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Archive-name: net-abuse-faq/email/spam-evils
Posting-Frequency: bi-weekly Last-modified: 16-Jun-2001 URL: http://www.twinlobber.org.uk/antispam/faq/faq2.txt Maintainer: James Farmer <nanae-faq@usenet.twinlobber.org.uk> See reader questions & answers on this topic! - Help others by sharing your knowledge
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An FAQ For news.admin.net-abuse.email
Part 2: The Evils of Spam
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Recent Changes
Disclaimer
Preface
2.1 The Problem with Spam
2.1.1 What are UBE and UCE? What is SPAM?
2.1.2 Why is spam a problem?
2.2 Advertising by Email
2.2.1 I want to advertise my business using bulk email! How can I do
this?
2.2.2 Is it okay to spam if I use a remove list?
2.2.3 What if I use a global remove list?
2.2.4 What's opt-out? Opt-in? Confirmed/Double/Raspberry Opt-in?
2.2.5 What methods of opting-in are the best?
2.2.6 We bought an opt-in list but people still said we were
spamming. What gives?
2.2.7 Our opt-in mailing list is contaminated with non-opted-in
addresses. Can I send one last mail to its members asking them
if they want to remain?
2.2.8 Are there other ways to market on the Internet?
2.3 Legal Issues
2.3.1 Is spam illegal?
2.3.2 What's this about an American law legalising spam?
2.3.3 Isn't spam protected by the First Amendment?
2.3.4 Can I get legal advice in this newsgroup?
2.4 Spammers
2.4.1 Spammers all live in trailers and eat KFC, right?
2.4.2 Spammers don't make any money, right?
2.4.3 Spammers are all scumbags, right?
2.4.4 But some spammers are scumbags, right?
2.5 Organisations
2.5.1 What is "The DMA"?
2.5.2 What is "CAUCE"?
2.5.3 Who is "MAPS"?
Credits
Use Policy
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--------------------------- RECENT CHANGES ------------------------------
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Linked to http://www.whyspamisbad.com/ and
http://www.efuse.com/Grow/direct_email_marketing_.html.
Plus links to interesting articles at
http://www.latimes.com/business/cutting/features/lat_junk010503.htm
Slight change to 2.3.3
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------------------------------- DISCLAIMER ------------------------------
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The following document should, where not otherwise stated, be understood
to represent the opinions and beliefs of the FAQ-maintainer only. I
endeavour to ensure that these opinions and beliefs are as correct as
possible, but take no responsibility for any problems caused by errors
herein. This document should not be considered to represent the opinions
of any individuals or organisations other than the FAQ-maintainer.
Please note that in this document, "we" is intended to collectively refer
to all regular or semi-regular posters to the news.admin.net-abuse.email
newsgroup, including those of all persuasions, and should not be read as
indicating the existence of a "clique" comprising persons of similar
viewpoints.
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-------------------------------- PREFACE --------------------------------
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This is one of three documents I have compiled to comprise an FAQ for the
news.admin.net-abuse.email newsgroup. Each document addresses points in a
given area, specifically:
The SPAMFIGHTING OVERVIEW offers a taste of the many techniques people use
to fight spam. The objective isn't to teach you how to fight spam (there
are many far superior documents that do just this), but rather to
introduce some of the techniques you can use and refer you to some more
detailed works.
THE EVILS OF SPAM covers the more ethical, moral, and legal aspects of
spam, including just what constitutes spam and the types of people who
become spammers.
UNDERSTANDING NANAE aims to introduce all of the weird, wonderful, and
sometimes impenetrable terminology that people use in
news.admin.net-abuse.email (nanae). It covers both colloquialisms (e.g.
"chickenboner") and technical terms (e.g. "direct-to-MX").
These three parts are designed to stand alone and don't have to be read in
order; feel free to pick and choose just the bits you're interested in.
These documents shouldn't be considered to be "the" FAQ, as there are
plenty of other FAQs that are superior in insight, detail, or depth of
coverage. They are just an FAQ that I hope will answer some questions
that have been troubling you.
These documents are currently maintained by James Farmer. If you have any
suggestions for additions or corrections, then feel free to send an email
to nanae-faq@twinlobber.org.uk
The latest versions of all of these documents can always be found at
<http://www.twinlobber.org.uk/antispam/faq/>
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----------------------- 2.1 THE PROBLEM WITH SPAM -----------------------
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2.1.1 What are UBE and UCE? What is SPAM?
These are all types of email abuse; that is, abuse _of_ the email
system. They differ from abuse _on_ the email system (e.g. stalking,
sexual harassment) in that they endanger the usability of electronic
mail as a communications medium.
UBE stands for "Unsolicited Bulk Email" and is an email message that is:
(a) Unsolicited
i.e. it wasn't explicitly requested by the recipient
and
(b) Bulk (or Broadcast)
i.e. substantively identical messages were sent to a non-trivial
number of recipients
To put it another way, UBE is most of the junk email messages that plop
into your email box every day. UBE isn't necessarily advertising, and
emailed advertising is not necessarily UBE (advertising isn't UBE if you
request it, or you knowingly request something that it is attached to,
for example), but most UBE is advertising (because advertisers are the
ones with the most interest in making you see something you don't
necessarily want to).
UCE is often used as an alternative to "UBE" - it stands for
"Unsolicited Commercial Email". Which term you prefer is largely a
matter of style. UCE is easier to prove than UBE - it's easier for one
individual to see if an email is commercial in nature than to see if it
is sent in bulk - but UCE doesn't necessarily endanger the email system
if it isn't UBE.
Of course, as a spam-victim, you will probably be in no place to judge
whether a suspected spam you received really was sent in bulk, as you'll
only get one copy of the spam yourself. For the most part, this doesn't
matter, as you can make a jolly good guess based upon what it looks like
and whether you solicited anything like it. Unsolicited advertising is
rarely sent individually. As the saying goes, if it waddles like a duck
and quacks like a duck then it probably is a duck.
While almost all UCE is also UBE, the converse is not true - there are
whole classes of UBE that are not UCE, such as:
* Political - politicians love to make direct contact with the
electorate. Many of them will see UBE as an ideal medium for this.
* Charitable - the world's worthiest causes need our help. Many
charities don't understand the issues surrounding bulk email and
might think it'd be okay to send UBE requesting donations.
* Religious - there is no shortage of people preaching the end of the
world and repentance as the only salvation, and seeing UBE as an
ideal way to reach a large number of sinners.
Five minutes spent thinking about this will throw up plenty more
examples.
SPAM is a tasty luncheon meat produced by Hormel
(<http://www.hormel.com>). Spam (note capitalisation differences) is a
colloquial term with a large and sordid history; in
news.admin.net-abuse.email it is generally used as a synonym for UBE or
UCE.
The subtle differences between these terms can be confusing, but for the
most part UBE and spam can be equated and UCE considered a subset of
them.
Other people may have different definitions. For example, some maintain
that spam is any unsolicited, non-personal email. Most definitions are
broadly compatible but differ in a few places around the edges.
RELATED LINKS
The Email Abuse FAQ
<http://members.aol.com/emailfaq/emailfaq.html>
A spam Primer
<http://www.spamfree.org/spamprimer.html>
The Net Abuse FAQ
<http://www.cybernothing.org/faqs/net-abuse-faq.html>
EuroCAUCE FAQ: The Definition of spam
<http://www.euro.cauce.org/en/faq.html#Q16>
Hormel's Policy on spam and SPAM
<http://www.spam.com/ci/ci_in.htm>
2.1.2 Why is spam a problem?
Many spammers (senders of spam) try to equate junk email with junk
postal mail. However, there are several important differences:
* Junk postal mail is free to the recipient, whilst junk email must be
paid for by the recipient. (Many people pay per-minute for Internet
access, and spam means more mail to retrieve means more time online.
Also, many ISPs have had to install extra capacity and employ extra
staff in order to cope with spam, the money for which is raised by
increased subscription charges for the subscribers.) Junk faxes are
a better analogy than junk postal mail.
* Junk postal mail won't stop your legitimate mail from being
delivered. However, many people still have limited sizes (quotas) of
emailboxes; the more spam that they receive the less space there is
for legitimate email. And if their email box is full of spam, any
legitimate email sent to them will be lost. Junk email can also
cause loss of legitimate email by overloading mailservers.
* Junk postal mail scales, because there is a significant cost for
sending each individual junk mail - i.e. the cost of printing, the
cost of the paper, the cost of postage, the cost of the
envelope-stuffer to put everything together. This forces the junk
mailer to send only to a relatively small number of people - it
simply isn't economical to send mailshots to everyone in the country.
In contrast, junk email is nearly free for the sender, which means
that it doesn't scale. There's nothing to discourage every business
in the world from sending spam to every person in the world.
Sound silly? Think about it for a minute... imagine you're going to
send a junk email advertising your pizza parlour in New York, and
you've got a list of email addresses for people all over the world
that you've harvested from newsgroups/bought on a CD/whatever. How
long will it take to extract from the list just the ones in New York?
In fact, how long will it take to just weed out the non-American
addresses? How much will it cost? A lot, a LOT more than it'd cost
just to send your spam to every address on that list, local or not.
So which option do you choose; the expensive one or the cheap one?
Now imagine that, say, 10% of the other businesses in America are
doing the same thing. How many junk email messages do you think the
average Internet user would receive every day if this happened? The
answer is in the thousands.
* Many people feel spam to be a violation of their privacy. Many
people are now too afraid of getting more spam to use their email
address in public - which is clearly not a good situation as these
people are being driven away from the kinds of social intercourse the
Internet had grown to facilitate. People's trust in the system has
been broken down by spam.
So spam is a bad thing. And that's not even considering all the other
problems associated with spam (crashed mailservers, scams, pornography
adverts sent to children, etc)...
RELATED LINKS
SPAMJAMR's Spam Numbers and Spam Facts
<http://angelfire.com/co2/spamjamr/index2.html>
Frederick's Spam Arguments (three links about half-way down the page)
<http://hometown.aol.com/frederi108>
Spam Costs Everybody
<http://www.efuse.com/Grow/postage_due.html>
The Spam Maths
<http://www.twinlobber.org.uk/antispam/maths.html>
CAUCE Does the Math - Why Can't the Marketing Industry?
<http://www.cauce.org/pressreleases/math.shtml>
What Bill Gates Thinks of Spam
<http://www.microsoft.com/billgates/columns/1998Essay/3-25col.asp>
Why Spam is Bad!
<http://www.whyspamisbad.com/>
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------------------------ 2.2 ADVERTISING BY EMAIL -----------------------
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2.2.1 I want to advertise my business using bulk email! How can I do
this?
(For simplicity, I'm not going to cover ideas like sponsorship of
Internet newsletters and the like, which, while technically advertising
by email (and IMHO very good ideas), aren't really relevant to
discussions on spam.)
You have two choices:
You can send an advert to the email addresses of people you are _sure_
have explicitly requested this advertising. This list could have been
assembled by your company or it could be managed by another company who
will handle sending the advert to the list for you.
Or you can send spam.
It's as simple as that.
RELATED LINKS
Good Direct Email Marketing
<http://www.efuse.com/Grow/direct_email_marketing_.html>
2.2.2 Is it okay to spam if I use a remove list?
No. There are several big problems with "remove" lists:
1) They have an inhumanly bad reputation because people have found
that, on average, trying to be removed results in them being _added_ to
more spam lists.
2) Trying to get on the "remove" list of every company out there just
isn't practical.
3) Even if an email address gets removed, what's to stop it being added
again later?
The technical term for using a remove list is "opt-out", which will be
discussed in more detail later.
2.2.3 What if I use a global remove list?
Still no. A "global" remove list (i.e. one remove list used by
everyone) sounds okay to start with, but when it's been tried, there
have been problems:
1) All too often, when spammers have got hold of the "global remove
list" they've used it as a spam list - i.e. they've purposely spammed
the email addresses on the global "remove" list! This is because, of
course, each and every address on the global remove list is a confirmed
"real" email address being read by a real person.
2) To be effective, a global remove list would have to allow entire
domains to be added. For example, anything sent to
<anything>@twinlobber.org.uk will end up in my mailbox - if I wanted to
be on the global remove list, would I have to add every single possible
twinlobber.org.uk email address (of which there are an infinite
number)? Yet if you do allow domain-wide opt-out then immediately most
ISPs will opt out all of their customers, which would render this
solution unattractive to much of the Direct Marketing (junk mail of all
varieties) industry.
3) Many people object to the principle of the thing. I didn't ask to
receive spam, so why should I have to make the effort to be "removed"?
Around 1998, there was a "spam summit" between a group of leading
antispammers and representatives of the Direct Marketing industry. One
of the results was an understanding between the two sides to develop a
global remove list. This caused mass controversy in the anti-spam
newsgroups, which quickly subsided as the Direct Marketers allegedly
reneged on every commitment they had made.
RELATED LINKS
DMA RENEGES ON AGREEMENTS REACHED AT SPAM SUMMIT
<http://mail-abuse.org/rbl/renege.txt>
CAUCE's opinion on a Global Remove List
<http://www.cauce.org/pressreleases/pr-emps.shtml>
DMA to Internet: Shut Up and Eat your Spam!
<http://www.mail-abuse.org/anti-dma.html>
Direct Mail Double-Cross
<http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/1999/11/12/spam/>
DmNews - Is E-MPS a relic?
<http://www.dmnews.com/articles/2001-01-08/12608.html>
E-MPS - The DMA's E-Mail Preference Service
<http://www.e-mps.org/>
2.2.4 What's opt-out? Opt-in? Confirmed/Double/Raspberry Opt-in?
Opt-Out email marketing is similar to spam with a remove list. A
company collects email addresses, sends as much advertising to them as
they like, but have to remove an email address if its owner asks them to
("opts-out").
Opt-In email marketing is a system in which companies send advertising
to lists of email addresses to which people are only added if they
explicitly consent. Note that opt-in consent to be added to a mailing
list should only be considered as consent to be added to _that_ mailing
list, and not consent to be added to any other mailing lists as well.
Verified Opt-In (sometimes known as Confirmed Opt-In or Complete Opt-In)
is a system by which people have to "confirm" or "verify" their wish to
join a mailing list if the initial request came through a non-secure
channel - e.g. an email message (the sender can be trivially forged) or
a WWW form (ditto). The confirmation typically takes the form of an
email message containing a unique token or URL; the recipient must reply
to the message or visit the URL to confirm that they really do want to
be on the mailing list.
Double Opt-In is the Direct Marketing community's name for Verified
Opt-In, reflecting their belief that this makes it too difficult for
people to join mailing lists.
However, many believe that Verified Opt-In is essential for two reasons:
1) With Unverified Opt-In, anyone can "opt-in" someone else to a
mailing list. (There is a common revenge tactic, known as a
"list-bomb", in which you subscribe someone to a few thousand
high-traffic mailing lists and watch their email box die.)
2) Given this, it is impossible to tell the difference between
Unverified Opt-In and Opt-Out. If you receive an advertisement
supposedly sent to a "100% opt-in" mailing list when you know you
haven't opted-in, the list-owner can just say "someone else must have
signed you up; here's how you can remove yourself" when you challenge
them about it. Are they being honest or are they opt-out spammers? If
the list is run using Verified Opt-In procedures, this situation is
impossible.
Opt-out is, by the way, an important component of opt-in; it should be
possible for a person who has opted in to a mailing list to opt out of
it at some later date. This tends to preclude opt-in lists from being
passed from party to party - if you send a copy of an opt-in list to a
third party, and subsequently one of your subscribers wants to be
removed, how can they also be removed from the copies of that list held
by the third party and anyone they might have passed the list to?
Many proponents of opt-in email marketing have stated that it produces a
vastly superior response-rate than purely opt-out email marketing.
Other people will have their own definitions of these terms which differ
somewhat from those I've described here (e.g.
<http://www.permissionmail.org/glossary.html>). As ever, the
FAQ-maintainer advises you to read around.
RELATED LINKS
MAPS Basic Mailing List Management Principles for Preventing Abuse
<http://www.mail-abuse.org/manage.html>
Draft Recipient Choices for Permission-Based Email
<http://www.permissionmail.org/choices.htm>
2.2.5 What methods of opting-in are the best?
Always a good favourite for an involved discussion is just what opt-in
means beyond the typical setup of a mailing list. Let's look at a few
examples:
* Example.com is an ISP that decides to send regular advertising
messages to their customers. Is this spam?
No, it's not spam because they own the email addresses. Their customers
are perfectly free to opt-out of this advertising by finding another
ISP. Example.com may choose to run a traditional opt-out system with a
remove list for customers who don't want to receive this email, or they
may decide not to.
But is this opt-in or opt-out? IMHO, it's certainly not wrong so it
doesn't really matter.
* Example.com is an online shop that decides to send regular
advertising messages to their current and past customers. Is this
spam?
This is a good one. Does the existence of a past relationship imply a
solicitation of future promotional material by email? Various online
shops have dipped their toes into this water and some have jumped
straight in, but the consensus of opinion on this newsgroup is that it
is spam... _unless_ the online shop made it clear to you at the time
they acquired your email address that you would receive such promotional
material.
But is this opt-in or opt-out?
As written above, it's clearly not opt-out, as the buyer doesn't have a
method of stopping the flow of mails. Is it opt-in? Well, if the buyer
knew the promotions would be arriving before they signed up then they
certainly opted-in at that point, but this takes no account of the fact
that the buyer may well change their mind later. Opting-in shouldn't be
considered as permanently binding unless this itself is explicitly
stated.
* Example.com is an online shop that decides to send regular
advertising messages to their current customers. But they don't want
to spam, and want to be ethical, so they put a notice about the
promotional emails in a small typeface at the bottom of their order
form and supply a selected box that the buyer can deselect if they
don't want to receive the promotional emails.
There are two opposing viewpoints on this issue:
a) The order form clearly explains about the promotional emails and
tells the buyer what to do if they don't want to receive them, and
everyone should read the entirety of a page before they input any of
their personal details into it, so this is okay.
b) The order form is clearly structured in the hope that the buyer will
fail to notice the explanation about the promotional emails, and in the
event of this happening, the form is set up (checkbox ticked by default)
so that the user's consent will be presumed even if the it wasn't
explicitly given. This is not okay.
There is no clear concensus as to which of these viewpoints is correct.
As ever, you should consider the issues involved, sample the debate on
both sides, and make up your own mind.
* Example.com is an online shop that decides to send regular
advertising messages to their current customers. But they don't want
to spam, and want to be ethical, so they put a notice about the
promotional emails at the bottom of their order form and supply a box
that the buyer can select if they want to receive the promotional
emails.
In this case there is no controversy; positive action is required by the
user to "opt in" to the mailing list, and if the buyer fails to notice
the request for this action then it is assumed that he/she has not
consented. This is opt-in, pure and simple. And because there's no
attempt to trick the customer into receiving the promotional emails,
they'll generally be better received, which means that the recipients
will be more receptive to example.com's email promotions than would
otherwise be the case.
2.2.6 We bought an opt-in list but people still said we were
spamming. What gives?
There are a number of possibilities:
1) What you bought wasn't a real opt-in mailing list. Be especially
beware of lists that claim to be "targeted" or offer "qualified
addresses" or "screened contacts".
2) The people on the mailing list had opted-in to mail from the list's
original creator, but not from you. This is very common.
3) The people may have opted-in to the list but then opted-out of it
between you receiving the list and you sending your email. This is why
opt-in email lists shouldn't be passed around or sold.
4) The people complaining have forgotten that they signed up to the
list. You or your list-supplier should be able to prove that they did
sign up; however, some may still fail to believe this even when
confronted with the proof. This is not uncommon.
In either of the first three cases, I suggest you take it up with your
list supplier... and bin that dodgy list now. In general, it is always
good practice to ensure that you know exactly where the email addresses
on a mailing list came from before you undertake to make use of it.
RELATED LINKS
Opt-In Email List Fraud!
<http://www.optinnews.com/news/showart.asp?DB=NewsTable&ID=430>
2.2.7 Our opt-in mailing list is contaminated with non-opted-in addresses.
Can I send one last mail to its members asking them if they want to
remain?
Ah; a tough one. There are two schools of thought on this:
* Sending more email to that old list will be spam. Throw it away
immediately, start a new list and put information about it
prominently on your website.
* Okay, just this once. But make sure you throw away the dirty list
after the mailing and build a new one containing solely the verified
opt-ins that result.
Again, think things through for yourself, weigh up the pros and cons,
and make an informed decision.
2.2.8 Are there other ways to market on the Internet?
Yes. Email is by no means the only way to market online, just as postal
mail isn't the only way to market offline. From banner ads through
sponsorship and the like, to attention-gathering innovation, there's a
whole host of ways you can market. Here's just a few links to get you
started:
Good Ways to Market on the Internet
<http://spam.abuse.net/good-marketing.html>
We Are Not Opposed to Commerce
<http://spam.abuse.net/spam/dweebs.html>
Using the Internet to Advertise Successfully (An Index)
<http://www.coyotecom.com/advertise.html>
Advertising, Marketing and Promotion for Free!
<http://www.whew.com/on-line_marketing/>
<http://www.whew.com/Spammers/freeads.shtml>
<http://www.whew.com/Spammers/freesrchenglinks.shtml>
Free Internet Marketing Resources
<http://www.whew.com/Spammers/freemktg.shtml>
Internet Marketing Tutorial
<http://www.rapiddata.com/nethome.html>
Marketing on the Internet
<http://www.dnaco.net/~tinc/market.htm>
How to E-Market
<http://www.spamfree.org/marketers/howtomarket.html>
Direct Email Marketing
<http://www.efuse.com/Grow/direct_email_marketing_.html>
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--------------------------- 2.3 LEGAL ISSUES ----------------------------
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2.3.1 Is spam illegal?
Perhaps. It depends on where you live, and may depend on certain
interpretations of certain laws. I Am Not A Lawyer, but the spam laws
website seems like quite a good resource for finding out about
specifically anti-spam laws:
SpamLaws.com
<http://www.spamlaws.com/>
Many contend that spam is "theft by conversion" (because the spammer is
"stealing" your resources to send his spam) and "trespass by chattel"
(because the spammer is gaining entry to your computer (your mailbox or
mailservers) against your will). These issues are beyond the legal
expertise of this FAQ-writer, so if anyone can supply links to some
discourse on these matters it would be appreciated.
Spam may also form a Denial of Service attack if it is sent in
sufficient quantity (it can cause legitimate email to be lost as
mailboxes fill with spam, can cause the network to slow down, and can
even crash mailservers). This may be a crime in your locality.
Spam which forges header information to appear as if it's from another
entity is very probably illegal in your locality, and it is in this area
that most successful court actions have thus far taken place. Yahoo,
for example, won a well-publicised court case against spammers who had
forged "yahoo.com" in their spams. In another case, the owners of
"flowers.com" successfully sued some spammers who had forged their
domain. Here's a few links about this affair:
Judgment Against Spammers
<http://www.mids.org/press/prnov.html>
Spam Suit Settlement
<http://www.mids.org/mn/803/spamset.html>
Flowers.com Final Judgment
<http://www.whiteice.com/~tv2go/news/tracy_case.html>
Spam which contains content that's illegal in your locality is, of
course, illegal. But in this case it's illegal not because it's spam,
but because of what it is, and thus this isn't a spam issue.
RELATED LINKS
Pending Legislation
<http://www.cauce.org/legislation/>
Email Abuse Legislation
<http://www.emailabuse.org/legislation/>
Cyberspace Law - Unsolicited Email
<http://www.jmls.edu/cyber/index/spam.html>
SueSpammers
<http://www.suespammers.org>
Court Cases Involving Spam
<http://www.whew.com/Spammers/legal/>
Junk Email Lawsuits
<http://www.junkemail.org/lawsuits/>
AOL vs IMS et al
<http://lw.bna.com/lw/19981117/0011.htm>
2.3.2 What's this about an American law legalising spam?
Ah. I'm guessing you've seen something like this in a lot of spam
messages:
Under Bill s. 1618 TITLE III passed by the 105th US Congress
this letter cannot be considered spam as long as the sender
includes contact information and a method of removal. This
is a one time e-mail transmission. No request for removal
is necessary.
What happened was that a few years ago Senator Frank Murkowski (R-AK)
championed a spam law that was widely panned by most anti-spam activists
as being an effective green light to spamming. The bill, as it
happened, died in Congress (i.e. the 105th US Congress ended before the
bill could become law). That's why in all these disclaimers, it's
called a "bill" - not a "law".
So no, there's no American law legalising spam. Almost all of the spam
that quotes this disclaimer doesn't comply with the terms of the bill
anyway. If you're interested you could have a look at the text of this
bill; technical reasons prevent me giving a direct link but go to
<http://thomas.loc.gov/home/c105query.html> and enter "S. 1618" in the
"Bill Number" field, then select either the version passed by the Senate
or referred in the House. (I'm not sure what the difference is. Can
anyone who understands the American legislature enlighten me?)
Senator Murkowski recently championed another spam-related bill. More
information is available at:
CAUCE's Legislation Page
<http://www.cauce.org/legislation/>
Senator Frank Murkowski
<http://www.senate.gov/~murkowski/>
2.3.3 Isn't spam protected by the First Amendment?
No. Sanford Wallace and Cyberpromo tried to argue this in court back in
the mid-1990's, but the courts ruled against them. As I understand
things, freedom of speech gives you the right to speak but not the right
to force people to hear you. Plus it only affects the right of
government to restrict speech, and doesn't extend to private entities
such as ISPs. (But I am not an American and I am not a lawyer.)
For more information, see:
Spam FAQ: Isn't Spam Protected by National Free Speech Laws?
<http://spam.abuse.net/faq.html>
Does the First Amendment Apply to spam?
<http://www.utdallas.edu/~pauls/spam_law.html>
Outcome of Cyberpromo vs AOL
<http://au.spam.abuse.net/spam/news/firstam.html>
AOL vs Cyber Promotions
<http://legal.web.aol.com/decisions/dljunk/cyber.html>
U.S. Supreme Court on Commercial Speech
<http://www.abuse.net/commercial.html>
2.3.4 Can I get legal advice in this newsgroup?
Many of the denizens of news.admin.net-abuse.email will be only too
happy to furnish you with legal advice on any spam-related issues.
However, you should remember two things:
* Laws differ between localities; the law in, say, Mississippi may not
be identical to that in, say, Quebec.
* Free legal advice is worth exactly what you paid for it.
Should you really need legal advice, this FAQ-maintainer suggests that
you seek the paid hours of a trained professional.
Incidentally, these points apply also to this FAQ. The FAQ-maintainer
is not trained in law and the descriptions of legal issues are merely
the way this untrained monkey believes things to be.
=========================================================================
----------------------------- 2.4 SPAMMERS ------------------------------
=========================================================================
2.4.1 Spammers all live in trailers and eat KFC, right?
There is a popular stereotype of spammers as penniless, jobless wasters
who dream of making it big and meeting a girl (see also 3.2.26 in part 3
of this FAQ, "Understanding NANAE".) While some spammers are
undoubtedly like this, many are not. In fact, spammers aren't all that
different from normal, regular people. In fact, spammers tend to _be_
normal, regular people. Spammers can come from any walk of society; so
suit-wearing businessmen can be spammers, caring mothers can be
spammers, your granny can spam and so can a kid wearing a baseball cap
backwards.
And not all spammers are fly-by-night one-man businesses either; some
large companies have been known to use spam. In general the
stereotypes, while amusing, can distract us from the important business
of dealing with spammers as fellow human beings.
RELATED LINKS
Types of Spammer
<http://www.supertroll.com/spammers.htm>
2.4.2 Spammers don't make any money, right?
Despite our best efforts, some spammers do manage to make money from
this business. You only have to contrast the kind of prices some
professional spammers charge (a randomly chosen spammer charged $375 for
a 500,000-address spamming) for their spam runs, with the cost of the
resources they need (a dialup account, a piece of spamware and some
harvested email addresses) to see that they're still laughing all the
way to the bank even if they only ever have two or three customers.
And the authors of spamware do pretty well for themselves too. The kind
of prices they charge ($299 for Desktop Server 2000!), for what are
pretty simple programs, mean that the only way they can fail to make a
profit is if they don't sell a single copy.
Other spam-support services must be similarly raking it in.
www.bulk-isp.net for example charges $300/month for a (supposedly
bulletproof) email account. Now admittedly I'm not privy to their
hosting costs, but I can't believe they're not making a pretty packet
out of that.
And of course there's the horde of other scams that take place over
spam, from the world of "Pump & Dump" share scams (see 3.2.29 in
"Understanding NANAE") to the good old favourite "You send us the money
and we don't deliver the goods!".
Just about the only people I'm not so sure make money from spam are the
businesses that have their websites advertised by spam ("spamvertised").
Are the few hits they'll gain from this really worth the pain and the
damage to their reputations that the spam will cause? In many cases, I
doubt it.
2.4.3 Spammers are all scumbags, right?
Would that the world were painted in black and white. Anti-spammers on
one side, spammers on the other; a unanimous cheer would go up as we
metaphorically malletted the spammers one by one. Unfortunately, it's
not that simple.
It's not uncommon for otherwise good people to spam because they've been
sold a service by an unscrupulous spammer. "I'll send your message to a
list of 500,000 opt-in email addresses I've assembled", the spammer will
say. Or maybe it's "Nobody minds getting email like this." Perhaps
they've been sold on the "It's just like junk postal mail" rhetoric.
Whatever the specifics, someone somewhere has sold them a boatload of
lies and now they've spammed, and their business is paying the price.
"What's happening? That nice Mr Spammer said nobody would mind getting
our emails. After all, everyone else is doing it," they will cry.
Such people aren't the enemy; they've been wrongly advised, so now's the
time to gently tell them the facts of the matter. Most people in such
situations see very quickly the problems of spam and are undoubtedly
feeling the extremely negative impacts on their business. They may even
be able to help you to track down and eliminate the spammer who took
advantage of their innocence.
RELATED LINKS
True Tale: The Danger of Purchasing a Mailing List
<http://www.cauce.org/tales/1.shtml>
2.4.4 But some spammers are scumbags, right?
Right. You've got folks selling apricot seeds as the cure for cancer,
envelope-stuffing as the way of the future, viagra as a universal
cure-all, and information about anyone. Spammers are advertising porn
to children, US dentistry in the UK, and "We'll remove you from credit
blacklists!".
And even if you go beyond the obvious scams, lots of spammers are still
knowingly stealing our computing resources to send their adverts,
clogging up our mailboxes with their rubbish, lying, and cheating to get
internet accounts.
Yup, there's a whole lotta scumbags out there.
RELATED LINKS
Spambook Spammer Manual
<http://www.canismajor.demon.co.uk/antispam/spambook.htm>
Seven Days of Spam
<http://www.latimes.com/business/cutting/features/lat_junk010503.htm>
=========================================================================
-------------------------- 2.5 ORGANISATIONS ----------------------------
=========================================================================
2.5.1 What is "The DMA"?
The Direct Marketing Association; a trade organisation and pressure
group for the junk mail industry. Some parts of it are pro-spam; some
parts of it are anti-spam; some parts of it don't give a damn. (Hey, I
made a rhyme! :) ) For more information see:
The DMA
<http://www.the-dma.org/>
Debunking the Direct Marketing Association
<http://www.whew.com/Direct_Marketing_Association/>
2.5.2 What is "CAUCE"?
CAUCE (Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email) is an
all-volunteer organisation created to advocate legislative solutions to
the spam problem. CAUCE's website includes a look at the anti-spam
legislation currently worming its way through the U.S. legislature. In
addition, there are European, Australian and Indian versions of CAUCE.
RELATED LINKS
Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email
<http://www.cauce.org/>
2.5.3 Who is "MAPS"?
MAPS (Mail Abuse Prevention Systems) LLC is a not-for-profit
organisation which has, in recent years, become an important combatant
in the battle against email abuse. Amongst other things, MAPS publishes
non-definitive lists of IP addresses classified according to various
criteria. It is commonly believed that many Internet Providers and
others use some or all of these lists, in a variety of ways, in order to
reduce the amount of spam received by them or their customers. More
information on MAPS can be found on their website at:
RELATED LINKS
Mail Abuse Prevention Systems LLC
<http://www.mail-abuse.org/>
=========================================================================
------------------------------- CREDITS ---------------------------------
=========================================================================
No document of this magnitude can be the work of only one man. I would
like to thank everyone who offered ideas and suggestions, everyone who
pointed out grammatical errors and gaps in my logic, and places where I
was just plain getting things wrong. This wouldn't have been possible
without you, people.
Thanks also to Paul Anderson for giving the document an official
proof-read.
=========================================================================
----------------------------- USE POLICY --------------------------------
=========================================================================
You may copy and redistribute this FAQ in unmodified form by any means or
media you see fit.
You may modify the presentation of this FAQ as you see fit, so long as the
content remains unaltered.
You may modify the content of this FAQ so long as you appropriately credit
both your changes and the original authors of this FAQ. At a minimum, the
link to the FAQ's website _must_ remain in place.
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