Comments on: When a lawyer gets hit by spammers, expect a lawsuit

In rare instance of individual taking spam fight to court, attorney files suit saying his e-mail address was hijacked by spammers.

Gr8 going

I hope all spammers get into jail and that they get a cellmate called Bob who likes to "drop the soap".

Actually the only thing that's annoying to me is spam since I have no viruses/adware (on Linux) but even the best of spamfilters cannot stop everything.

[George Cole]

best of spamfilters

http://www.analogstereo.com/jaguar_xjs_owners_manual.htm

[hadaso]

One more reason not to "unsubscribe" from spam

This is one additional reason not to "unsubscribe" from spam! When the spam says to "unsubscribe" by replying, you might just be sending spam to one additional spam victim (the one whose email address was used in the "From" or "Reply-to" fields.

I usually try to unsubscribe from cerain spam messages (NOTE: only from an address I use for receiving and reporting spam though spamcop.net and never from an email address I use to get real email). I do it so I can record the unsubscribe requests and include details about not honouring them in subsequent complaints about the same spammer). But just a few minutes before reading this story, I followed the "unsubscribe" instructions on a spam message that said to just "hit reply" to unsubscribe, but it seems now that the reply was sent to an innocent third party. My experience is that usually these kinds of "unsubscribe" instructions either send to a non-existent address, or to a real address of the spammer that usually is "over quota". Most spammers that want a fake "unsubscribe" option just use a fake URL.

So in fact' if you want to make sure you don't send spam yourselg, you should never "unsubscribe" by replying to an email.

This is one issue in which CAN-SPAM completely fails, by giving spammers a tool for making recipients participate in a denial of service attack: the only way for a recipient to comply with the act is to follow the "unsubscribe" instructions, even when following them just sends more spam, and there's no easy way for the recipient to tell working instructions from non-working or malicious instructions. If "opt-out" is to work, it must be done through a "trusted party", i.e., only by a link to a recognized agency that handles these requests and that the recipient trusts.

Right now it is dangerous to reply to spam, or just follow unsubscribe instructions, not just because your own address is revealed, but also because by doing this you might be participating in an online attack on a third party!

[New-York-Accident-Lawyer]

Spam is a big issue in USA. Each and every day several million spam emails are sent from various countries. It is a menace which should be clamped down seriously.