[Dave P]

Here we go, lowering the theshold for a felony, one more time:

Spam Sent by Fraud Is Made a Felony Under Virginia Law


By SAUL HANSELL The New York Times

In the toughest move to date against unsolicited commercial e-mail, Virginia enacted a law yesterday imposing harsh felony penalties for sending such messages to computer users through deceptive means.


So does this also mean the sending of all those deceptive envelopes I get from Publishers Clearinghouse, saying I won a million bucks, is also a felony?

[BigG]

If it ain't, it should be. :o

[CZ-75]

A felony? :rolleyes:


Jaywalking must be a capital offense.


SPAM is annoying, probably deserves a fine, but it isn't a felony, to me.

Chalk this up to the ever-expanding list of felony crimes.

"I can't own a gun because I sent junk e-mail." :rolleyes:

I'd like to see those who send the same crap through the mail get similar punishment, then.

[BigG]

[/sarcasm] ;)

[spacemanspiff]

this morning i had 33 spam emails in my mailbox. throughout the day i will recieve no less than 20 emails offering me to refinance my nonexistant home, to refill my nonexistant prescriptions, and to enlarge my nonexistant genitals, not to mention they want to sell me creams to enlarge my breasts. they think i need to buy pills to lose weight. they think i still need to join a cd or dvd club. oh yeah, they also think i have an obsession with porn so at least a dozen sites will send me enticing offers of "free membership" for the first day.


spam email is more than just annoying. it should be a felony, and the criminals should have all their rights revoked, and they should never be able to touch another computer as long as they live. you know what, forget all that, they should be executed for wasting my time! some of you may think i'm joking, but i am not.

my old email server was more useful in blocking individual email addresses, or even entire blocks of IP addresses or domains.

[TheeBadOne]

I think what they are addressing are fraud attempts using spam. This is no different than other types of fraud, just using email to do it.

[Logistar]

Rant on:

Maybe I am just having a bad day today but it seems like most people here don't think crimes exist! It seems like society is no longer "polite". People want "whatever they can take".

Is it NICE to murder innocent people, say, for money?
Is it NICE to invade other people privacy if there's a buck in it?

Laws are made to (attempt anyway) keep society civilized. If you are knowingly engaged in "harmful" activity (illegal) you should be penalized.

As far as I am concerned, if the law says don't spam THEN DON'T SPAM. If you do.... then (as I said in another post) PAY THE PRICE - and the price needs to be sufficiently high to at least discourage the crime.

If you don't plan on being a criminal then don't worry about it. It you do then I hope you do find the laws distasteful. As long as we slap criminals on the wrist we do little to PREVENT crime.

Rant off.

[GregoryTech]

http://www.giantcompany.com/

or:

http://www.mailwasher.net (free version available).

They work.

[Sergeant Bob]

Public outrage at spam is causing states and Congress to start looking at stronger measures against it.
Spam Sent by Fraud Is Made a Felony Under Virginia Law (http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/30/technology/30SPAM.html?ex=1052280000&en=024152ea92fbadce&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE)

Too bad the "public" can't get "outraged" at the erosion of our Constitutional Rights! The only time they get mad is when they get spam, or have to pay an ATM fee.

Amendment XXVII
The right of citizens of the United States, to be free of inconvenience

[JohnBT]

Public outrage...and the fact that AOL is in Virginia outside of D.C. and the spam is about 40% or so of the daily volume IIRC. JT

[TheeBadOne]

If you spam me, you negate me
:neener:

[answerguy]

Is it NICE to murder innocent people, say, for money? Is it NICE to invade other people privacy if there's a buck in it?

Murder equals annoying people. Seems to be a stretch.

[TheeBadOne]

Murder equals annoying people. Seems to be a stretch.
Not on this forum :neener: :neener: :neener:

[Justin]

If you don't want spam, don't use your email to sign up for stuff on the web. If you absolutely have to, use one of those free yahoo email accounts, that way all your spam goes there.

Reserve your real email address only for people you know.

However, I think that the 'Jay and Silent Bob' approach would be the best one to take.
Ah, but for the freetime and the plane tickets...:p

[ImJustRick]

The right of citizens of the United States, to be free of inconvenience

Waitaminute. Until very recently I worked for myself, and 98% of that time was spent in front of my computer. I charged about $100 an hour for my services. I also got (and still get) about 50 pieces of SPAM per day.

Now if I took the time to read each one and decide to throw it away or keep it, that would take about an hour (50 mails @ 1 minute apiece = 50 minutes = $83.30). Every day I would lose one billable hour and almost one hundred dollars.

But we're all pretty savvy here, and we know what spam looks like, right? Okay, so I don't have to open it up and read it to know I need to delete it. Hitting delete-delete-delete takes me what, 10 minutes? Okay, spam just cost me $17. Over a one-work-week period, that's $83 again. That's over $4000 a year.

But wait, you say. You USED to work for yourself. Right. Now I work for a huge company with about 10,000 employees. Let's be generous and assume they all get a lowly dozen pieces of junk mail every day. Let's say it takes everyone only FIVE minutes to sort and delete this mail every day. That's 1666 work-hours per day. That's over 8000 work-hours per week. If the average salary here works out to, say, $30 an hour, spam costs my company...(furiously working the calculator)... almost a quarter-million bucks a week. Or something.

Tell me: if someone went into your bank account every Saturday morning and withdrew one days wages from you, would you want that person charged with a felony? How about if they did it for a year?

Now of course the flip side of this is that I really don't want the government sticking it's oversized nose into anything, up to and including what I get in my inbox. The more control the white men in suits exert over email, the more standing they have to put more restrictions and controls on it in the future. It's not a huge leap to wonder if sending controversial emails will soon be a felony. Or if sending unwanted personal mail will be a felony.

Indulge me as I wander a bit here, but aren't there cases in the Kalifornia courts recently about women who decided, post facto that they did not consent to intercourse? What happens if, say, I decide that I don't want a certain piece of email after I clicked on the "Yes! Send me info" button?

{/free association}

So I don't know. SOMEone should do something about all this spam... preferably something horrible and violent. :) I'd like to think that the might would come from the consumer end, in not supporting companies that send out junk email. That doesn't seem to be happening, though. I hate to see it fall into the hands of the gov'ment, but what's the alternative?

-R

[Logistar]

Murder equals annoying people. Seems to be a stretch. I guess I was having a pretty bad day.:)

Yeah, I guess those two are a little different.;)
The problem I have with SPAM is that it indirectly affects my freedom! (Maybe I should I stayed off the boards today!)

For example, my E-Mail just stopped working. Everything else was fine. I could not send E-mails. (ISP blocked all SMTP except for those destined for their servers.)

I called and wanted to know what was going on. They responded that it was a "spam reduction measure". In other words, I am not free to use any E-MAIL service I please (including my companies E-mail). I must go through theirs only.

My reasoning is that *I* have never sent spam so why should I be punished or restricted. - Restrict those who abuse it. They wouldn't listen though so now I am looking for another ISP but who knows when they might "change" too.

I prefer to keep my E-mail access "free" and punish (or restrict) those who don't play fair.

(I swear I am not posting anything else for a couple of days! - maybe I'll be back to normal by then!)

Logistar

[TheeBadOne]

If you don't want spam, don't use your email to sign up for stuff on the web. 1)If you absolutely have to, use one of those free yahoo email accounts, that way all your spam goes there.

2)Reserve your real email address only for people you know.
Good suggestions, but nothing if full proof. I myself use this set up, but you will still have 'friends you know' attaching your email address to mass jokes they sent to their other friends along with you. This can eventually land you on a "spammer list". I know, it happened to me. I still recommend using these 2 tips as I am amazed at the volume of spam in my 3 "bogus" accounts.

[Jeff White]

At least the anti-spam people are looking at things reasonably. How nice it would be if more activist groups looked at things this way. The bold highlights are mine.

Jeff


GET RID OF SPAM FOREVER*
updated: 04/30/2003 02:09 AM


*E-mail messages making false claims, like this one,
are the subject of an FTC survey and conference


By Michael Sorkin
Of the Post-Dispatch


Two-thirds of the junk e-mail that clogs our computers contains false information in the "subject" or "from" lines or the text of the messages, federal regulators said Tuesday in the most extensive review yet of spam.

Most misleading of all are the messages that promise wealth through work-at-home or other business opportunities. A whopping 96 percent contain false information, lawyers for the Federal Trade Commission found.

"You aren't going to get rich by replying to spam that says you can earn money or get rich - period," says the FTC's Eileen Harrington.

The survey results come as the FTC opens a three-day hearing in Washington today into spam - unsolicited, commercial e-mail that is widely distributed and sent in large volumes to unsuspecting computer users.

You can run from spam - but you can't hide.

Last fall, FTC staffers set up 250 e-mail accounts to study spam. They didn't have long to wait: 86 percent of the newly minted addresses rapidly began attracting spam. One spam message arrived just eight minutes after an address opened.

By one estimate, 45 percent of all e-mail this year will be spam. If nothing changes, that's expected to jump to 70 percent in four years.

The number of spam messages grows about 18 percent each year. More than one in six spam e-mails promote pornographic Web sites.

A St. Charles woman says she and her husband use the Internet to e-mail friends and family, to search for maps and to find Christian materials and authors. She says it saves on phone calls - at the price of invading her privacy "just like the telemarketers on the phone, only worse."

She contacted a reporter by e-mail about the spam epidemic but says she is afraid she'll attract more spam if her name is published.

"The government is doing all they can," she says hopefully. "But it's just gotten so much worse - I'm afraid to go anywhere on the Web anymore."

She isn't alone. Two members of Congress introduced separate anti-spam bills this week while a third already is being debated. Computer magazines are filled with stories on how to fight spam. The most common advice: Don't give out your e-mail address to anyone.

But how do you do that and still buy clothes at Lands' End and L.L. Bean, conduct your business and not turn into an Internet hermit?

Some Internet companies have gone bankrupt in part because of paying the cost of subsidizing advertising for spammers. Some spam carries viruses, which hijack the computers of those who receive it - turning them into spammers, too.

Spam is estimated to cost U.S. businesses $9 billion a year in attempted solutions and employee time.

Many companies resort to anti-spam filters, but none is foolproof.



"There clearly is no magic bullet - if there were we would have shot it by now," says John R. Levine, author of "Internet for Dummies."

The problem is that e-mail was never intended to be secure. When it was invented, security wasn't even considered to be a problem.

Spam is a social problem - and you can't solve social problems with technology or legislation, says Laura Atkins, president of the anti-spam group the Spamcon Foundation.

She says people should hide their e-mail addresses. When she gives out hers for business reasons, she creates a unique temporary address so she knows when that business resells it.

Her site, spamcon.org, offers free, disposable addresses to consumers.

For months, tens of thousands of people around the globe got spammed by a company calling itself "Married but lonely."

Some of the victims said they tracked down the name and address of the spammer. The spammer basically replied: "tough."

This month, the FTC filed a civil suit against a Ballwin man, identified as Brian D. Westby, after receiving 46,000 complaints.

The complaints are in the form of spam that is sent to the FTC at its spam e-mail address: uce@ftc.gov. Only FTC staffers can access the spam, which has reached 38 million and is growing at the rate of 130,000 per day, says the FTC's Brian Huseman.

David Sorkin, an expert in Internet and privacy laws at John Marshall Law School in Chicago, says spam can be fought with a combination of technological and legal devices.

Nearly 30 states have anti-spam laws; few are well-enforced. Congress has yet to act although observers say the odds are better now that direct marketers have dropped their opposition.

The result: There is usually no incentive to obey the law. Since taking aim at spammers, the FTC has filed nearly 50 lawsuits without putting a dent in spam.

"The effect of these laws is to legitimize spam," Sorkin says. "We ought to either ban it or not do anything with the law and just rely on technology."

In Missouri, Attorney General Jay Nixon and some legislators think they have found the answer: A "no-spam" list for consumers and businesses to stop unsolicited commercial e-mail. It's modeled on the popular no-call list enforced by Nixon's office.

The bill won House approval last month but has yet to come to a full vote in the Senate.

Nixon said reducing spam would reduce Internet fraud, just as the number of complaints about telemarketing fraud has dropped by half since enforcement of no-call began in July 2001.

A coalition of consumer groups pans all the anti-spam proposals as too weak because they don't prohibit spamming (requiring instead an opt-out) and don't allow consumers to sue spammers.

"Consumers should be able to sue spammers, just as they can sue junk faxers and telemarketers who phone them at 10 p.m.," says Jason Catlet, president of Junkbusters Corp.

Atkins, of Spamcon, says she favors stronger laws but doesn't expect them to be successful. The long-term solution, she says, is to remake the systems that send e-mail so that spammers can't hide their addresses or pretend to be someone else.

"Maybe," she predicts, "when spam becomes painful enough."



The Missouri spam bill is HB228.

Reporter Michael D. Sorkin:
E-mail: msorkin@post-dispatch.com
Phone: 314-340-8347

[0007]

I have a real problem with people who get wildly upset with SPAM. I don't like it either, but the simple solution is if you don't recognize the sender, USE THE DELETE BUTTON. I sometimes don't have access to a computer for a few days. When I do open my hotmail account I may find 150 junk emails sitting there. Takes me at least 2-3 minutes to read the headers and delete them. What I don't understand is felony(?) for spamming. Maybe a misdemeanor and banning from the net for some specified time.

[rock jock]

After years of getting tons of spam email, I am ready to make it a capital offense.

[Standing Wolf]

I think we need to handle fraudulent and/or obscene spammers on a tiered basis: the first offense ought to be a misdemeanor; the second, a gross misdemeanor; the third, a felony.

[Hkmp5sd]

Instead of 5 years in prison, they should bring Old Sparky out of retirement. Let them sit in the same chair Ted Bundy occupied (for a very short time anyway).

[pax]

Tell me: if someone went into your bank account every Saturday morning and withdrew one days wages from you, would you want that person charged with a felony? How about if they did it for a year?
No, I think I'd want him elected. It'd be an improvement.

Oh, SPAM? I'd suggest getting rid of AOL. I'll bet that 3/4 of you people who are complaining about spam are signed up with the biggest spam-factory in the world and are paying for the privilege. Me, I use a tiny little ISP and I never get spam.

pax

Progress might have been all right once but it has gone on too long. -- Ogden Nash

[Dave Markowitz]

I run my own domains and mail servers, I don't post my email addresses willy nilly all over the Internet, yet I still get some spam.

What people somtimes forget is that spammers tie up huge chunks of bandwidth and server resources -- none of it free to the ISPs -- by sending out their junk.

I say hang spammer from the nearest lamp post and leave them there for the encouragement of others. :cuss: