My Ramblings.......

[SteveS235]

General Discussion, eh?.......

Ok, during a lapse of nothing better to do, I got to thinking about spam after my hosting company sent me it's quarterly reminder of their anti spam policy. Here is my really silly question:

Why is spam illegal?

Forget about the bandwidth, and network overload. Take the technical, hardware and cost side completely out of the arguement.

Why is it illegal?

It is illegal to send someone an email that literally takes a second for someone to hit the delete button, and away it goes. If it comes from someone you don't know, just delete it! When I get spam (and I do), I just hit the delete button.

BUT.....based on the whole spam theory, why is it perfectly legal to send me junk mail??? I must get 2 or 3 peices of junk mail every day. Like spam, I didn't ask for it, so what makes them think I want to read it? Just like wasting bandwidth money, they waste postal money. Yeah, it only takes the same second to throw it away without reading it (which I do), but in theory, it is the same thing. Sending me something that I didn't ask for.

ALSO.....telemarketing! It is perfectly legal for someone to call me at my home, disturb my privacy, and try to sell me something over the phone. Again, just like spam, contacting me trying to get me to buy something that I didn't ask for.

If spam is illegal, then why isn't junk mail and telemarketing illegal?

Anyone else have any thoughts on this?

Maybe someone needs to take a better look at this.

Or maybe I need my head examined!

[kdjoergensen]

I dont think spamming is illegal as such, but service providers may have anti-spam policies (terms of agreements which prohibits spamming if you use their services) and if users do it anyway they are in violation of the service providers user agreement.

Anti-spam enforcement usually rest upon understanding that most service providers prohibit same and therefore as end user you can contact (any) service provider and complain about alleged spamming which (most likely) will then be in violation of the spammers service agreement.

a code of honor, if you like.

Joe Burns of htmlgoodies.com explained it this way (my para-phrasing): junk mail require the advertiser to pay some money to print, distribute and handle the advertisement. the cost is on the advertiser not the consumer who can recycle the flyers. spamming does not cost anything to the advertiser who at most will be paying for one email upload. the end receivers will be paying for uploading emails, either by pay-per-minutte charges, phone bills, or indirectly through higher fixed monthly fees (my contention is here that if no spam existed costs for ISP's would be lower and fees would in free market economies go down).
The junk mail advertiser must invest something to advertise. the spammer has no investment, nothing to lose.

Consider what the television add market would look like if television adds did not cost anything .. would you like to view 2.5 hours of commercials before getting to 'my old house' ? maybe an overstatement, but think about it..

Kenneth

[Jason]

Technically, there has to be a way to opt out of all so called "unsolicited ads" such as telemarketing, and junk mail. As far as the law is concerned, if you contact a company that has your name on a list, they must remove it. Spam does not give this option. What's worse with spam, is that the sender will often change his own email address for each time he sends, so it is impossible to block the sender.

I know that for the most part, it is simple enough to just press the delete key, and never see the email again, especially for something like a pop email account. However, I've lost 2 of my hotmail accounts to spammers. What do I mean by "lost"? Well somehow, I've managed to get on massive spamming lists (possibly because I allowed the accounts to be publicly listed in the hotmail directory -- big mistake). I was receiving on average about 30 pieces of junk mail a day, and I was only checking the accounts about once per week. I used the hotmail block feature, and blocked the maximum number of senders allowed, 200 addresses, but this of course made no difference. If I ever go back to those accounts it will be impossible to sort through the real email from the spam, and I sure don't feel like routing through 6 pages of "porn", "credit card offers", and "debt consolidation". Anyway, if those email accounts had been important to me (at one point they actually kind of were). I'd be in big trouble.

Anyone else have a story where spam has caused actual damage?

FYI Kenneth – I believe that spamming is indeed against the law.

[Edited by Jason on 01-24-2001 at 11:40 AM]

[kdjoergensen]

You are (luckily) probably right..
What do you guys think the success ratio is on spam mail ?
I delete 20-30 emails per day from my hotmail account (I dont give out my personal account) but never read any of them and never reply to any of them..
Wonder how many replies back a spamming company considers a good day ? 1 out of 10,000 ?

Am I wrong or is this like 'tagging' on subway stations where the 'artist' would write their name just to get name around, but never expected any pay or otherwise. Or is there really enough people crazy enough to respond to these spam mails to actually make it worth while ?? (but guess it does not cost much effort or money so maybe just 1 out of 1 mill hits is enough reward ?)

[Ian]

I believe it is not called spam if they include an "opt out" address or statement to this effect.

"We comply with proposed federal legislation regarding unsolicited commercial e-mail by providing you with a method for your e-mail address to be permanently removed from our database and any future mailings from our company."

and/or...

"To remove your address, please send an e-mail message with the word REMOVE in the subject line."

HOWEVER, have you noticed when you do try and remove yourself, your email comes straight back saying the address is unknown !!
I must get around 20-30 per day coming through A1 javascripts email addy alone, and what makes it even worse, is that I don't just get one of them, I get 2 or 3 copies of the same thing. Some of them state it is a one time only mailing, but I have already recieved 3 LOL, and sure, it is a one time thing from that address, next day they think up a new one and blast you with them all again.

I am sick to death of receiving garbage about stuff that doesn't effect me, I don't care about new weight loss technology, saving 20-70% off my grocery bill, paying higher prices for inkjet printer refils, or some pleasure pill for women called Lady V. !!

I would personally like to see a tougher line taken on spammers and companies that produce the software which allows it.

I wonder if these people themselves get spammed and what do they think about it.

[whkoh]

Spamming, hey, who doesn't get spammed? Spamming:

Unsolicited e-mail, often of a commercial nature, sent indiscriminately to multiple mailing lists, individuals, or newsgroups; junk e-mail.

by Dictionary.com (www.dictionary.com)

Anyway, spammers usually change their message headers so that their email addresses will not be known:

Ex.:

From: ABC <unknown>
TO: <unknown>

Large amounts of spam (talking 'bout thousands)
can lead to Denial of Service (DoS), that's why spam is illegal but telemarketing and/or junk mail isn't/aren't.

Some reference:

http://www.google.com/search?q=spam
http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Internet/Abuse/Spam/
http://search.metacrawler.com/crawler?general=spam&method=0&cat=Web&target=metaworld&redirect=web&rpp=20&hpe=10&region=0&timeout=0&sort=0&format=beta99&theme=classic&refer=mc-search

[Wabanaki Web]

Originally posted by Ian
I am sick to death of receiving garbage about stuff that doesn't effect me, I don't care about new weight loss technology, saving 20-70% off my grocery bill, paying higher prices for inkjet printer refils, or some pleasure pill for women called Lady V. !!

Every other spammail I get is for viagra or a viagra substitute. I'm neither male nor old, and I'd like to know how these people got my email address. :confused:

I was told do not opt out, because then the spammer knows he has hit an active email account and will sell the email address to other spammers.

[Jason]

I've heard that about opt-ing out also, however I think spammers are less organized than they use to, because I usually just receive a bounce when trying to remove myself. You know people are getting lazy when spammers don't bother to optomize the benefit from their mailings :D .

[whkoh]

Originally posted by Wabanaki Web
Originally posted by Ian
I am sick to death of receiving garbage about stuff that doesn't effect me, I don't care about new weight loss technology, saving 20-70% off my grocery bill, paying higher prices for inkjet printer refils, or some pleasure pill for women called Lady V. !!

Every other spammail I get is for viagra or a viagra substitute. I'm neither male nor old, and I'd like to know how these people got my email address. :confused:

I was told do not opt out, because then the spammer knows he has hit an active email account and will sell the email address to other spammers.

Well, I don't know how they (the spammers) got all the people's email addresses, but check out the resources:

http://www.google.com/search?q=spammers+email+address
http://www.private.org.il/harvest.html

[SteveS235]

I think most spammers try to go for the 1% ratio. if they mass mail 10,000 people, they consider it successful if they only get 100 responses. Although I think some are happy with any response at all because it is basically free to send someone an email.

I've noticed that I usually get an influx of spam for the week or two after I bid on something at eBay. eBay maintains that if someone does this you should report it to them, but why can't they just hide the e-mail addresses and show just the user name? If I bid on something in the Businesses for Sale category, for the next couple of weeks, all I get is email from people telling my how I can make thousands from my fax machine or home computer.

I was just trying to relate spam with junk mail and telemarketing. With all 3, someone is is trying to get me to buy something without me asking for the information. One way is illegal, the other two are not when they are all the same in business marketing theory.