If everyone with something to sell used modern communications technologies to broadcast their pitches to the world, we would all be drowned in a flood of marketing messages. As a indication that this could happen, we present a few disturbing recent stories from history below. To find out how we think that email solicitations can be stopped, read about JUNKBUSTERS SPAMOFF.
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FTC sues spammer for alleged scam
The Federal Trade Commission is suing Internet Business Broadcasting, a company that promoted its Internet magazine business with junk email, for allegedly defrauding consumers. [FTC News Release] [FTC Complaint] [CNET] [ZDNET] [Followup] [Washington Post] [Bloomberg]
In February 1998 the FTC announced in a press release titled ``No scamming while you're spamming'' that it has sent letters to 1,000 spammers warning them that the get-rich-quick schemes they are promoting may be illegal. [CNET] [USA Today]
The FTC's plans to sue spammers can be traced back at least as far as their public hearings in June 1997, when Commissioner Varney openly discussed the idea with her staff.
Separately, the FTC established a page on How to protect your privacy. It includes links to the DMVs of each state, many of which sell registration information to marketers.
Separately, the FTC released a report on new fraud techniques on the Internet. (1998/4/17)
Separately, a candidate for Texas Court of Criminal Appeals tried spamming as a cheap way of campaigning, but was flamed and cut off by his ISP, the Dallas Morning News reported. A similar tactic was used by a candidate for a municipal court, the Orange County Register reported. (1998/5/30) The New York Times reported on a political advocacy group in Seattle, and a candidate for state Supreme Court in North Carolina, Jim Martin. (1998/6/7) [NY Times]
Separately, AOL has settled in one of its spam suits, TechWeb reported. [CNET]
Separately, spambone wannabe GTMI is offering to pay Internet providers to accept spam, Interactive Week reported. CNET reported the spambone launched in May '98.
Junkbusters at Internet World with Legislators
Junkbusters praised a strategic change taken in Californian anti-spamming legislation. Rather than banning spam outright, a revised bill will allow Service Providers (ISPs) to claim statutory damages" (dollar amounts) in court from spammers. Junkbusters President Jason Catlett discussed the legislation with two California Assemblypersons at Spring Internet World '98. [Press Release] PC Week Japan [PacBell outage] He also debated arch-spammer Sanford Wallace, which was covered by the LA Times and UPI. Separately, a new company, Sendmail Inc., has been formed to commercialize the popular email systems software of the same name. It launched with new anti-spam features. [Wired] Separately, the kingdom of Tonga is trying to make its top-level domain spam-free, CNET reported.
Sanford Wallace back to junk faxes?
The Philadelphia City Paper reported that spam king Sanford Wallace has returned to sending junk faxes. Prior to the 1991 law that prohibits them, Wallace had previously been in the junk fax business, though he denies that his output was large enough to have had any influence in the Act being passed.
Separately, free Web-based email provider Hotmail Corp. is suing several spammers, CNET reported. [Andover]
Leading free email provider Juno had earlier field suit against spammers for falsely using its name in email addresses CNET and Wired News reported.
Suits against spammer became common in late 1997. The Conference on Computers, Freedom and Privacy even held a ``moot court'' on suing spammers.
Spam King Abdicates?
According to Wired News Spam King Sanford Wallace has said he's out of the spamming business. The same story reports damages awarded against Wallace for sending junk faxes. [TechWeb] [CNET]
Earlier the New York Times reported company that CyberPromo has agreed to pay $2 million to Earthlink, and to stop spamming its customers. [Wired News]
Anti-spam bill has senate hearings
The Senate held hearings June 17 on an anti-spam bill (S. 1618) that has passed the U.S. Senate. [FTC Press release] [Prepared Statement by FTC Commissioner Sheila F. Anthony] [ZD] [Wired News] [AP] [CNET] [WSJ] [ZD] It was attached to an anti-slamming bill. (Is it a coincidence that the words sound similar?) Junkbusters and most anti-spam organizations condemn this bill as worse than the status quo; it would tend to legitimize spam. People are already receiving spam beginning with legalese such as
Per Section 301, Paragraph (a)(2)(C) of S.1618, further transmissions to you by the sender of this email may be stopped at no cost to you by sending a reply to this email address with the word "remove" in the subject line. For the last 2 years Bulk E-mail has been at the forefront on controversy... But NO More !! It's Legal.All this before the bill has passed the House. Some web sites are joining a "pink-out" in protest, Wired News reported. A comparison of the several federal anti-spam bills is given below.
Separately, former spam king Sanford Wallace announced that he will serve as an expert witness and consultant in suits against spammers, Wired News and DM News reported.
Hotmail wins default judgments against spammers
Free web-based email provider Hotmail has won substantial monetary damages in default judgments against three spammers who faked their domain name in ``From'' headers, Wired News reported. [CNET]
Separately, anti-spammers have been mourning the loss of Jim Nitchals, who worked tirelessly and effectively to stop spam, and founded the Forum for Responsible and Ethical E-mail (FREE). Obituaries: Wired, CNET, ZDNET.
Separately, an anti-spam bill in Washington State has gone effect, Internet News reported. The bill was signed 25 March by the Governor CNET reported. The act makes it illegal for spammers to "misrepresent the messages' point of origin." The Attorney General's Consumer Protection Division has set up a registry so that spammers can find out which email addresses are in the state. The problem with this is that they may use it as a source of addresses to spam, correctly representing the point of origin with a throwaway address.
Web-based email from Hotmail sometimes leak email address
Junkbusters reported a privacy bug in Hotmail and Excite's free email
to
CNET.
[The Standard]
If you use a web-based email service with this bug,
and click on a
URL
in an email sent to you,
your email address may be revealed to that site.
To test whether you are exposed to the bug,
follow this procedure:
What should you do if you are being exposed? Excite announced that they will fix the problem, but what to do in the meanwhile? The easiest way is simply not to click through when in email. If you need to go to a site, cut and paste the URL into the Location field instead (or use the Open Page command).
If you use the Internet Junkbuster it removes referer information, but this isn't always available while traveling.
A similar incident occurred again in July 2000. [WSJ/ZD]
FTC receives report on junk email
An Ad Hoc Working Group on Unsolicited Commercial Email has delivered its report to the Federal Trade Commission, recommending that the FTC, the Department of Justice and state authorities begin action against spammers for faking headers and return addresses. Junkbusters President Jason Catlett praised the report in a News Release. [Newsbytes] [CNN] [CNET] [USA Today/Internet News] [Interactive Week] [TechWeb] [TechWeb2] [The Standard] [Wired] [AP]
AT&T spams webmasters
AT&T has sent out its first (and we hope last) spam, CNET reported. This example is the latest of several instances of spamming blunders by blue-chip companies that ought to know better.
Spammers threaten to publish AOL email addresses
A group called the National Organization of Internet Commerce (NOIC) threatened to make public the email addresses of millions of America Online members unless AOL changed its spam policies. AOL called the demands "cyber-terrorism" and filed suit. [Coverage by Wired, PC World, CNET, and CNN.]
Junkbusters President debates ``Spam King'' Sanford Wallace
Junkbusters President Jason Catlett debated Cyber Promotions President Sanford Wallace 10 December 1997 at the world's largest Internet conference. See front page coverage on ZD News. A rematch was held March 11, 1998 in Los Angeles. [Press Release] [Catlett's opening remarks].
Separately, Wired News deemed CyberPromo's promises of a ``SpamBone'' to be vaporous. CNET's ace spam correspondent, Janet Kornblum described how complaints from anti-spammers brought down an information site set up about the SpamBone.
Kornblum reviewed the year in spam in an article titled No End in Sight.
Cyber Promotions re-disconnected from AGIS
Cyberpromo has been disconnected by AGIS again, but is still sending spam, CNET reported. A Philadelphia US District Court had granted a preliminary injunction request from Cyber Promotions to force AGIS to restore its Internet connection until mid-October, CNET and Wired reported. AGIS, notorious as the ``spammer's ISP,'' made surprising move in September of cutting off the spam factory, citing ``security concerns.'' The definitive history of AGIS's the descent and return was written by CNET's Janet Kornblum. In a story about Cyber Promo's intentions to build a ``spambone,'' she quotes Sanford Wallace as saying ``If this doesn't work, nothing will... If it doesn't go, then that's it for me--I'm done.'' [NewsBytes]
Separately, Cyber Promotions is being sued by Bigfoot, CNET reported. (S.D.N.Y. filed Oct. 6, 1997)
Separately, CNET reported that Netcom has abandoned an automated system for deleting spam before it reaches its customers.
Separately, AOL is suing a Las Vegas-based spammer, Over the Air Equipment, in Eastern District Court in Alexandria, Va. [CNN], and more recently Prime Data Worldnet Systems, according to ZD News.
Separately, SimpleNet is seeking criminal charges under the California Data Access and Fraud Act against VNZ Information and Entertainment Services, claiming that they illegally obtained lists of the ISP's customers.
Separately, a San Francisco "political consultant" has spammed out a "slate card" and intends to send millions more, CNET reported.
Sun chief urges mailbombing Microsoft?
We find this hard to believe, but Sun CEO Scott McNealy urged a conference in Berlin to ``flood'' Bill Gates's email box with protests about Java, according the Convergence.
This site has made many criticisms of Microsoft, but we discourage mailbombing anybody. It's uncivilized, ineffective, and hurts innocent people.
During hearings of the Senate Judiciary Committee in March 1998 McNealy said Gates is ``probably the most dangerous and powerful industrialist of our age.'' Another quote: "The only thing I'd rather own than Windows is English or Chinese or Spanish, because then I could charge you a $249 right to speak English and I could charge you an upgrade fee when I add new letters like 'n' or 't'."
Extremely Hopeful Idea?
Experian has pulled out of EHI due to bad publicity, according to Wired News, DM News and CNET. The venture's home page seems to have been moved to a new site.
The consortium of traditional direct marketing list vendors hopes to get people to volunteer to receive solicitations by email, allowing their email addresses to be sold, InterActive Week reports. It is offering payments of $20 per head to ISPs to get information about their customers, and recently announced it had signed on Prodigy. The leaders of the ``EHI Anti-Spam Action Project'' say it will be good for privacy. ```It's odd, to say the least, for Experian, one of the largest collectors and vendors of personal data, to position itself as a champion of privacy,'' EPIC's David Sobel told Cox News Service. Wired News reports that due to a ``clerical error'' EHI put EPIC's name as a supporter in the release, despite EPIC's urging ISPs not to support EHI's plan. ``But it went up online by accident.'' said Experian director Ian Oxman. Another case of Erroneously Handled Information? Put it down to inexperience? Or is there a pattern here?
The venture's name, EHI, was taken from its founding companies: Experian (a credit reference company) and Harte-Hanks Data Technologies Inc. and IBL Inc., direct marketing database companies. [See also a reports by CNET and ZD News.]
Barnes & Noble targets spam based on people's home pages
Bookseller Barnes & Noble have been ``harvesting'' the email addresses of people who mention certain authors and types of books on their personal home pages, reports the San Francisco Chronicle.
Junkbusters earlier earlier warned people about this kind of technique for more than a year. An earlier story covering Amazon's emailing practices ran in Wired News. Wired also reported on a spam from Symantec, which the company apologized was ``accidentally combined with another list of email addresses bought from a third party list provider.''
Separately, leading online auction site OnSale harvested tens of thousands of email addresses from rival eBay, and sent email solicitations to them. OnSale claims that because their unsolicited commercial email was targeted, it's not spam. We think that if it tastes like spam to people who get it, it's spam. [ZD] [Wired] Followup: OnSale decides to conceal its customers' email addresses, CNET reported.
Separately, the Software Publishers Association spammed several hundred thousand administrators of FTP sites with a warning about piracy, CNET reported.
Separately, UPS have been gathering email addresses of people who email customer.service@ups.com (even to complain) and spamming them with surveys, CNET reports.
There have also been cases of major companies spamming accidentally, such as the much-admired HP.
Separately, leading tech publishing company IDG is renting email lists, NetMarketing reported in October 1997.
Entertainment - consent = harassment + fraud?
An article in Time reports how two ``Web fiction developers'' sent 43 prominent media people email from employee ``characters'' at the fictional Dysson Foundation, including statements that the sender of the first email may have been murdered. (1997/10/4, p. 47) A link to a fake corporate Web site was included. After two weeks, the distressed victims were told this was a pitch. ``What could be better than a TV show where you start getting E-mail from the characters?'' the developers asked.
What could be worse than being spammed by fake identities crying murder?
Separately, Wired News reports that a disgruntled consumer has used spam for revenge by sending ``A fraudulent series of threatening emails purporting to be from Samsung and its attorneys...'' (Also covered by CNET.)
Beware spam bearing unsolicited software attachments
The National Computer Security Association has warned people about a spate of trojan horse programs with names like PORN.EXE and PLAYBOY.ZIP: ``In general, users should never run unsolicited software attached to email or received by any other means or via any service provider.''
Earlier this year the Department of Energy issued an alert concerning a trojan horse program called AOL4FREE.COM that erases hard drives if executed. Simply reading the email does no damage, only executing the attachment. For background on a hoax with a similar name and claimed behavior, see Wired News.
Also from Wired News: the Fake Spam Club. Some people use software to send fake bounce messages to spammers in the hope that they will delete their addresses.
More spam news
Several lawsuits against spammers have been reported recently. Concentric are suing spammer who they say are making fraudulent offers to their customers, CNET reported. Tokyo-based Internet service provider Typhoon has made a partial settlement for $2,500 in damages with Paging America and other defendants (CV 97-6270 JSL (AIJx) S.D. Cal. Sept. 1997), also CNET.
Some people's mail has been blocked by attempts to cut off spammers, reported CNET.
Major ISP UUNet has instituted some new anti-spam measures, following boycott steps, reported CNET, and Wired News. Separately, various other efforts are under way to prevent commercial postings rendering Usenet unusable. [Wired] ZD News reported on NoCeM, an alternative to CancelBot, and Interactive Week reported on net.*, ``a new newsgroup feed based on rigorous rules and an ardent anti-spam philosophy.''
The Nevada state legislature has signed the first US law on spam, CNET reports. ``The law requires that mass emailers offer a procedure for recipients to remove themselves from mailing lists and that senders use their correct business names, but it imposes no penalty for spammers who fail to comply.''
A man whose domain name has been used as a bogus return address by spammers has offered a reward in his attempts to track them, reports CNET. A similar bounty was offered in http://b2000.com by a different victim.
The Manhattan State Supreme Court has ordered spammer ``Krazy'' Kevin Jay Lipsitz to discontinue his fraudulent practices, Bloomberg reported. He was also accused of e-mail-bombing people who complained about his spam.
Separately, Junkbusters has added a new page on how to avoid having your email address added to spammers' lists.
Separately, Cyber Promotions Inc. is suing WorldCom, which reversed its decision to provide the spammer with Internet connectivity, according to CNET. The spam factory was subsequently kicked off another access provider.
Legal eagles hovering over spammers
Senator Robert Toricelli (D-New Jersey) introduced the Electronic Mailbox Protection Act of 1997 June 11. EPIC's roundup of spam legislation states that it ``creates a cause of action against spammers who try avoiding responses, messages of non-delivery, or filtering mechanisms... [and] against those who harvest e-mail addresses or distribute lists of them with the intention or knowledge that they will be used to send unsolicited e-mail.'' It also ``initiates an opt-out scheme... based on individual interactions between each recipient and each spammer.''
Web Systems Corporation is undertaking litigation including class action against Cyber Promotions and its president. Its Spam Fight! site includes discussion database `` to allow the internet community to provide commentary about the activities of Cyber Promotions and any damage, nuisance, or other activities which might interest the court.''
The director of the Pennsylvania Attorney General's recently created Information Technology and Law division is quoted by Wired News as saying ``[Spam is] causing substantial injury. It's not an issue we're going to drop.''
Federal legislation proposed to restrict spam
Two separate Acts have been proposed restricting or banning spam, one by Chris Smith (R-New Jersey) [coverage by Wired] and another by Senator Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska) [coverage by CNN, Wired]. Comparisons of the two were made by the Boston Globe. Wired News reported that the site http://www.intergov.org is conducting a poll on them.
The legislation is monitored on the Anti-Spam Page of the Electronic Software Publishing Corporation, which also includes a wealth of related resources. A tabular comparison of three bills is provided by CDT. An analysis critical of all bills other than the Smith bill, including the Tauzin bill is provided by CAUCE.
Email opt-out lists: easy to start, hard to enforce
Many organizations are setting themselves up as compilers
of lists of people who don't want to be spammed.
Some are honestly trying to do the right thing,
others are putting up a sham to deflect criticism for spamming.
Some of these measures may help,
but there is
widespread agreement
that they won't completely solve the problem.
The history of
D-SPAM
isn't encouraging.
Junkbusters and many others are astonished that a major Internet company would attempt to become ``Spam Central.'' The announcement will be remembered in Halls of Shame as the hubris of AGIS.
Public reaction has been swift and sharp. AGIS has fallen victim to network attacks, and its presidents' car has been egged. Yahoo created an Anti-AGIS category, which includes a series of graphic parodies on its name and logo. Our contribution: Association of Giant Institutional Spammers.
In other spam-related news
DMA says spam ``poses little or no risk to consumers''
In its written comments before the Federal Trade Commission's enquiry into consumer privacy, the Direct Marketing Association says it believes ``except in the cases of fraud, unsolicited marketing e-mail poses little or no risk to consumers, but substantial risks to direct marketers...'' Consumers who fear a risk that their email might become completely clogged by spam will see this statement as confirmation of the DMA's indifference towards people who don't want spamming to become rampant. We believe that the DMA's policy of allowing companies to spam will greatly increase the number of companies do so, without stopping the many who currently ignore requests not to spam. Their planned electronic Mail Preference Service is likely to be even more ineffective at stopping spam than their Telephone Preference Service is at stopping telemarketing calls. In comments filed after the event, the DMA somewhat qualified their position.
In DM News counsel Robert Gellman denounced the DMA's ``send-until-they-scream policy'' and attacked the DMA's president for speaking the awful truth that emailing only people who asked would make it ``too difficult to make e-mail direct marketing a viable concept.''
Cyber Promotions Web site attacked by hackers
The web site of the world's most prominent junk email factory, Philadelphia-based Cyber Promotions Inc., was broken into by an anti-``spam'' hacker on Thursday 20 and Friday 21 March, according to two separate stories on CNET. On the Friday evening, Wired News reported that the whole event may be a hoax. They ran another story on Wednesday 25 March about the company's denial of this.
On Friday 21 March about 9am we saw the company's home page changed to begin with an obscenity against Cyber Promo's President, Sanford Wallace, followed by the line ``Give up, the internet does not want spammers.'' The hacked page remained live for more than an hour, after which the Cyber Promo site appeared to have been shut down for a period. By 11:30 am the regular page was reinstated, with a message saying that the company had identified the hacker.
Junkbusters believes that spammers should be countered by legal means, not break-ins.
Hackers have previously mounted similar attacks on other sites. The web site of the CIA was penetrated by a group of Swedish hackers on 18 September 1996, who changed its name to the Central Stupidity Agency. Another hacker replaced a page of aviation statistics published by the US Air Force with a pornographic picture.
You're invited to a spam party in cyberspace
Reuters reports that First Virtual has developed ``HTML e-mail'' software that allows solicitors to receive a commission on any purchase made as a result of their email solicitation, ``even from one consumer to another.'' Direct marketing on the Internet ``might be horrifying...but it's what's working,'' said AOL VP Greg Shove.
Spammers hijacking ISPs
C-NET reported 2/25 that one spammer used ``a simple technique for sending email from the ISP's server without actually having an account on its system, making the culprit difficult if not impossible to track down.''
We hope that such activity will be prosecuted appropriately. Courts seem to be coming to the opinion that junk email can constitute actionable trespass.
Bill proposed to outlaw spam in Nevada
EPIC reports that ``Senator William Raggio, the majority leader of the Nevada Senate, introduced a bill (S.B. 13) that would prohibit sending unsolicited email for commercial purposes.'' (See also PC Magazine and Wired). According to St. Petersburg Times (3 March 97), ``California, Virginia and Connecticut are considering similar measures, but the Nevada legislature is widely viewed as closest to passing the ban.''
Our opinion is that although widespread spamming is clearly against the public interest, attempts to outlaw it are likely be ineffective.
Junk email in the courts
Junk email is becoming such a widespread problem that it is now
the subject of several legal disputes.
For the latest updates see our
What's New
page.
The ``R9ch'' and ``tiptoe001'' child porn spam
On 21 October 1996 a highly offensive piece of spam was sent from two AOL accounts to perhaps hundreds of thousands of email addresses around the world. Reuters reported that the FBI has determined that it is a hoax. AOL says that the users at the two addresses were not involved in sending the messages. The sender appears to have been trying to victimize the person named in the letter.
Here is an excerpt from the letter.
Hi! I sent you this letter because your email address was on a list that fit this category. I am a fan of child pornography and for the past 4 years, I have been able to gather quite a collection of it. I have pictures, VHS tapes, posters, audio recordings, and games based on child pornography. I am now selling my products (or trading for other child pornography). I have a complete color catalog of all my products now available.The person named in the letter appears to be the intended victim of the hoax. The email was sent from two America Online accounts (tiptoe001@aol.com and r9ch@aol.com), but AOL says it has determined that those people were not involved in sending it. We hope that the real sender of this mail is caught and prosecuted. JUNKBUSTERS SPAMOFF is intended for genuine spammers who really do repeat their solicitations.If you were not supposed to receive this letter, please delete it immediately. I send out these advertisements to this mailing list once a week. If you want to get off this mailing list, please send a letter to my address below. Do not write to this email address because I will delete it after I mail these letters. The only way to get off this mailing list is to write to my address below.
The child porn spammer angered many people by beginning with the statement about email lists. It correctly points out that people have no effective way to control the use made of information about them gathered from the Internet. Real marketers don't rub consumers' noses in the details of how they do their targeting, but the truth is that the Internet is giving them far more information than they have ever had. If you think you remain anonymous when surfing the net, you might want to read our alert on Web Privacy.
Although this particular case appears to be a fake, it shows how offensive email solicitations can be. If the whole practice of spamming isn't stopped in its tracks, messages like this could become a daily feature of using email, not just an occasional outrage. For an indication of the anguish this spam has caused, sample the discussion on Usenet.
Name-scavenging robots
Services that retrieve email addresses for a given name can be very useful for finding a lost friend, but also useful for companies who want to include your email address in what they already have about you in their databases, perhaps throwing in some psychographics derived from your Usenet postings over the years, plus anything you've put on the Web. Or they can pay someone to do it for them, along the lines of roverbot.com, which ``harvests'' (scavenges) email addresses ``by exploring web pages that meet your criteria,'' or a similar ``Agent'' tool that also automatically emails a canned message. The day can't be far off when merely mentioning words such as ``gardening,'' ``yoga,'' or ``golf'' in a chat room, on Usenet, or a web page will get you a barrage of catalogs, club membership, and magazine subscription solicitations, by email, telemarketing and junk mail, and add the information about your interests to an unknown number of databases.
The Financial Times reported 1997/9/5 that the NASDAQ stock exchange is monitoring chat rooms for ``market sensitive information.'' Surely some stockbrokers have had the same idea: ``Hello Mr Jones? I happened to be in the chat room where said it's a good time to buy...''
``an additional medium for Psychological Operations campaigns''
The Pentagon has also noticed the attractions of spamming, as shown by a 1995 report from the ``Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict'' called Strategic Assessment: The Internet. Here's a quote mentioned in Wired (4.10).
Increasingly, officials in national governments, foreign military officers, business persons, and journalists, are obtaining access to the Internet and establishing individual e-mail addresses. There is even a commercial service that will shortly offer access to an online database of the names, organizational titles, phone/fax numbers, and Internet e-mail addresses of virtually all government officials in all countries. Using this information, it would be possible to employ the Internet as an additional medium for Psychological Operations (Psyops) campaigns. E-mail conveying the U.S. perspective on issues and events could be efficiently and rapidly disseminated to a very wide audience.
Spammer is phone-bombed
Thomas Petzinger Jr's Front Lines column in the Wall Street Journal November 1 tells a morality tale about spammers. He reports that somebody set up phone software to continually dial a spammer's toll-free telephone number. The spammer is quoted as saying ``People don't realize the ramifications of someone pushing a button.''
Using autodialers to call a toll free number is illegal in the US, as explained in our page on how consumers could use their PCs to enforce their permissions concerning direct marketing.
Survey finds users want spamming stopped without legislation
The GVU's 6th WWW User Survey found that ``people are very clear'' that they do not want to be spammed, and asked what they propose to do about it.
``The majority of people responded in favor of an opt-out system, where a registry would contain the addresses of people who do not wish to receive mass emailings. Note that is is similar to the system already in place in the US that exists to remove people from junk mailing lists. Over 16% responded in favor of imposing an 'impact' fee on the agencies sending the mail. Exactly what this impact fee would be or how it would be implemented was not specified in the question. Somewhat surprisingly, only 5.89% voted in favor of government regulation making spamming illegal.''About 4% of those surveyed say that they retaliate against spammers.
Spam is often fraud
``Spam has already won its place as bottomfeeder of the advertising media food-chain,'' wrote Mark Frauenfelder in Wired News. Eschewed by legitimate marketers, it has become a haven for scamsters. If you or someone you know has been a victim of a fraud through spam (other than the usual fake headers), please tell us.
So what should be done about spammers?
We think that as a matter of public policy, the case against junk email is stronger than the one against junk faxes, which were outlawed by in 1991 in the US. However, many people oppose any legislation that restricts the Internet, and it wouldn't be effective anyway: spammers would remail their junk through other jurisdictions to evade regulation.
Until recently we have simply recommended replying to spammers saying that junk email may be illegal, but the time has clearly come for stronger measures. Our new service, JUNKBUSTERS SPAMOFF, uses a tactic adapted from Private Citizen Inc.'s anti-telemarketing methods. A similar idea has even been published by at least one person on the Web. The basic idea is to tell them that their spam costs you money, and that they must pay you if they send you any.
We hope that lawsuits won't be needed; we don't want the courts to be the place where the future of the Internet is decided. But we do want spammers to know what they are risking. Their basic economic principle is that they are willing to annoy a very large number of people for the sake of getting money from a small number of people. This is exactly the part of direct marketing that we are trying to change forever.
Copyright © 1996-2005 Guidescope Inc ®. Copying and distribution permitted under the GNU General Public License. 2005/01/15 http://www.junkbusters.com/stopspam.html