Comments on: Microsoft wins record amount from spammer

Company wins $84,177 over term violation; U.K. individuals, though, are virtually helpless against spammers, lawyer says.

[hadaso]

There are plenty of ways to convict spammers

Spammers forge communication data (email transmision headers). Spammers steal identities (forged sender headers, meant to have others cope with complaints). Spammers steal computer and network resources by taking over vulnerable PCs and building spam sending "botnets" from them. Spammers cheat their customers (advertisers) by using false claims that their service is completely legal (including forged headers, botnets etc.)

There are plenty of ways to bring a spammer to court without even mentioning the question whether or not sending unsolicited bulk email is OK or not OK.

Spammers work for money. Advertisers pay for their service. If an advertiser pays someone to infiltrate other people's PCs and use them to send spam, then the paying party should be responsible for the result (trojan horses in other people's PCs, mailbombing of Joe job victims etc.) and pay the price (spend time in jail). If you pay someone else to kill someone, or just steal something you need, then you are an accomplice. You are responsible to the crime even though someone else carried it out. Advertisers are paying the spammers to perform criminal activities for them. They should should pay the price for the crimes they finance, and the price should be jailtime if breaking into computer systems or posing as a third person is part of the deal.

[rmiecznik]

I agree

I agree, go after the companies that the spammers sent the emails for, and the spammers too.

Both.

[ml_ess]

Not letting them off easy, or anything!

There have been a couple news stories about spammers (finally) getting charged for flooding inboxes, and I've yet to see a sentence that fits the crime. http://www.essentialsecurity.com/Documents/article20.htm
An old email account got spammed so bad that I had to completely shut it down to open a new one. Might not be a big deal for personal email, but for your business address it can cause major damage... so why aren't these Internet CRIMINALS actually PAYING for their crimes...?!

[aabcdefghij987654321]

Record amount? Doesn't look like much!

If this judgement is a record amount then the British courts and laws are seriously lagging behind. This piddling little amount isn't nearly enough to deter spam unless the bozo that sent all that spam was making seriously less than other spammers.

[wbenton]

Hope it helps...

I don't really care whether Microsoft profited from it or not.

Nor whether the amount was really anything worthy of such news.

But what I do care about is the signal that SPAM won't pay in the future. Although the fee itself isn't really that phenominal... hopefully this will set a future trend to make spammers think twice prior to pushing the "Send Millions of Spam" button!!!

Walt

[wbenton]

Very Simple Solution

Hold ISP's responsible for their users.

SPAM originates from users.

Users MUST connect to the internet via ISP's.

Thus ISP's ARE the First Line of DEFENSE!!!

Holding ISP's responsible for Spammers WILL FIX THE PROBLEM.

If Irresponsible ISP's want to continue accessing the internet... they MUST assist in stopping SPAM originating from their network!!!

If they don't BLACKLIST their entire IP address range.

It may seem draconian... but it's not really. You fix the problem at the root.

And in this case... the root is irresponsible ISP's.

Thus until somebody starts holding the ROOT responsible... not much will change.

This article about only effective within the UK only goes to serve just such.

ISP's... regardless of where they're located in this world... MUST follow Anti-Spam guidlines or else face the wrath of their entire IP Address Range being blocked.

Irresponsible ISP's will fall by the way-side while responsible ISP's fighting to retain their entire IP address range WILL FIX THE PROBLEM!!!

No two (2) ways about it.

The problem MUST be solved at the root. And in this case... the ROOT is the irresponsible ISP!

Hold them accountable or face further increases of SPAM!

Walt