcyde ( 759406 ) <ImTheDarkcyde@hotmail.com> on Friday December 03, 2004 @12:53AM (#10983005) Journal
      next thing you know they'll probably reccomend fire fox!

    • Re:Amazed! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      if most /.ers took the blinkers from around their eyes they might actually see that as well as doing evil in the name of profit, Microsoft also does good.

    • Re:Amazed! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MP3Chuck ( 652277 ) on Friday December 03, 2004 @01:02AM (#10983069) Homepage Journal
      Well of course ... they run one of the biggest email operations out there so it'd be in their best interest to eliminate spam, since it only hurts them. It's no surprise, really.
      • Mmmm, given the spam ratio on hotmail accounts, i'd say MS uses hotmail to sell adresses to spammers. Besides, how would it be profitable for them if they didn't ?
        Or are you taking of MS own internal email system ?

        Or maybe they just figured out the most machiavelic business plan ever:

        1. sell thousands of hotmail accounts to spammers
        2. profit !
        3. sue spammers because they cost them money
        4. profit !
        5. goto 1
        6. ???

    • Re:Amazed! (Score:2, Interesting)

      by AndroidCat ( 229562 )
      And John D. Rockefeller used to hand out shiny dimes to kids as a PR move.

      Speaking of which, here's an interesting tidbit [eh.net]:

      But whether the gift was a dime or in the millions, he had to be persuaded that his charity would do some good. He wanted results, not just to give handouts, and he sought the best counsel he could obtain on giving money from Frederick Taylor Gates, a former Baptist minister who became a member of his staff. Gates had to convince him in detail of the advisability of what would come t

  • Makes Me Wonder (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 03, 2004 @12:50AM (#10982978)
    Out of curiosity, why is Microsoft bothering to litigate?

    Surely, the amount of money they spend doing this outweighs the "brownie points" they'll be winning.

    And, why wouldn't they just focus on writing anti-spam filtering software, and then _sell_ it as a solution to the spam problem? (In that light, shouldn't they be _encouraging_ more spammers so that they can sell more anti-spam software, or perhaps better convince people to switch to an "enhanced" Outlook 200x?)
    • Probably a direct order from He Who Is Most Spammed, Mr. Bill G.

    • Re:Makes Me Wonder (Score:5, Interesting)

      by thogard ( 43403 ) on Friday December 03, 2004 @01:10AM (#10983113) Homepage
      Out of curiosity, why is Microsoft bothering to litigate?

      One reason is that if they don't stop the spam from zombie windows boxes, they can get sued by others for engineering negligence combined with innocent third party issues. At this point they have no option but to show they are doing their best to go after the spamers and deal with a technical solution or else they are going to end up on the wrong end of a class action suit.

      The case to sue MS for the spam issue is getting stronger every day and one of these days they are going to wish they had done something sooner.

      Once the spam zombies are gone, the stupid hosters will be a much easier problem.

    • What are the punishments? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Chuck Chunder ( 21021 ) on Friday December 03, 2004 @01:18AM (#10983153) Journal
      Are there damages? Can suing spammers actually be a revenue stream for MS?

    • Re: (Score:2, Redundant)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Surely, the amount of money they spend doing this outweighs the "brownie points" they'll be winning.

      It is not just "brownie points". I presume that lots of home users find spam sufficiently annoying / offensive that they stop using email. Many of these will stop using the internet or even home computers. This translates to fewer people buying replacement home computers, and hence fewer people paying for new Microsoft licenses.

      Pulling some numbers out of the air, (say) 1% of (say) 500 million computer

  • The United States of America (USA) 'runs' on money. Cash. Credit. Status.

    Anything can happen when you're rich. You can be president, the head of an national power company, or even the supposed 'good guy' in the fight against Internet freedom from solicitation.

  • Small dent in Hotmail Viagra Sales... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rzebram ( 828885 ) on Friday December 03, 2004 @12:53AM (#10983015)
    Of course, no matter how much they spend, we'll probably always be seeing viagra spam in our hotmail boxes. Perhaps in addition to this set of lawsuits (which benefit everybody, don't get me wrong), they should throw in a campaign to work on giving the Hotmail spam filters an overhaul. It might help the community a great deal if Microsoft were to push some of their development over to spam filtering, as well as integrating some of the better email authentication systems into Hotmail, Outlook and the like.

    Are there any published studies about how much spam could be reduced if Microsoft could place more effective anti-spam features into the OS itself

    Don't get me wrong, I think this is a great step forward, but I think (supposing spammers aren't a little more intimidated) that we might see a better reduction in spam if better precautions were to be taken. Sorry if I've missed any big features mixed in with Windows that might help with this, I don't pay much attention to the patching that goes in as far as email is concerned.

    Ryan
    • Are there any published studies about how much spam could be reduced if Microsoft could place more effective anti-spam features into the OS itself

      I certainly wouldn't want spam features built into the OS. Isn't the reason why we all hate microsoft that they put too much stuff into their os?

      Thunderbird does an ok job of filtering spam for me, although I'm very careful about where my email adress goes.

      the biggest thing that could help stop spam is if no one bought anything. sapm costs basicly nothing to se

    • The OS is a bad place to put this stuff.

      Spam, viruses etc are a very fluid problem, defences have to adapt and change quickly. The OS is (should be?) too stable/slow-moving to be able to adapt quickly enough.
    • My name is also Ryan, and I see much less spam in my hotmail inbox. The only ones I see are "CI1IAS FREE!", and Hotmail marks it as spam.

      YMMV, but for me their spam filter works just fine. Are you... signing up for these viagara letters? Sometimes we all need a little boost... well, not us... you.

  • I don't believe it! (Score:5, Funny)

    by TR0GD0RtheBURNiNAT0R ( 734295 ) on Friday December 03, 2004 @12:53AM (#10983016)
    ...I'm actually rooting for MS!

    let's see... Red Sox won World Series as well.

    Well, the apocalypse is on it's way... better start repenting and whatnot.

    • Re:I don't believe it! (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I'd like to root MS too, but not in the way you'd think.

      Australians should know what I mean.

    • "Red Sox won World Series as well."

      As a die hard Red Sox fan I can say the apocalypse is not coming just yet. In fact, it looks like we've narrowly averted the apocalypse by missing out on a Chicago Cubs/ Boston Red Sox World Series last year. Now that the Red Sox have won a World Series and ended their 86 year drought, it looks like they can't trigger an apocalypse for at least another 86 years.

  • Hooray! Go Microsoft! (Score:5, Funny)

    by BugBlatterBeast ( 801489 ) on Friday December 03, 2004 @12:54AM (#10983021)
    ...this feels strange...

  • I bet I know why.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Mechcommander ( 784124 ) <<Ionix9> <at> <hotmail.com>> on Friday December 03, 2004 @12:56AM (#10983026) Journal
    I recently read that Bill Gates has the most spammed e-mail address in the world. Microsoft is simply following a game-plan to sue all the spammers that aggravate Mr. Gates.

    • Re:I bet I know why.. (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 03, 2004 @01:08AM (#10983099)
      *Bill Gates opens up his Hotmail account*

      "Do I want mail-order brides from Russia? Why... why yes... I do. I'm sure Stevey B wouldn't mind one as well under the tree on Christmas morning!"

      *clicks to order, moves onto next message*

      "What... What? Is this one implying I need pills to compensate for my small penis? Do you really think, doug35651@aol.com, that I would be ordering mail order brides if I couldn't pleasure them? I don't need pills to compensate -- my deep pockets and my corporate empire keep me secure enough! Doug, you shall rue the day you trifled with Mister Gates!"

      *buzzes intercom, calls legal team, sets plan in motion* ... please feel free to continue this story :)
      • *hides his interest in mail-order brides from his lawful wife, Melinda Gates*, perhaps?
      • *later that day in Topeka, KS Black helicopters silently fly up to an unspeceting house on (address deleted to protect the innocent) St.* One brave commando leaps through the front window, and unloads his clip into the computer room, completely destroying 192.168.0.1.

        Meanwhile in an undisclosed location Mr. Black Hat Logs onto his botnet, and notices one of his open cable modem spam relays is down. "Guess another luser got what was coming to them, time to rename the .exe to 'AdBusterV10.exe' haha they'll
      • I would love to see Bill's reaction when he gets one of those.

  • The spammers will just move overseas (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DemonCat ( 181152 ) on Friday December 03, 2004 @12:57AM (#10983030)
    As we pass laws in the US against spam, and start enforcing them, all it will ultimately do is drive the spamming operations out of the country. There will always be some small poor nation willing to let these paracites stay as long as they generate some tax revenue and keep a few locals employed. Blocking international email traffic isn't a viable option, so there is little we will be able to do about it.

    Given that, I have moral objections to spammers and am pleased each time I hear of one getting what he or she deserves.

    • Re:The spammers will just move overseas (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Indy1 ( 99447 ) on Friday December 03, 2004 @02:10AM (#10983434)
      let the spammers flee to south america, asia, etc. Unless you need mail from such and such a country, firewall the HELL out of it. Koreans are already learning the hard way what it means to be so heavily blocked that no one accepts their mail traffic.

      • You know, you just illustrate the problem (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Moraelin ( 679338 ) on Friday December 03, 2004 @05:11AM (#10984098) Journal
        There used to be a time where we all actually opened emails from strangers in other countries.

        E.g., when I wrote that walkthrough of mine and put my real email address in it (again, spam was not yet a problem), it never occured to me that I'd ever want to discriminate against, say, gamers from Korea if they have questions.

        E.g., when I posted on newsgroups, I actually expected that some people would answer privately per email. No point in dragging the whole thread off-topic, after all. Some of them were, yes, in other countries. If I was talking about Linux or about 3D programming in assembly, I wasn't going to reject potentially valuable information from someone just because their email info is from Elbonia.

        The fact that nowadays email addresses are some jealously guarded family secret, and that we're gladly blocking whole countries or continents, is the effect of spam that I hate the most. It just shows the extent of the damage these fucks have done to this public resource.

        So, well, in fact I actually aggree to your point of view. Let them flee if they want to. Then we can block just the countries which still encourage them, and maybe reclaim our communication resource to the rest of them. Having a usable communication channel even to just half the world, is better than what we have today.

    • Re:The spammers will just move overseas (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Frater 219 ( 1455 ) on Friday December 03, 2004 @02:17AM (#10983466) Journal
      Let them move. Let them live in paranoid armed compounds in "small poor nations" and fear that the locals will dig up their phone lines for the copper. [chron.com] Let them hide in places where the corrupt telecoms monopoly has run Internet access so badly that their IP addresses are already widely blocked for spam and abuse. Let them eventually get lined up by a tin-pot dictator and executed at dawn by firing squad, since they want to live beyond the rule of law. (After all, we can always block 'em -- I understand getting an email out of Nigeria is pretty tricky these days.)

      Currently, the bulk of the big spammers [spamhaus.org] live and operate within the United States. They may host their Web sites in China, buy lists of open proxies from Romania, and commission viruses from Russian Mafia programmers -- but they live in the "comfort" of the U.S. whose laws they flout.

      They do not want to move overseas. They want the comforts of home -- to make millions without leaving the couch. They are small-minded, hurtful, nasty little people. They want the world delivered to their door, and are willing to steal and destroy to get it -- but only if they can do that stealing and destroying from behind a screen. They are not brave. When they are challenged, they retreat into paranoia and lash out with lawsuits based on conspiracy theories. [slashdot.org] Can't do that from East Bumfuckistan.

    • This is bullshit. 85% of spammers are based in US. They might have purchased domains and other resources in other countries, but these are the americans spamming the world. Just look at the spam. Most of it flatly assumes american audience.

      I would love if they'd just exclude addresses that are really not gonna bring them any business. Now tell me why would you try to sell viagra to anybody at mff.cuni.cz domain. Its math and physics department for gods sake!

      1. Its in eastern europe, no credit cards until r
  • do we like Microsoft now?
    • No.

      And whats even funnier is when I hit reply slashdot told me "This exact comment has already been posted. Try to be more original...".

    • No. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by raehl ( 609729 )
      We still hate Microsoft, but we like that they're suing spammers.

      If two people you really don't like kill each other, you can still hate them even though they both did you a favor.

  • Where are the IP lawyers when you need one? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Surely somebody in the 80s must have patented 'an electronic method of distributing junk mail without permission, including false redirection to addresses for the installation of extra product services".

  • But what about the harmful stuff? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ticklemonster ( 736987 ) on Friday December 03, 2004 @01:02AM (#10983068) Journal
    My 10 year old son apparently registered at a gaming site that sells email addresses, because for a long time, he was getting pron emails. This has finally stopped, so I think either they gave up, or perhaps Moft is doing some good.

    But what I wonder, is why isn't Moft going after the spyware and all that put stuff on your machine that, if you remove it, it makes your machine act funky? Isn't that damaging their product, IE?, or sometimes even Windblows itself is messed up.

    Spam is a nuisance, but the adware and spyware are, imho, what are the biggest threat to people's computers. Of course, far be it from me to complain, because I make a liiiiittle on the side cleaning up machines over and over and over a freaking gain, but really, I think Moft should go out and start nailing some of these folks hard.

    (btw, Moft means Microsoft)

    That's my two cents, I expect no one to pay any attention to it, lol.

  • I think they aren't quite sure who they're suing, so they make it "John Doe" at such and such address, DBA so and so. Spammers are a slippery lot.

    Notice they're only suing pornographers. As if that's the only annoying spam.

    I get spammed regularly to sign up for Microsoft's certification classes. I know that because it goes in my 'caughtspam' folder, whereupon I delete it.

  • Well it won't be the deth bell or anything (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Friday December 03, 2004 @01:03AM (#10983076)
    But it will help. All technology, lawsuits, and prosecution helps slow the increase (hopefully to the point of making it negative) of spam. Technology and lawsuits both make spam a less profitable proposition. The less spam that gets through, the less sales you make. The more spammers that get sued and lose their ass, the less likely the average spammer is to come out ahead. The more spammers get locked up, the more scary a proposition it is to new ones.

    It's all about making it less attractive. It will always be attractive to some, even if thepbenalty is death by anal probe. However the numbers CAN be reduced by things like this.

    Up till receantly, all it took to be a spammer was a total lack of ethics. There was basically no risk. You wouldn't get sued, and there was no law against it. Combine that with the returns, you had a lot of people lining up.

    Well now there IS a risk. You can get your sued to the point of losing everything, and locked up in jail for a good long time. Also the returns will continue to get worse as more and more gets blocked.

    We can never expcet to get rid of spam completely, but with effort we can curtail it. It's not like drugs where people demand it, actively seek it out, and will pay massive amount of money for it. Most people, even those that buy from it, don't want to get it. Thus all you really need to do is make it unattractive to people and most of it will die off.
    • Well now there IS a risk. You can get your sued to the point of losing everything,

      You can get your sued?

      I think I speak for all the grammar nazis out there when I say that there's no such thing as an implicit ass in a sentence. That's Latin you're thinking of. Remember, English is a Germanic language. If you want to say ass, you pretty much have to just say it.

      [/parody]

  • Everyone come down a little bit... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by apiccirilli ( 833885 ) on Friday December 03, 2004 @01:07AM (#10983097)
    For all the Microsoft naysayers out there, could we pause one little moment here? Before we trash everything Microsoft does as being downright evil with secret motives, it might be nice to consider that perhaps Microsoft IS doing something decent. After all, Bill Gates is undeniably a good guy when it comes to charity (I hope most people would be without that kind of money, but he does do a LOT of stuff with it). And he has been known to do a good amount of anti-spam work with Congress. Could it be possible that their 120 suits against spammers are actually at least slightly altruistic in purpose?

    I'm not saying not to hold a little suspicion - they are Microsoft, but then again, don't discount them just because they are Microsoft. Instead of trying to make better anti-spam software (which they are also doing), they are throwing a lot of money at the root of the cause, both in Congressional lobbying and these suits. Doesn't seem too bad to me.

    Aaron
    • Call me a naysayer, but I would put forward that ones business strategies applied in secret says more about how much of a "good guy" someone is than how much they publically give to charities for everyone to see.

      What would be very impressive would be if the SEC found secret donations to worthy charities but somehow I don't think we'll be seeing that.

    • ... they are throwing a lot of money at the root of the cause, ...

      The root cause of SPAM are naive, uneducated users.

      [insert-your-favourite-MEGACORP] has _never_ done anything to educate potential customers, it makes lying^H^H^H^H^H^Hmarketing more difficult.

    • Could it be possible that their 120 suits against spammers are actually at least slightly altruistic in purpose?

      There's a HUGE difference between Microsoft and Bill Gates. Bill Gates has plenty of money, and doesn't need to make more. I highly doubt his sole purpose in life is to make money.

      Microsoft IS NOT Bill Gates. Microsoft exists for one reason only. To make money. There IS some reason that involves money behind this. They don't do things for altruistic purposes. You ever seen a Microsoft donate su

      • They don't do things for altruistic purposes.

        Before we proceed, let me make the point that I agree with this statement completely. Of course, it could be applied to any corporation as well.

        You ever seen a Microsoft donate sums of money and not see it prominently advertised?

        That said, this is a pretty feeble argument. Suppose, for a moment, that Microsoft only publicizes 50% of the donations it makes. The other half it funnels down to worthy charities in amounts small enough and/or channels obscure
      • Dude, what do you *want*, of /course/ that they will ad it to death if they donate moeny/services/computers/software.
        That is what companies *do*.
        Does this make it any less of donation? Or help the needy more?
  • DDoS them, sue them, whatever it takes I guess. Maybe we can't stop them from changing ISP's and moving servers around to avoid attacks, but maybe M$ can eventually bankrupt them. Use evil to fight evil?

  • Increased space (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If they want to cut junk mail, why did they increase the storage space?

  • It might even work as well as the lawsuits against filesharers.

    In all seriousness, if the passage of the law changed nothing, likely the lawsuits will only stop those targeted, and ten will spring up to replace the one that got nailed. They also can do next to nothing about spammers outside the US. So, while I have to give a (rare) salute to Microsoft on this one, I don't think it'll do much to stem the flood.

  • Go Microsoft?

    Microsoft is the good guy?

    Hummmm must be a full moon...
  • Spyware and malware is partly their fault. If they really want to clean up their own image, apologize and take on the jerks who cause so much frustration. This stuff is killing productivity, costs millions, and drives people crazy.

    Spam's got nothing on spyware.

  • it may make spammers remove hotmail accounts from their lists.

    I'm sure it will put a damper on things. When AOL, Earthlink and MS sue spammers, it must have an effect, but spam will only stop once Cisco sells spam filtering routers that will drop all spam packets on the floor.

    • why do you need a cisco router? iptables works wonders for my mail server.

      I even tarpit the spammy fucks.

      http://mail.btfh.net/spam.txt
      http://mail.btfh. net/asia-spam.txt

  • Today's MS Friend-o-meter reading (Score:5, Funny)

    by Linuxathome ( 242573 ) on Friday December 03, 2004 @02:06AM (#10983411) Homepage Journal
    Friend [---------------*--] Foe
    Two notches towards friend since yesterday.

  • Self-serving Distraction Generator (Score:3, Interesting)

    by eyepeepackets ( 33477 ) on Friday December 03, 2004 @02:13AM (#10983447)
    Could it be that Microsoft is trying to generate some positive news for itself at a time when even the average Joe and Josephine are pissed because their Microsoft OSes are trashed after being on the net for a few hours? Or is Microsoft doing this Spam battle out of the goodness of their hearts?

    Curious, but the invective hurled against Microsoft by average non-geek folks certainly has exploded recently: Seems even grandmas understand Microsoft sold them a pretty bag full of moths, metaphorically speaking.

    This could make for an interesting ending of the Microsoft con: The greedy, gluttonous dragon devours its own heart and falls over dead.

    Add your own happily-ever-after line here.

  • Like all things... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by defile ( 1059 ) on Friday December 03, 2004 @02:20AM (#10983491) Homepage Journal

    ...making them illegal doesn't necessarily mean people will stop doing them.

    If you make spam illegal and prosecute the people sending it, you basically force businesses who respect the law out of the market, and what remains are the businesses with no respect for the law: organized criminals

    The mob's next frontier is spam, and spam's next frontier is the mob. I don't think this is an improvement.

  • ...abolished the right of private action?

    Or is this right now just limited to Corporations?

    ...I must have missed how this was different from Fascism

  • Microsoft could end spam tomorrow (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bigberk ( 547360 ) <bigberk@users.pc9.org> on Friday December 03, 2004 @02:52AM (#10983637)
    I'm saying this very seriously. They probably run the world's busiest email domain, and get a shitload of spam. If they cooperated with the community, via dcc, or even just by publishing their own blocklist -- other ISPs could start using that list tomorrow to kill pretty much all spam sources.

    But Microsoft don't share, I don't buy this bull about how MS is trying to end spam. It would take 2 of their engineers and one week to set up a very effective blocklist just based on the garbage being thrown at hotmail all the time. Then the world would know about virtually all spam sources.

  • Microsoft's True Motive (Score:3, Funny)

    by Dystopian Rebel ( 714995 ) on Friday December 03, 2004 @03:40AM (#10983803) Journal
    The company is diversifying into... penis extensions!

    A whole new meaning to "embrace and extend".

  • The facilitate spam (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pe1chl ( 90186 ) on Friday December 03, 2004 @04:22AM (#10983943)
    Microsoft provides DNS and mail service hosting to the large scale lottery scam.
    Next time you receive one of these ("you have won a big price in the lottery") check the domain name you are supposed to send mail to. Usually some variation on "cashchangeukltd.com".
    Do a whois on it. In 99% of cases, it has been registered by Microsoft!
    The "technical contact" is an address that only sends an auto-reply tellig you another address (pdbeta@microsoft.com). That one is linked to /dev/null.

    When you send a mail to the mentioned cashchange address, it usually returns after a few days with some "mailbox overflow" or "could not contact mailserver" reply *FROM HOTMAIL*.

    So, Microsoft are fully in the position to do something with this. Yet, they ignore all abuse mail about this topic.
  • With Microsoft's deep pockets, can they effectively send a resounding message to spammers?"

    I hope so. My penis is now 20 m long, I have about fifty Rolexes and don't get me started about the amount of MS software I have crammed in my closets!
  • Can't Microsoft revise their EULA to state that their OS cannot be used for spamming? and that the license will be revoked by Microsoft if caught doing so?

    Sure, this might move the spammer off Windows when caught, but configuring a Linux type system would be beyonf the capabilities of some spammers.

  • In Redmond... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by IO ERROR ( 128968 ) <errorNO@SPAMioerror.us> on Friday December 03, 2004 @06:50AM (#10984372) Homepage Journal
    Your post advocates a

    ( ) technical (x) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante

    approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which vary from state to state.)

    ( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
    ( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
    (x) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
    ( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
    ( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
    ( ) Users of email will not put up with it
    ( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
    ( ) The police will not put up with it
    (x) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
    ( ) Requires cooperation from too many of your friends and is counterintuitive
    ( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
    ( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
    ( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
    (x) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
    (x) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever worked
    ( ) Other:

    Specifically, your plan fails to account for

    ( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
    (x) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
    (x) Open relays in foreign countries
    ( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
    (x) Asshats
    (x) Jurisdictional problems
    ( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
    ( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
    ( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
    ( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
    ( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
    (x) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
    ( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
    (x) Extreme profitability of spam
    ( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
    (x) Technically illiterate politicians
    (x) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
    (x) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
    ( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
    ( ) Outlook
    ( ) Other:

    and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

    ( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
    ( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
    ( ) Blacklists suck
    ( ) Whitelists suck
    ( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
    ( ) Countermeasures cannot involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
    ( ) Countermeasures cannot involve sabotage of public networks
    ( ) Sending email should be free
    ( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
    ( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
    (x) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
    ( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
    ( ) I don't want the government reading my email
    (x) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
    ( ) Other:

    Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

    (x) Nice try, dude, but I don't think it will work.
    ( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
    ( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!

    In Redmond only old people sue spammers.
  • ...we can convince Mr. Gates that those computer generated 'cease and desist' orders from the RIAA are spam...

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