Anti-Spam Crusader Sues Spammers
According to Cisco Systems Inc, there are about 200 billion spam messages circulating a day, accounting for up to 90% of all e-mail. Despite clearing the spam folders of my two e-mail accounts weekly, today’s tally stands at 743 spam e-mails and counting. At the top of the heap:
Sender: Rickie Bentley
Subject: Great WeightL0ss Medications are here!Sender: postmaster
Subjejct: CHEAP VIAGRA!!!Sender: Congratulations.
Subject: YOU have received a $1000 Wal*Mart Certificate Survey
While spam mail is irritating and crass, I consider it relatively harmless. My e-mail client has a decent spam filter that prevents much of it from getting through to my inbox, and clearing the spam folder takes less than a minute. All in all, a tolerable nuisance.
Not so for Daniel Balsam, whose life's work it is to eradicate the web of spam (while making a few bucks along the way).
Eight years ago, Balsam was working as a marketer when he received one too many e-mail pitches to enlarge his breasts.
Enraged, he launched a Web site called Danhatesspam.com, quit a career in marketing to go to law school and is making a decent living suing companies who flood his e-mail inboxes with offers of cheap drugs, free sex and unbelievable vacations.
"I feel like I'm doing a little bit of good cleaning up the Internet," Balsam said.
From San Francisco Superior Court small claims court to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Balsam, based in San Francisco, has filed many lawsuits, including dozens before he graduated law school in 2008, against e-mail marketers he says violate anti-spamming laws.
Many argue that the U.S. has become an overlawyered, excessively litigious society, and people like Dan Balsam certainly don't help this trend. After all, where would we be if we all sued over every minor nuisance. Nevertheless, I find myself cheering for this anti-spam crusader and hoping for his continued success.
If you were tasked with putting an end to spam, how would you go about it? (Bonus points for methods that utilize free market principles.)
- Comment (6)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (2)
Comments :
May '10
Re: Anti-Spam Crusader Sues Spammers
My simple method: If someone headlines their mail "Remember Debbie from work? Pictures!" think back to if you remember Debbie from work. Note that this requires you remembering the name of everyone from work whose pictures would be worth looking at, so make sure you make the effort to memorize, in detail, everyone at work worth looking at, ya slackers.
Also, obviously, if a headline says f r e^e v#ia gr/a, delete.
Self-reliance, people
Jun '10
Re: Anti-Spam Crusader Sues Spammers
For those who take the time to set up alternate email addresses, filters, and safe-lists, you can pretty much eliminate spam. If everybody was doing that, spam would just die out because nobody would ever see it. People say, texting, Facebook, and other IMing will just gradually replace email for most people, but I hope not.
May '10
Re: Anti-Spam Crusader Sues Spammers
The cost for the spammer and/or the email host provider needs to be sufficiently increased to the point where the practice is discouraged.
One suggestion is to have a mechanism in everyone's email software that automatically sends back ten emails to the email sender. Or - if legal - the ability to register the spammer's server for a Denial of Service attack.
The effect on the 'spamee' would be quite small, but the effect on the spammer (or its host) would be significant.
This will tend to reduce - rather than eliminate - spammers. I'm sure that spammers' methods in turn will 'mutate' much like bacteria do.
However, an active response will always tend to be more persuasive than a passive one that has little or no downside for the spammer.
May '10
Re: Anti-Spam Crusader Sues Spammers
It's a war on Spam! Like the war on junk mail. Throw the mail away, delete the email. There, was that so hard? Yeesh, we need to get the gummint camel poking its nose into the tent over this?
May '10
Re: Anti-Spam Crusader Sues Spammers
Yeah, but this is like the problem of a handful of people who don't vaccinate and keep diseases alive that would otherwise go extinct.
May '10
Re: Anti-Spam Crusader Sues Spammers
Diane, did you notice that the pro-spam lawyer took out a website danhatespam.com, only one letter different from danhatesspam.com, to trap misdirected users on his own site? Could there be a more fitting tactic?