Court Shanks Spammers With $3.7 Million Decision
These are already times for spammers,and it looks like things are getting even tougher, since a U.S. district court has ordered an international spam ring to cough up $3.7 million for filling your inbox with annoying messages, violating the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003.
The FTC does some well-earned bragging on its site about the court decision, on a 2007 case against spammers from Canada and St. Kitts.
The FTC charged that the operation used spammers to drive traffic to Web sites selling an extract of the hoodia gordonii plant it claimed would cause significant weight loss, and a "natural human growth hormone enhancer" it claimed would reverse the aging process. The FTC alleged that these claims were false or unsubstantiated, and charged the defendants with deceptive advertising in violation of federal law. It also alleged that the spammers sent e-mail that contained false "from" addresses and deceptive subject lines, and that they failed to provide a required opt-out link or physical postal address.
A disappointment to everyone out there who secretly hoped a spam-inspired diet would trim your flab. In the end, the only thing the spam artists knew how to slim down was its own bankroll.
Court Orders Spammers to Give Up $3.7 Million [Federal Trade Commission] (Thanks, Brett!)
(Photo: O Pish Posh)
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Comments:
The only way that spammers will disappear is if their spam doesn't get through, nobody responds and they go out of business.
I think our IP's need to do a better job blocking this stuff. If my junk mail filter knows it is spam, why doesn't RoadRunner?
Just my opinion.
Yeah, too bad they live in Canada and can ignore the court orders with no problem. It might as well have been a fifty bajillion dollar order...
@SgtMajorFragg: 1% response rate! You are a few orders of magnitude too high there. With modern bot armies, just a couple per million is still a quite profitable response rate, and many do just fine on less.
The ISPs and portals don't seem to really care about stopping it. I've used Yahoo! Mail Plus for several years now and have had several of those "How can we improve service" discussions and I can't even get them to allow the use of wildcards or or in their filters and they only offer the capability to block 500 domains and when the spammers are changing the domain name almost daily and adding 001, 002, etc., to their domain names to buypass filters, the controls built into their system can be overwhelmed rather quickly.
I have Thunderbird set to intercept and check anything that gets through my Yahoo controls but inevitably, some crap gets through and has to be dealt with manually.
The ISPs and web portals could definitely be doing a better job.
While I use Gmail for my primary inbox, I have found that their spam filtering has been quite effective. With that said, I also like the idea of otherinbox.com's service. All of my mail now from this point goes there, then forwards to Gmail. It helps me trap who is selling my name. Made the mistake to sign up on a site and used the otherinbox alias and last I checked, it blocked well over 500 for this particular person.
I noticed a great reduction of Spam when I was using the Blue Frog Security service. (See wikipedia), but alas, the white flag went up way too fast.
These are already times for spammers? Missing a word there?
@maxx22:
Because filtering is an inexact science. When your email program does it, you can usually view what gets filtered out and try to improve it by telling it stuff isn't junk. If it gets blocked before it gets to you, then you don't have that chance, and some legit emails will get missed. And nothing pisses off customers more than deleting important emails without them knowing it.
It's a good thing these people who bombard us with junk offers are getting the punishment they deserve.
I mean, who would be interested in a Magic Stick when you have the option of getting a Very Very Magic Stick?
@MinorAnnoyance: I've been in the anti-spam industry for about the last five years. Fighting spam, for most ISPs and web portals, ranks somewhere between providing good customer service and providing good retirement resources for its support personnel.
Which is to say, they don't give a fuck unless it would make them look worse than their competition. It costs them money and doesn't give return on their investment. Spammers are paying customers who understand that they're out multiple months hosting when they get caught and suspended, and just consider it an operational expense. When they're making millions from crooked businesses to drop ad-bombs, they don't care, and this $3.7 million decision is being paid with the spare change they find in the couch.
@Crovie: hardly a punishment, just another operating expense that they can pay with pocket change. 8 digits will get their attention. not 7.
@undefined: @Sian: I disagree. Spammers continue because the cost of entry and operation is so low. This would effectively put them out of business. Read Inside the Spam Cartel: Trade Secrets from the Dark Side by Spammer X.
One spammer goes away -- ten more would be willing to take that spammer's place to get rich quick.
Spammers know that their products sell, regardless how much we all hate to have our inbox filled with this garbage.
For every one million messages sent out, if only 1% actually bought the product they've made their initial investment and reaped a profit.