Start your day with: The first successful Spammer conviction

[Knightshade Dragon]

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080302-first-spam-felony-conviction-upheld-no-free-speech-to-spam.html

There ya go folks - the first felony spam conviction.  9 years in Federal "Pound me in the ass" prison for this chump.  My day is brighter already...

[Purge]

I prefer syrup.

[CeeKay]

[Wolves]

I predict that pretty soon he'll be the one getting something unwanted in his....'inbox'. 

[CeeKay]

I predict that pretty soon he'll be the one getting something unwanted in his....'inbox'. 

don't you mean his junk folder?

[Knightshade Dragon]

I predict that pretty soon he'll be the one getting something unwanted in his....'inbox'. 

I suspect when that item is out of his inbox there will be a "Draft".

Badoom Tiss!!! </crickets>

[Laner]

One down, 50 million to go

[unbreakable]

Too little, too late.

Had they done this kind of thing ten years ago, perhaps legitimate email wouldn't be a single digit percent of total email traffic.

[gellar]

Too little, too late.

Had they done this kind of thing ten years ago, perhaps legitimate email wouldn't be a single digit percent of total email traffic.

Wouldn't have mattered really... too easy to use Bots to send spam and of course there is the whole foreign countries issue.

gellar

[unbreakable]

Too little, too late.

Had they done this kind of thing ten years ago, perhaps legitimate email wouldn't be a single digit percent of total email traffic.

Wouldn't have mattered really... too easy to use Bots to send spam and of course there is the whole foreign countries issue.

gellar

I think it would have mattered, because these guys made a ton of money, then just moved their operations overseas.  Had it been difficult to get away with from the very start, the problem wouldn't have become the big business it is now.

I've also been reading that now, most of the spam, phishing, and spyware is being connected with organized crime.  Now it's a big money business.  Had the government just said that the already-existing "junk fax" laws also apply to email... rather than acting like email is some new and magical thing which needs all new and magical legislation... it would have been nipped in the bud.

For an example of how bad things are now, our spam filter needed to be rebooted during the day last week, and was down for five minutes.  We got tons of calls about people getting all kinds of spam in their inboxes, some people got as many as 50, maybe more.  That's from FIVE MINUTES without spam filtering up.

[gellar]

Oh I know how bad it is... a portion of the Vast Gellar Fortune (TM) came from working for an email security company during the boom years (and the subsequent selling of said company to a large, unnamed multinational congolomerate).

I think you have a point, had it never gotten off the ground, people would not have found ways to game the system.  Still, who knew it'd get to this point?

gellar

[Wolves]

I predict that pretty soon he'll be the one getting something unwanted in his....'inbox'. 

don't you mean his junk folder?

Bahahah!

I predict that pretty soon he'll be the one getting something unwanted in his....'inbox'. 

I suspect when that item is out of his inbox there will be a "Draft".

Badoom Tiss!!! </crickets>

Heheheh. Nicely done, sir.

Hey, I wonder if this guy will get any internet access for good behaviour. If so, I think we should bombard him will e-mails like 'GET YOUR JAIL SENTENCED REDUCED BY 3-4 YEARS GUARANTEED!!!', 'THESE PILLS CAN MAKE YOUR D**K SO HARD, IT'LL BE ABLE TO BEND JAIL BARS!!!', 'IMPRESS YOUR NEW GIRLFRIEND BOYFRIEND!!!!', etc.

[Kratz]

See... you really missed a chance at a GREAT joke...

'Now his outbox will be full of a different kind of pork.'

You settled for merely 'ok'

[unbreakable]

I think you have a point, had it never gotten off the ground, people would not have found ways to game the system.  Still, who knew it'd get to this point?

gellar

Mostly geeks like me who spent most of their time sitting in server rooms.  Hardly surprising nobody listened to the warnings 

Actually, if people would have just looked at communications history, it was pretty obvious.  Junk Faxes were a huge problem.  Junk mail has always been a big problem.

Think about the snail mail you receive.  How much of that is actually legitimate communications?  I'd say 15-25% of my mail is bills or communications, and the rest is unsolicited junk.

So it's not really without precedent, it's just people were too busy ooh-ing and aah-ing over how new and groovy email was, and not putting enough time into just looking at it as simply the latest upgrade for written communication.

[gellar]

Well let's not even get into the fact that SMTP is probably the dumbest successful protocol in history.

gellar

[Knightshade Dragon]

Let me tell ya, paying for a server out of your own pocket tends to make you a little hyper-sensitive to spam.  No punishment would be too great for this guy.   

[unbreakable]

Well let's not even get into the fact that SMTP is probably the dumbest successful protocol in history.

gellar

It seems like just about every standard out there was really created more as a "proof of concept", but then rather than designing something good, it was just used as it was.

That's also why networking is so goofy.