FTC Finally Cracking Down On Spoof Con Sites
from the it's-about-time dept
In the past few months, there seemed to be a new story every other day or so about a scam involving a "spoofed" website, made to look like a legitimate company, asking for credit card and/or banking info. The way the scam works is that the scammer would create the site, and (usually) try to obscure the real URL to make it look legitimate. Then, they'd spoof the email headers to send out spam appearing as if it came from the same company, telling people there was a billing problem, and to go to the site to solve the problem. A few people, not realizing it was a scam, would go to the site, enter their info, and be ripped off. Finally, it appears that the FTC is cracking down on such scams. Of course, it's not clear they're cracking down very hard. They caught one such scammer - a 17-year-old kid who spoofed AOL - and got him to agree to a $3,500 fine and a promise that he'll never send out spam again. Not exactly going to scare too many people, is it? So, let me get this straight. If you happen to have a perfectly legal file sharing application on your desktop, and it leaves open access to copyrighted materials (even if no one downloads them), you can be thrown in jail as a felon. However, if you've consciously set up an elaborate scam to trick people into giving up their credit card and bank account info you get a slap on the wrist and are told not to do that again? That sounds fair.
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Welcome to the US Justice System...
Where else in the world do you have the privilege of being found guilty of copyright infringement and find yourself in jail with penalties the same as if you accidently killed someone, sold large amounts of drugs, or transported illegal aliens into the country for profit?
Rates up there with being convicted as a hacker without a trial and held in jail for five years without even a bail hearing because someone with access to the New York Times and a dire want to get money even when spouting lies and half truths decides to set their sights on you.
The good thing is that after five years of hard time, the 56 million teenagers arrested and convicted for the felonious copyright infringement will be fully educated in the art of crime, and we'll have 56 million more ways to be scammed.
Of course, the government will have really good access to low cost child labor during that time period.
Of course, I am waiting for the RIAA to use Burman and Hollings to push through a "Promotion of Digital Music Act (PDMA)" whose sole goal is to outlaw dissention and anger towards the RIAA (since just about every name they have come up with so far has been an anti-thesis of the contents of the bill.)
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Re: Welcome to the US Justice System...
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