Looks as though the FTC put the smack down on a huge spamming ring, but will it reduce the amount of garbage flooding your inbox?
According to a report from the Associated Press, the now-convicted network spanned across multiple countries including China, New Zealand, and the United States. Their methods included enticing the recipient to click through to one of their websites, offering false discounts to prescription drugs, weight-loss pills and even male enhancement pills. The problem was that many of their sites looked legitimate, thus throwing off the Federal Trade Commission in its hunt to track down the spammers.
"These sites are really professionally constructed," said Steve Baker, the FTC’s Midwest Region director. "Some years ago you used to be able to tell the bogus things because they looked cheesy and had misspellings. Anymore, I don’t think that’s true."
The FTC answered the call of more than 3 million victims and spam recipients. To determine if the website in question was legitimate or fake, FTC staff members purchased drugs undercover and did not provide prescriptions. In turn, the alleged websites not only did not ask for valid prescriptions, but did not send instructions along with the drug shipment. Now a federal judge in Chicago has issued a temporary injunction to halt the organization, and the FBI is currently investigating everyone involved. Included in the investigation are citizens established here in the States and New Zealand.
The federal CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 allows the FTC to investigate organizations that do not provide a postal address, uses false headings in emails, and does not offer an "opt-out" link for those who actually take the bait. While the FTC is frantically working hard to eliminate spam altogether, the problem doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon. According to a report released a few years ago, 60% of all spam comes directly from internet users who have no idea their PCs are even sending out spam.
While some spam experts applaud the FTC’s attempt, others criticize its intents. "I’m not expecting the FTC to talk about successes, because I don’t think it really can trumpet any," says Jordan Ritter of Cloudmark, an antispam and secure-messaging firm.
But when looking at the bigger picture, one must question if there are genuine attempts to actually crack down on spammers. After all, if spam were eliminated altogether, companies such as McAfee, Symantec and Computer Associates would have less to offer consumers. Many ISPs have implemented server-side spam filters to weed out most of the incoming garbage, yet consumers still need to shell out money for third-party software. Is that a coincidence?
Still, it’s certainly a positive thing to see the FTC shutting down one of the largest spamming operations to date. However, it seems that messages like "drink away your fat" or "she likes it meaty" are just a normal part of everyday reading. Sometimes they’re just as comical as the morning paper funnies.
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"While the FTC is frantically working hard to eliminate spam altogether...". You are JOKING, right?
The FTC has been slower than a snail in molasses to do anything at all about spammers, and on the rare occasions that they do actually catch one, the spammers get a fine which is a tiny proportion of their illegally-made profits.
A great way to control these American criminal scammers, isn't it? Do your readers know that a Canadian woman *died* from taking spammer drugs? Yet the US authorities manage to slap a spammer on the wrist about once a year.
Interesting insinuation that the FTC is on anti-virus company payrolls, or that somehow the government views them as an important economic engine to keep alive by allowing spam to continue.
Somehow, I find this a bit far fetched. I think it is more likely that the agency either does not have the proper funding or lacks agents with the skills needed to combat this new 'threat'.
Myself, I never expect miracles out of any agency (govenment or non-governmental organization). However, it is definitely nice to see one victory under the FTC's belt.
As an admin of multiple domains at work, I've forwarded thousands of SPAM e-mails to the FTC in the past (years ago). I bulk forwarded them as one e-mail with each SPAM e-mail as an attachment. I've tried calling my ISP about SPAM. I've looked into who owned the IP address of the server sending the e-mail (if the header was correct) and found most out of country. So we can't as small businesses and individuals go after these people due to a lack of resources or any rights to do anything (especially if out of country). I'm disappointed that our federal government doesn't recognize the publicized cost to businesses and how it is hurting our economy. SPAM needs to stop. The internet is not for free to infringe on others systems and connections. If businesses got 10,000 pieces junk postal mail in a week there would be more lawsuits. Don't censor the web, but go after those that exploit it and forge information to entice victims while stealing resources without permission (internet access costs money, unecessary SPAM filter software costs money and is inaccurate sometimes, mail servers take computing resources that cost money, taking over computers without consent to send SPAM).
Where's the DEA? This is a drug issue blatantly in their face (with victims to a crime). Another story mentioned they found regulated drugs with potential for low bloodpressure issues when the website and product did not list these ingredients. Yet the DEA goes after individual users of recreational drugs (victimless crime). Let's redirect this crime fiting to what will help the country and economy rather than political and personal vendeta's.
Where's the DEA? This is a drug issue blatantly in their face (with victims to a crime). Another story mentioned they found regulated drugs with potential for low bloodpressure issues when the website and product did not list these ingredients. Yet the DEA goes after individual users of recreational drugs (victimless crime). Let's redirect this crime fiting to what will help the country and economy rather than political and personal vendeta's.
Lol victimless.... Any go somewhere else for your pot supporting you idiot.
Eh, I don't mind E-mail SPAM, and rarely does my SPAM filter not catch it.
What does really annoy me is instant messaging bots. There is no filtering system for IM bots, and IM spam. I would much prefer that stopped before e-mail SPAM did.
"While the FTC is frantically working hard to eliminate spam altogether...". You are JOKING, right? The FTC has been slower than a snail in molasses to do anything at all about spammers, and on the rare occasions that they do actually catch one, the spammers get a fine which is a tiny proportion of their illegally-made profits.A great way to control these American criminal scammers, isn't it? Do your readers know that a Canadian woman *died* from taking spammer drugs? Yet the US authorities manage to slap a spammer on the wrist about once a year.
I certainly hope by your statement you are simplyreferring to the spammers that are in the US, and not ignoring the fact that there are just as many spammers in other countries...
That and, while I certainly feel for anyone who is hurt by these awful people (that are in US and other places)...taking anything you got online from one of these places is kind of like going to a 3rd world country for cheap plastic surgery. Buyers have some responsibility too. There wouldn't be money in spam advertising if people stopped clicking on shit in their inbox and ordering cheap meds, fake rolexes, and vitamins re-labled as wonder penis in a bottle.
Hi nekatreven,
Yes I know that spam gets sent from all over the planet, mostly China, but the majority of it originates from scammers in the USA.
We are absolutely in agreement that if gullible suckers didn't keep responding to the ludicrous scams which arrive in their e-mail in-boxes, the spammers would not be in business and we wouldn't have this problem.
Unfortunately there's one born every minute and the scammers know it.