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M

mc

Jan 1, 1970
0
As long as they can keep getting paid, they'll keep doing it. It's like
the war on drugs - it's like stopping the tide.

Maybe there should be a law against buying things from spammers.

And a law against knowingly providing credit card, banking, or Internet (web
hosting, email) services to spammers.

Especially the last of these.
 
M

Michael A. Terrell

Jan 1, 1970
0
Rich said:
The main problem is the morons that comprise the 4 percent that actually
buy crap from the spammers.

FOUR PERCENT! That's a phenomenal return, even for a pre-qualified
mailing list.

As long as they can keep getting paid, they'll keep doing it. It's like
the war on drugs - it's like stopping the tide.

Sigh.
Rich

We should just declare all spammers as terrorist and turn the world's
military loose on them. They obviously use "Weapons of Massive
Disruption"!
 
W

Watson A.Name - \Watt Sun, the Dark Remover\

Jan 1, 1970
0
Rich Grise said:
The main problem is the morons that comprise the 4 percent that actually
buy crap from the spammers.

FOUR PERCENT! That's a phenomenal return, even for a pre-qualified
mailing list.

As long as they can keep getting paid, they'll keep doing it. It's like
the war on drugs - it's like stopping the tide.

Sigh.
Rich

Make everyone take the Boulder Pledge.
 
R

Rich Grise

Jan 1, 1970
0
On Fri, 25 Feb 2005 21:39:33 -0800, Watson A.Name - "Watt Sun, the Dark
Make everyone take the Boulder Pledge.

WTF "Boulder Pledge?"

Tks,
R
 
S

Spehro Pefhany

Jan 1, 1970
0
Why feel guilty for getting competitive bids? It's standard practice.

Bugs me that they don't let you sort by price when you do a search.
Obviously an intentional omission.


Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany
 
R

Rich Grise

Jan 1, 1970
0
Maybe there should be a law against buying things from spammers.

And a law against knowingly providing credit card, banking, or Internet (web
hosting, email) services to spammers.

Especially the last of these.

There already are, if not laws, at least terms of service that prohibit
sending spam - in the US. They don't have any effect on the spammers in,
say, Elbonia, however. This is why I'm in favor of some kind of central
"spammer-list", where people can download the week's list of what IPs
should be just dropped at the firewall. I have a "Blacklist" now that's
8585 entries long. Would you like me to post it?

I don't actually need it, though, since I don't go online with Windoze
any more, and I don't answer spam. It's kinda weird, though, to get
empty popups. ;-) (the sponsoring page can have a little popup script,
that opens a second window, and tries to show a page from a blacklisted
spammer.)

Thanks,
Rich
 
M

Mike Andrews

Jan 1, 1970
0
WTF "Boulder Pledge?"

Google can be _your_ friend, too.

"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."

<http://www.panix.com/~tbetz/boulder.shtml>
 
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Watson A.Name - \Watt Sun, the Dark Remover\

Jan 1, 1970
0
mc said:
Maybe there should be a law against buying things from spammers.

Well, WTF? There's already a law against spamming, and it doesn't do
any good. Why would _you_ think your law would do any better????
And a law against knowingly providing credit card, banking, or Internet (web
hosting, email) services to spammers.
Especially the last of these.

Well, every ISP or ASP has a clause against spamming in their policy.
But the problem is they ignore it, and sign 'pink' contracts with
spammers. The worst offender by far is UUNet - part of MCI (was
Worldcom) See www.spamhaus.org.

One big problem is that no one wants to bite the hand that feeds them.
The UUNet system supplies connectivity to so many ISPs - it's
everywhere - that disabling it would put a serious dent in the
connectivity in the U.S. Like, 800 pound gorillas tend to get their
way, don'tcha know. :-O

Speaking of connectivity. Yesterday I was walking down the street and
noticed the manhole covers had the XO ground off, and replaced by Level
3. The FO companies spent zillions of dollars putting all that FO in
the ground, and they couldn't get enough of it leased to pay the loans.
So the only alternatives were either bankruptcy or merger. Perhaps this
is why the ISPs are too lenient on letting the spammers keep on
spamming. Money talks, and big money talks loudly. :-/

Wow. I just watched Sunday Morning (CBS). They had a piece on the guy
who invented the intermittent windshield wipers. Turned out he
eventually won $20 million from Chyrsler and $10 million from Ford for
stealing his idea, but ended up paying most of it to the lawyers. For
those who don't know, it's a SCR and a few other electronic parts that
trigger the W-W intermittently.

One thing is certain: the world would be _much_ better off if the LEAs
would enforce the existing laws. That sentence implies that they are
not being enforced at all. Well, we get an occasional sensational
headline that says, "Spammer Convicted"
(http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,118493,00.asp).
But they say there are only a couple hundred spammers that are
reponsible for most of the spam; if the FTC would simply crack down on a
few score, or even a few dozen, it would put a serious dent in the spam
traffic. I'm not holding my breath, tho.

Someone should start a donation fund to pay for law enforcement
personnel to track down, arrest and prosecute spammers. I heard that
Microsoft and some other agency have a reward out for spammers. If
people would just put up the money, the spammers could be decimated.
 
W

Watson A.Name - \Watt Sun, the Dark Remover\

Jan 1, 1970
0
Rich Grise said:
There already are, if not laws, at least terms of service that prohibit
sending spam - in the US. They don't have any effect on the spammers in,
say, Elbonia, however.

The spammers are here, in the U.S. The laws don't have much of an
effect on them, either.
This is why I'm in favor of some kind of central "spammer-list",

That's already being done. It's called the SBL. www.spamhaus.org There
are many others, too. Been that way for many years.
where people can download the week's list of what IPs
should be just dropped at the firewall. I have a "Blacklist" now that's
8585 entries long. Would you like me to post it?

No, your list isn't a current list; you have to delete the
non-functioning records from the list, too.

[snip]
 
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Watson A.Name - \Watt Sun, the Dark Remover\

Jan 1, 1970
0
Mike Andrews said:
In <[email protected]> Dark


Google can be _your_ friend, too.

"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."

<http://www.panix.com/~tbetz/boulder.shtml>

Thank you. And thank you, Roger Ebert. ;-)

(Watch him and Roeper tonight, Sunday, on ABC.)
 
J

Jim Thompson

Jan 1, 1970
0
On Sun, 27 Feb 2005 08:42:35 -0800, "Watson A.Name - \"Watt Sun, the

[snip]
The spammers are here, in the U.S. The laws don't have much of an
effect on them, either.
[snip]

No, your list isn't a current list; you have to delete the
non-functioning records from the list, too.

[snip]
[snip]

I average 6 spam E-mails per month, all of which are caught by my
filtering and go straight to Trash.

All of them go to a specific publicly-known E-mail address which I'm
about to replace with a form on my website.

Then I should be receiving zero.

...Jim Thompson
 
W

Watson A.Name - \Watt Sun, the Dark Remover\

Jan 1, 1970
0
Jim Thompson said:
On Sun, 27 Feb 2005 08:42:35 -0800, "Watson A.Name - \"Watt Sun, the

[snip]
The spammers are here, in the U.S. The laws don't have much of an
effect on them, either.
[snip]

No, your list isn't a current list; you have to delete the
non-functioning records from the list, too.

[snip]
[snip]

I average 6 spam E-mails per month, all of which are caught by my
filtering and go straight to Trash.

All of them go to a specific publicly-known E-mail address which I'm
about to replace with a form on my website.

Then I should be receiving zero.

...Jim Thompson
--

C'mon, Jim. We all know that your son is doing that for you. ;-)

When you say form, what does that say? A specific error message that
refers to another email address?

On occasion I still troll the web for instances of my old email
addresses. I still find them from prehistoric times, back when I had
freebie educational email addresses. They just won't go away, and the
spammers still scrape them off the net, trying to sell millions of them
to other spammers. I was getting spam on my unix shell acct for a
decade, even tho the address hadn't been used for almost that long.
 
R

Rich Grise

Jan 1, 1970
0
Google can be _your_ friend, too.

"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."

<http://www.panix.com/~tbetz/boulder.shtml>

Chuckle! "And a remarkable amount of bandwidth is devoted to
undergraduates telling each other they suck..." - Ebert

Thanks!
Rich
 
R

Rich Grise

Jan 1, 1970
0
Google can be _your_ friend, too.

"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."

<http://www.panix.com/~tbetz/boulder.shtml>

Hmmm. Did you also read about the "CAN-SPAM" law? (Link at the bottom
of the BP page).
http://www.angelfire.com/blues2/blowschunks/index.html

It seems Congress has not only de facto legalized spam, they're even
overriding states' rights by pre-empting state anti-spam laws!

There's a list of emails of congresscritters that voted for the law,
and they[0] recommend forwarding all of your spam to them[1].

Thanks!
Rich

[0] the writers of the page
[1] Congress.
 
K

Kryten

Jan 1, 1970
0
Money talks, and big money talks loudly. :-/

When money talks, it swears.
Someone should start a donation fund to pay for law enforcement
personnel to track down, arrest and prosecute spammers.
I heard that Microsoft and some other agency have a reward out for
spammers.

That's rich, seeing as their bug ridden software provides lots of holes for
malware to exploit.

It's like them selling you an animal, but without a decent immune system.
Then you have to buy endless antiviral medication to keep it healthy.
If people would just put up the money,
the spammers could be decimated.

We've already paid them to do the job of enforcing the law.

We should threaten to sue them for not doing their job,
not paying extra to do it.
 
M

mc

Jan 1, 1970
0
One thing is certain: the world would be _much_ better off if the LEAs
would enforce the existing laws.

I agree wholeheartedly. Most spam violates pre-existing fraud laws, not
just CAN-SPAM.
 
W

Watson A.Name - \Watt Sun, the Dark Remover\

Jan 1, 1970
0
Rich Grise said:
Hmmm. Did you also read about the "CAN-SPAM" law? (Link at the bottom
of the BP page).
http://www.angelfire.com/blues2/blowschunks/index.html

It seems Congress has not only de facto legalized spam, they're even
overriding states' rights by pre-empting state anti-spam laws!

I can see you're another sheeple that hasn't learned to think for
himself.

Think about it: How can you 'legalize' something that had no prior
restrictions? Does what you said make any sense?

I agree that it was unwise to override some state laws, especially since
Calif had just toughened the spam laws. But don't try to tell us that
the law legalizes spam. The law puts restriction on spamming where
there were none before (nationally).

[snip]
 
W

Watson A.Name - \Watt Sun, the Dark Remover\

Jan 1, 1970
0
Kryten said:
in message

When money talks, it swears.



That's rich, seeing as their bug ridden software provides lots of holes for
malware to exploit.

It's like them selling you an animal, but without a decent immune system.
Then you have to buy endless antiviral medication to keep it healthy.


We've already paid them to do the job of enforcing the law.

We should threaten to sue them for not doing their job,
not paying extra to do it.

I don't know where you're at, but (the U.S.) congress had the foresight
to include a clause in the act that requires the Federal Trade
Commission to report back to congress in 18 months or so with how well
the law is working. If it finds that the law isn't effective, then it
can change the law, hopefully the worse for spammers. Perhaps when the
FTC reports it will tell congress that there is insufficient funding to
do the job. Then congress can put up some money and hope it helps.

But someday all the i's will get dotted and t's crossed and the spammers
will not have any way to hide. That may take IPV6, which seems like it
should have been implemented long ago, but still hasn't. Don't hold
your breath.
 
R

Rich Grise

Jan 1, 1970
0
I don't know where you're at, but (the U.S.) congress had the foresight
to include a clause in the act that requires the Federal Trade
Commission to report back to congress in 18 months or so with how well
the law is working. If it finds that the law isn't effective, then it
can change the law, hopefully the worse for spammers. Perhaps when the
FTC reports it will tell congress that there is insufficient funding to
do the job. Then congress can put up some money and hope it helps.

But someday all the i's will get dotted and t's crossed and the spammers
will not have any way to hide. That may take IPV6, which seems like it
should have been implemented long ago, but still hasn't. Don't hold
your breath.

This law?
http://www.spamlaws.com/federal/108s877.html
Or maybe this one?
http://www.angelfire.com/blues2/blowschunks/index.html

Thanks,
Rich
 
R

Rich Grise

Jan 1, 1970
0
On Sun, 27 Feb 2005 20:57:58 -0800, Watson A.Name - "Watt Sun, the Dark
I don't know where you're at, but (the U.S.) congress had the foresight
to include a clause in the act that requires the Federal Trade
Commission to report back to congress in 18 months or so with how well
the law is working. If it finds that the law isn't effective, then it
can change the law, hopefully the worse for spammers. Perhaps when the
FTC reports it will tell congress that there is insufficient funding to
do the job. Then congress can put up some money and hope it helps.

But someday all the i's will get dotted and t's crossed and the spammers
will not have any way to hide. That may take IPV6, which seems like it
should have been implemented long ago, but still hasn't. Don't hold
your breath.

I've tracked down a summary of the alleged "anti-spam" law:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery/?&db_id=cp108&r_n=sr102.108&sel=TOC_0&
---excerpt---
Calendar No. 209
108TH CONGRESS
Report
SENATE
1st Session
108-102
--CAN-SPAM ACT OF 2003
JULY 16, 2003- Ordered to be printed
Mr. MCCAIN, from the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation,
submitted the following
R E P O R T
[To accompany S. 877]
The Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, to which was
referred the bill (S. 877) to regulate interstate commerce by imposing
limitations and penalties on the transmission of unsolicited commercial
electronic mail via the Internet, having considered the same, reports
favorably thereon with an amendment in the nature of a substitute and
recommends that the bill (as amended) do pass.

PURPOSE OF THE BILL

The purposes of this legislation are to: (i) prohibit senders of
electronic mail (e-mail) for primarily commercial advertisement or
promotional purposes from deceiving intended recipients or Internet
service providers as to the source or subject matter of their e-mail
messages; (ii) require such e-mail senders to give recipients an
opportunity to decline to receive future commercial e-mail from them and
to honor such requests; (iii) require senders of unsolicited commercial
e-mail (UCE) to also include a valid physical address in the e-mail
message and a clear notice that the message is an advertisement or
solicitation; and (iv) prohibit businesses from knowingly promoting, or
permitting the promotion of, their trade or business through e-mail
transmitted with false or misleading sender or routing information. ---end
of excerpt---

Let's analyze this.
(i) prohibit senders of electronic mail (e-mail) for primarily
commercial advertisement or promotional purposes from deceiving
intended recipients or Internet service providers as to the source or
subject matter of their e-mail messages

In other words, if you don't overtly lie about your product, you're OK,
you can legally send all of the spam that you want to.

(ii) require such e-mail senders to give recipients an opportunity to
decline to receive future commercial e-mail from them and to honor such
requests;

Yeah, the ever-popular opt-out clause. This does a lot of good, at the
bottom of megabytes of popups.

(iii) require senders of unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE) to also
include a valid physical address in the e-mail message and a clear notice
that the message is an advertisement or solicitation;

Valid Physical Address. There's a vacant lot just down the street from me.
Include a clear notice? How about not send it at all, huh?

and (iv) prohibit businesses from knowingly promoting, or permitting the
promotion of, their trade or business through e-mail transmitted with
false or misleading sender or routing information.

So, you can't use your anonymizer. Big deal. It still gets sent!

So I tend to agree with this guy:
http://www.angelfire.com/blues2/blowschunks/index.html

I believe I might start spamming with The Boulder Pledge.

Ah Seen Tha Light!

Thanks,
Rich
 
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