Email harvesters hit with $1billion spam lawsuit

[Pornwolf]

A lot of people just got caught with their pants down.

Originally Posted by Computerworld.com

A $1 billion lawsuit filed today promises to open up a new front in the battle against spam: It targets not just spammers, but -- for the first time -- also those responsible for harvesting e-mail addresses on behalf of spammers.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., is one of the largest of its kind and is being filed on behalf of Project Honey Pot members in over 100 countries. Project Honey Pot is a service provided by Park City, Utah-based antispam company Unspam Technologies Inc.

"If you've harvested e-mail addresses or sent spam in the last two years, chances are you're on our radar screen, and we're coming after you," a note posted on the Project Honey Pot Web site said today.

"This lawsuit is unique because we believe it is the first major case in the United States to bring a claim against spammers for harvesting e-mail addresses," the note said. "While this practice has been a penalty enhancement under the CAN-SPAM Act since it was passed, in most cases the data was not available in order to prove an address was harvested."

Source

[hjnet]

Nice, so there's still a chance that I can check my emails without deleting 500 unsolicted ones first.

[madawgz]

damn....thats serious news

[Aussie Rebel]

Originally Posted by madawgz

damn....thats serious news

Thats GREAT news

[Mr Bond]

Bout fuckin time

It's been so bad I've resorted to White List Email

[georgeyw]

good - hope they crucify those motherfuckers!

[martinsc]

good news

[nikooo]

Originally Posted by georgeyw

good - hope they crucify those motherfuckers!

[Tom_PM]

Serious question: Is "harvesting emails" illegal? Under what law?

[Tom_PM]

Lets say I have 400 AVS sites, and inside my members area I decide to have a newsletter. Ok so far right?

Now it's 4 years later, I have a very large email database and I decide to sell my list.

Is this lawsuit trying to say the onus is on ME, the seller, to determine whether or not the email database will be used legally?

Whats the slippery slope that could come out of this? Anything?

Last I knew, if someone "harvested" by means of script or voluntary collection box, it's not illegal. And selling the data is not illegal. So is buying a list illegal? I dont think so. Is emailing to a bought list illegal? Not that I've ever heard. *

So I think the bottom line from the article once you read it fully, is that they have identified some specific people and linked them to some specific "spammers", but it doesnt seem like it has precedent setting potential without some new laws.


*if compliant with can-spam obviously

[BlackCrayon]

Who are they going to sue? the server companies that spammers use with anon credit cards?

[8ball]

Originally Posted by BlackCrayon

Who are they going to sue? the server companies that spammers use with anon credit cards?

they'll also invade Russia and China to find them! Watch out!

[Jace]

Originally Posted by PR_Tom

Lets say I have 400 AVS sites, and inside my members area I decide to have a newsletter. Ok so far right?

Now it's 4 years later, I have a very large email database and I decide to sell my list.

Is this lawsuit trying to say the onus is on ME, the seller, to determine whether or not the email database will be used legally?

Whats the slippery slope that could come out of this? Anything?

Last I knew, if someone "harvested" by means of script or voluntary collection box, it's not illegal. And selling the data is not illegal. So is buying a list illegal? I dont think so. Is emailing to a bought list illegal? Not that I've ever heard. *

So I think the bottom line from the article once you read it fully, is that they have identified some specific people and linked them to some specific "spammers", but it doesnt seem like it has precedent setting potential without some new laws.


*if compliant with can-spam obviously

email harvesting is when you set a bot up to surf gfy and find any and every email it can find and then sell that list to someone

you are within the law if people came and signed up by entering their email ina blank and then opted in through email later...hence, double opt in

[LiveDose]

Good to hear.

[Tom_PM]

Originally Posted by Jace

email harvesting is when you set a bot up to surf gfy and find any and every email it can find and then sell that list to someone

you are within the law if people came and signed up by entering their email ina blank and then opted in through email later...hence, double opt in

Jace, yes I know that, and my post was a hypothetical too just to clarify.

But the question was about selling the list, legallity of using a script to harvest emails, whether or not the onus is on the seller or the buyer or either and so on and so forth.

If someone can point me to the law that says "email harvesting" is illegal, that'd be nice. I don't think it is, and I wonder if this will simply be thrown out because they seem intent on setting precedent and making the courts essentially "legislate from the bench", instead of making a new law.

[Brad]

I wonder why they are so concerned with spam when I get flyers for shit I don't want in my mail box everyday. At least with spam you press the delete button and it's gone where as the shit that ends up in my mail box goes into the trash and then the landfill and it hasn't even been read. Don't get me wrong, spam is a pain in the ass (i get about 1000 a day) but I think that flyers are a much worse problem and also involve much more time, energy, and money to distribute.

[Tom_PM]

Dude, no shit. My mailbox yesterday was stuffed, STUFFED with Clipper magazine addressed to "resident" (I get them once a week it seems!) also a newsletter from my local school (I have no children and never attended that school) and so many goddamn credit aps I could wallpaper my half bathroom.

oh! I forgot to mention I had ONE piece of mail. A wire receipt from my bank, lost in a sea of purest bullshit.

[Tom_PM]

oh oh! And while I'm venting, I hada phone call yesterday and this is how it went:
"hello?"
"Hi, I need to speak to the person in charge of the <utility company name> bill."
"Are you from <utility company name>?"
"No I'm not sir, but..."
"Then you mean you WANT to speak to that person, you dont NEED to, right??!"
"Yes sir"
"Dont fucking call me again!"
click

[RawAlex]

Originally Posted by PR_Tom

Dude, no shit. My mailbox yesterday was stuffed, STUFFED with Clipper magazine addressed to "resident" (I get them once a week it seems!) also a newsletter from my local school (I have no children and never attended that school) and so many goddamn credit aps I could wallpaper my half bathroom.

oh! I forgot to mention I had ONE piece of mail. A wire receipt from my bank, lost in a sea of purest bullshit.

Tom, if you are in Canada, just put a "NO AD MAIL PLEASE" on your mailbox, and Canada post is obliged to stop delivering anything that isn't personally addressed to you.

Enjoy.

[g$$$]

bump this one up

[Phoenix]

yeah who pays for the bull shit newspapers mailings and advertising that gets stuffed into my mailbox and tossed on my porch every day...we have a separate recycle bin for that stuff every week....who pays for that shit?


besides most people are not blanket spamming addresses these days..it is all fairly targetted....not like pizza pizza who pays habid to dump flyers that get scattered all voer the streets

[ztik]

Originally Posted by Jace

email harvesting is when you set a bot up to surf gfy and find any and every email it can find and then sell that list to someone

you are within the law if people came and signed up by entering their email ina blank and then opted in through email later...hence, double opt in

Actualy, within the can-spam act you can email anyone for any reason. If they publicly posted their email on a webpage I don't see how its illegal. I don't see them winning this one, but it is possible. Im sure if they get one of the "big fish" they are lookingn for they will fight back and get off.

What they should do is sue the email harvesters for their client list who they sold their email list to.

[BlackCrayon]

Originally Posted by PR_Tom

oh oh! And while I'm venting, I hada phone call yesterday and this is how it went:
"hello?"
"Hi, I need to speak to the person in charge of the <utility company name> bill."
"Are you from <utility company name>?"
"No I'm not sir, but..."
"Then you mean you WANT to speak to that person, you dont NEED to, right??!"
"Yes sir"
"Dont fucking call me again!"
click

Haha, yeah i get 3-5 calls per day at least from telemarketers and such. Sometimes i'll play games with them and tell them im so poor i have to eat cat food or something stupid like that but more often than not i just pick it up and hang it up. Some strange calls i get too, people wanting me to donate clothes calling daily for weeks despite me saying i don't have anything. People calling wanting to landscape my lawn when i have none. Spam email has never woke me up or disrupted my supper.

[Drake]

That's destined to fail. Hey, I don't particularily like spam, but this is the internet.

[inabon]

The defendants in the case are the "John Does" responsible for e-mail harvesting and spamming, Praed said. "Spammers are very good at hiding themselves," he said. "But what they can't hide are the data points that they use [for spamming]. We have got a lot of those data points."

ermmn so they have nothing LOL what GREAT NEWS

[warlock5]

Originally Posted by PR_Tom

Serious question: Is "harvesting emails" illegal? Under what law?

Its a fucking lawsuit, it doesn't have to be illegal

[Doctor Dre]

Originally Posted by PR_Tom

Serious question: Is "harvesting emails" illegal? Under what law?

Spamming non double optins lists is in the US

[BlackCrayon]

Originally Posted by Doctor Dre

Spamming non double optins lists is in the US

actually if you are following can spam the emails don't have to be opt in, they just have be able to opt out of them.

[V_RocKs]

Suing John Doe for that money? Good luck.

[kektex]

Originally Posted by BlackCrayon

Who are they going to sue? the server companies that spammers use with anon credit cards?

Actually, most of the spam I receive comes from zombie computers in the U.S.
The people in the Honeypot project are posting unique,random email addresses that have never been used, so any existing email addresses that are part of any mailing lists will not count for this lawsuit.
As much as I would like this lawsuit to succeed I don't think this is going anywhere.
I once used a script that generated random email addresses to bog these harvester bots down and the site would get hit all day by these fucktards.

The first email I ever had , which I think I made back in 1994-1995 or so gets around 500 spam email everyday.
Good thing I'm now using gmail...their spam filter rocks.

[Big John]

Looks like the lawsuit never was intended to 'win' and it won't. It's been started to give the Honeypot people some big publicity and has managed that in style

Shame as the volume of spam these days really annoys. Thankfully Cloudmark manages around 95%+ of it although the odd 5% can still piss you off.

[gornyhuy]

Originally Posted by hjnet

Nice, so there's still a chance that I can check my emails without deleting 500 unsolicted ones first.

don't count on it.

[BlackCrayon]

Originally Posted by kektex

Actually, most of the spam I receive comes from zombie computers in the U.S.
The people in the Honeypot project are posting unique,random email addresses that have never been used, so any existing email addresses that are part of any mailing lists will not count for this lawsuit.
As much as I would like this lawsuit to succeed I don't think this is going anywhere.
I once used a script that generated random email addresses to bog these harvester bots down and the site would get hit all day by these fucktards.

The first email I ever had , which I think I made back in 1994-1995 or so gets around 500 spam email everyday.
Good thing I'm now using gmail...their spam filter rocks.

Well, where do you think they connect to the zombie PC's from? Anywho as far as i know spammers with a clue stopped harvesting emails a couple years ago. I think you'll see these guys soon offer a pay email service or something similar and used this lawsuit for free advertising but who knows. All i know is that lawsuits never stopped spam in the past, and i doubt it will in the future.

[suesheboy]

There goes all the free content for http://www.mycrapmail.com

[DaddyHalbucks]

Excellent news!

[pornguy]

Originally Posted by Jace

you are within the law if people came and signed up by entering their email ina blank and then opted in through email later...hence, double opt in

Even this is schetchy. even if they sign up, and double opt in, they can later say that it is spam, and they can sue you. It has happened already.