Top Spammer Arrested... But Will It Matter?
from the probably-not dept
While both Microsoft and an ISP have won multi-million dollar judgments against Robert Alan Soloway for spamming, he apparently kept on spamming. This time around, he might not have it so easy. Rather than a civil case from a company, he's now been arrested for sending out millions of spam emails over a zombie network he put together -- and it looks like the feds threw everything they could think of against him: mail fraud, wire fraud, e-mail fraud, aggravated identity theft and money laundering. Apparently, the identity theft part was for "taking over someone's domain" (though, it's not clear here if they mean falsifying an email address or for the zombie network). Either way, it's hard to believe that this will really have much of an impact. After all, other spammers have been arrested (and jailed) before and it's not like the spam has gone down. So it seems a bit ridiculous for the federal authorities who are going after the guy to claim that people should see the amount of spam they receive start going down due to this arrest. Someone else will simply step in and fill the gap pretty quickly.
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Stop Spammers
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Exactly
Zwx
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move it offshore!
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Re: move it offshore!
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Re: move it offshore!
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Consumer Education
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Take that, mom!
I agree that taking out this one guy will end up being ineffective, but that's not a good reason to stop trying to catch these douchebags.
Though, I think we should forget about spam and worry about the freakin' zombies!!!1111 ;)
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Learn to read!
That claim is just bogus.
It's good that the guy got arrested (and hopefully gets sentenced (I'd be an awful jury member in this case, though the prosecutor would love me)), but it won't stop spamming in any way, nor will we see much of a decline in the amount of spam.
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Re: Learn to read!
That claim is just bogus."
On my account alone Spam Assissin has detected 84 messages in the last 7 days versus an aerage of more than 400 a week for the previous month.
Have to say the claim seems less than bogus from my perspective.
Regards
Peter
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So?
Personally, I think we should have public stonings for these biotches.
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Re: So?
FORGET STONINGS, IMMA TALKING ABOUT BRINGING BACK PUBLIC EXECUTIONZ ! MAKE THEM KNEEL, PUT ONE IN THE CHAMBER, THEN SHOOT ONE TO THE BACK OF THE HEAD ! MAKE SURE THE CAMERA IS ROLLING ! NOT IN THE US ? CHECK IT OUT IN CHINA ! YES, CHINA HAS THE HIGHEST EXECUTION IN THE WORLD !!!!!!
DONT BELIEVE ME, LOOK FOR IT ONLINE SEE FOR URSELF !
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what spam?
along with other spam blockers. I HAVE NO SPAM. Why is it others can not do the same. Every thing i us is free and works well. I still have an AOL ACCT. and even there the spam filters do the job and I just hit DELET. I must be missing somthing but I just do not get the spam others do.
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Re: what spam?
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Re: what spam?
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Re: Re: what spam?
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Re: what spam?
People grumble about spam but don't get fed up since its not directly costing them money. If every email you received cost you something... you'd change your tune, especially if half of them were bulls**t from a**hole hawking viagra or pr0n.
We need to put these spamming losers under the jail.
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It won't really matter in the long run
a mere slap on the wrist, and will laugh all the way to the
bank, having paid some minimal fine and perhaps done
some light time. It will make absolutely no difference
of any kind with the overall spam problem, of course,
because he'll be back at it soon enough, and others --
seeing how easily he got off -- will make their own efforts.
FCC Commissioner Orson Swindle had it right: "What
we need are a few good hangings."
And the Feds are clueless if they're really citing "millions"
of spams -- big-time spammers like this send at least
that many in a single hour.
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It won't slow down spam...
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spam
Question for everyone that gets spam. if you run what comment Number 10 is doing lets get techdirt.com or someone to survey how much spam after a month of installing these filters and or protecting the emails get.
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spam
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Blocking spam
Go figure we got a bunch of politicians reading this stuff.
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Solving spam
Would you like $5 of this return to go to fund the international spam and internet fraud police/execution squad?
Then we make it a crime to do business with or click on any spam.
I think our ISP's are responsible for selling our addresses to spammers that fill our boxes. I make ones like "x5ty7$49a@netzero.com" and I still get spam, that proves that ISP provider netzero is selling my address.
Yahoo is extremely effective at blocking spam, I see perhaps 3 in a month.
"L"
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Spam
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Still Spam
It's a typical ostrich approach to just assume that because you don't see something it isn't there.
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two cents worth
There are many things in this world that I find unacceptable; spamming is one of those things. There are social rules we live to attempt to live peacefully with each other is this ever shrinking world.
I live my life by several simple rules, the first is “Each and every person has the right to do what ever they want to do as long as it does not infringe on the rights of any other person. When an act of exercising those rights leads to an action that encroaches upon someone else’s the person responsible forfeits their rights.”
Now, these people can be gathered into large communities, separated from the general population being a strain on those willing to follow the rules.
Or
They can be gathered into one place and quickly and cost efficiently recycled into a product that benefits the general population in the most positive manner, like being converted into petroleum. The Soylent Green of the 21st century.
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Eye for an eye
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Spam
In the mean time, I'd rather have my users worry about the stuff they're NOT getting because of the Spam firewall then the 65000 spam messages coming in every month.
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Utopia
I was just wondering.
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Re: Utopia
Spammers burn in hell. If we can only throw them in jail, then I will take it.
Other cops can chase the violent criminals, this is not a zero sum game.
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Think smarter
Will the amount of spam go down in a huge way just because he is no longer spamming? No, and that is the ONLY thing all of you are thinking about.
If other spammers see this guy get taken down hardcore, then they might start thinking to themselves "hmm maybe now is a good time to stop before *I* get caught"
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Re: Think smarter
Jeremy Jaines got sent to jail for 9 years and was fined millions... and spam continued to increase. These guys don't think they're going to get caught, and punishment isn't stopping the spammers.
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Not Harder...
My junk mail box hovers around 500 or so, but nothing gets through that I don't want. And that's just with gmail-- nothing else. No time and no money on my part.
Also, Mr. Geezer, you tossed out the fun phrase "zero sum game" which I thought meant that my gains were my opponent's losses, and vice versa. I fail to see how it should apply to your topic. However, I'd like to remind you that taking one cop and making him hunt down a "Spam King" is one less cop that can be hunting down a rapist. (I'm not sure what you meant, really.)
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Effective punishment
Why don't I rob a bank? Because I know I'll be caught and I know I'll go to jail?
Why do spammers send spam? Because they know they will not be caught. And even if they are caught, what are the chances that they'll go to jail?
Mike mentions one guy who got sent to jail for 9 years? Who else? Out of the billions and billions of spam messages that have been sent out, how many people have gone to jail?
Now add in the fact that many spammers either operate overseas or operate a zombie network overseas. It would take a *LOT* of work to get that country's government to extradite the spammer to the US to stand trial.
So, while it's great to hear that a spammer was arrested, I don't think arrests and jail time is an effective deterrent.
Instead, someone (I'm not sure who) should educate people about not clicking on links in e-mails, not buying products from spammers, installing anti-spyware tools, and to start complaining to any company mentioned in spam e-mail.
Basically, the only effective way to stop spam is to stop the income from spam. If spammers can't make any money at it, they'll stop doing it.
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John's right (in comment #34)
"mass mail abuse" and other similar things 20 years ago.) And
I've seen all kinds of supposed "solutions" to spam -- from
junk like SPF ("Spam as a technical problem is solved by SPF" -- yeah,
right) to poorly-designed spam-spewing appliances (of which Barracuda is a major offender) to idiocy like pay-per-email.
None of these have worked, and none of them are going to work.
They fail because none of them do what's necessary: pin
responsibility for the spam problem on those who are responsible
for it. By that I mean holding system and network operators
responsible for what comes out of their networks; holding
web hosts responsible for what they're hosting; holding registrars
responsible for who their customers are; etc. NOBODY gets a
pass, nobody gets to say "not my problem". Anyone providing
any form of support to any spammer/phisher/etc. needs to
stop, stop now, stop permanently, and ban those people for life.
(Yes, for life. One thing we've learned is that there is no such
thing as an ex-spammer. Not until they're dead. See "Spamford".)
Until this happens, the spam problem will continue to get worse.
And the only way to make this happen is to blacklist -- to
refuse to provide services to those entities that are supporting
spam. This makes it THEIR problem instead of OUR problem --
it imposes economic pain (when done by a sufficient number of
people) that appears to be the only way to direct the attention
of those responsible to the problem.
It's sad that this is the case. But it's been proven, over and
over again, beyond any possible argument, that this is exactly
how it works. So be it. We can either resign ourselves to living
with an ever-growing spam problem, or we can have the guts
to blacklist those responsible. Choose.
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Re: John's right (in comment #34)
THOUSAND ARE EXECUTED EVERY YEAR, THE HIGHEST IN THE WORLD !
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No more spam
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THEREZ NEVER TOO MUCH FOR THE FEDS TO HANDLE, MORE MONEY FOR THE FEDS ! WOULD YOU WANT TO GO TO PRISON FOR SENDING OUT STUPID EMAILS ?ALL THOSE THAT ARE STILL SPAMMING, WILL EVETUALLY BE CAUGHT SOONER OR LATER ! YES THEY WILL BE REPLACED, REPLACED BY DUMB IDIOTS ! & THEY WILL BE CAUGHT AS WELL! WHO DOESNT KNOW UNTIL ITS TOO LATE ! I LOVE IT, AMERICA IS SUCH A AWSOME COUNTRY TO LIVE IN !
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