MS sues 200 for spamming

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Spamming Travel Firm Sues Anti-Spammer

Spamming Travel Firm Sues Anti-Spammer 03/17/2005 03:26 AM
Here's yet another case of a company accused of spamming getting pretty upset when they're called on it. Someone asked a travel company, named cruise.com, to stop sending him spam. They continued to send him spam. He threatened to sue them under Oklahoma spam laws, and featured them on his website. They turned around and sued him for $4 million for defamation and trademark infringement. They might have trouble on both those claims. First, the guy seems to have the spams pretty well documented, including his repeated attempts to opt-out. It's tough to win a defamation claim when the facts alleged are true. Second, the trademark infringement concerns the use of their logo on his website about them -- but, as has been explained numerous times, trademark law is only to protect against confusion, not to give full rights to the trademark. It's quite unlikely that anyone going to this guy's website about how the company was spamming him would confuse the site as one officially sanctioned by the spamming company.

Spammer Sues Spam Victim, Continues
Spamming Him

Spammer Sues Spam Victim, Continues
Spamming Him 03/17/2005 03:02 AM
It is a nightmare come true. A spammer exacts revenge on you by suing you 3 states away. All you wanted was for them to stop emailing you but they filed a lawsuit in an effort to cost you money and scare you off! [PRWEB Mar 16, 2005]

Bot Spamming

Bot Spamming 05/31/2004 05:04 PM

Gadgetopia got targeted by a comment spam bot over the weekend. Two entries were targeted, and each got 80 comments each — one for a site with rape fiction, the other for an incest porn site. This happen three times over the weekend, for a total of 480 spam comments.

Needless to say I'm frustrated pissed off.

I've dealt with comment spam before, but not on this magnitude, nor with spam for topics this offensive. What bothers me the most is that it doesn't just clutter up this site. All the Gadgetopia authors get comments emailed to them, and there's a comments RSS feed. This means that a bunch of people got this filth in their aggregators, and my fellow editors — whom I appreciate to no end for helping me with this site — got hundreds of emails before I realized what was going on and shut it off. So this idiot has essentially used me to irritate other people (and, trust me, I need no help there...).

I tried banning the IP, but the bot is coming in from a different address every time. I've taken some steps outlined by Adam Kalsey a few months ago to prevent this from happening again.

To everyone who was affected via email or RSS, I'm very sorry.

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spamming webl0gs?

spamming webl0gs? 12/11/2002 08:09 AM
hey rich are you spamming weblogs with update pings from this site? because in my blogroll, it says there is always new content up here, tho in fact there is not.

Comment Spamming

Comment Spamming 09/06/2004 09:54 PM

Comment spammers are starting to hit me pretty hard.  Please ignore the spam comments until I find some time to add a spam filter.  Thanks.

Spamming for office

Spamming for office 05/17/2004 12:02 PM
ZDNet May 17 2004 3:43PM GMT

More on Comment Spamming

More on Comment Spamming 12/17/2004 06:43 PM
Update: We've identified a few of the issues that are causing the extreme server loads. Jay Allen has posted a...

Man gets nine years for spamming

Man gets nine years for spamming 04/08/2005 07:49 PM
A US man gets nine years in jail for sending millions of junk emails selling pornography and sham products.

Spamming spammers?

Spamming spammers? 03/22/2005 03:49 PM
IBM unveiled a service Tuesday that sends unwanted e-mails back to the spammers who sent them.

The new IBM (Research) service, known as FairUCE, essentially uses a giant database to identify computers that are sending spam. E-mails coming from a computer on the spam database are sent directly back to the computer, not just the e-mail account, that sent them. "Spam has become a high priority security issue for businesses today," Stuart McIrvine, IBM's director of corporate security strategy, said in a prepared statement.

"By creating a multi-layered defense that proactively repels spam at its source, companies can get ahead of spammers and malicious hackers who are always looking for new ways of penetrating IT systems through e-mail." IBM said the new solution effectively minimizes the growing threats of "phishing and spoofing -- tactics used to trick people into disclosing information that can lead to identity theft."

News source: CNN

Read full story...

Spamming for a Date

Spamming for a Date 01/06/2004 12:59 AM

I got this spam today. This guy really wants a date.

To: Juror #3, Van Nuys Superior Court, Dept E, Los Angeles, CA, excused on November 13.

This is Juror #4 and I would really like to say Hi and continue our conversation. You can reply to this email or call 818-831-1492.

[I was going to delete the guy's number, but then I realized that he proactively spammed this to millions of people, so it's a little late for discretion. — Deane]

DO YOU KNOW JUROR #3? She is WF, 30's, 5'5", slender build, short light brown hair. She served on jury duty November 12 & 13, Van Nuys Superior Court in the San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles, CA. Contact me or please pass this message along to her. Thanks, and Happy Holidays!

This brings up the issue of spam for reasons other than to sell something or scam someone. With the supposed power of mass mailing something to 100 million people, you think people would do it more often for reasons other than sales.

I've gotten a few religious spams that were nothing more than Christian evangalism — there was no attempt to sell anything, the sender just wanted me to know that Jesus loves me.

And the other day, I got an email from a pro-Israel group filled with supposed facts and figures that Muslims are "responsible for 98% of the world's conflicts." It seemed to have no other purpose than to get me to hate Muslims.

I'd like to send an email to 100 million people to protest the inability of people to add an "e" to the end of my name. Deane's of the world unite! We have rights too!

(Okay, speaking of this, I'm going to relate this story against my better judgement. Back when I was beta testing the original MSN in 1995 or so, they had the ability to search user accounts by name. I entered "Deane" and actually found 30 or so.

I sent a mass email to all of them trying to organize the "Deane With An 'E' Society of America." I think I got two responses, both supportive. You'd think we'd be a social force eight years later, but things didn't work out. Politics and all that.)

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Spamming for Dummies

Spamming for Dummies 07/27/2004 11:06 AM
A cautionary tale

MT Comment spamming

MT Comment spamming 03/16/2003 05:53 AM
I'm starting to wonder. Just how stupid can spammers get? Sitting next to my girlfriend – I just heard her...

Refer Spamming

Refer Spamming 03/06/2004 01:48 AM

A lot of people using Refer have noticed the increasingly frequent appearance of spurious referrers such britney-spears-breakfast-beers.blogspot.com in their referrer lists.

I’ve been seeing this junk recorded by other traffic reporting software, thus I don’t think Refer installs are being specifically targeted; nonetheless measures should be taken to silence this incredibly dim-witted ‘marketing’.

In the current version of Refer running on this site I’ve added a filtering mechanism which disallows multiple referrers to be delivered by the same visitor address, like, oh I don’t know, hmdnsgroup.com or h24-69-156-45.no.shawcable.net.

The update is still too flaky to release, and this is taking up all available time, however those running older versions of Refer can take advantage of this patch by Eric Goldberg, which filters spammers based on their user-agent headers.

Virginia Arrests Man For Spamming

Virginia Arrests Man For Spamming 12/11/2003 06:07 PM

U.S. leads top spamming countries

U.S. leads top spamming countries 12/28/2004 11:39 AM
Security software company Sophos has published its latest report on leading spamming countries and found that 42 percent of all spam sent in 2004 came from the United States. Other countries topping the list are South Korea and China, with the two countries producing over 21 percent of the total global spam. "Many of the computers sending out spam are most likely to have had their broadband internet connections exploited by remote hackers," Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos said. "Zombie computers--PCs that have been compromised by hackers or virus writers--are sending out over 40 percent of the world's spam, and many users who fall victim are unaware."

Spamming Back The Spammers

Spamming Back The Spammers 04/19/2004 04:29 PM
Somewhat amusing column from someone who admits they were quite clueless on the spam issue (claiming they actually thought people complaining about spam were talking about the faux-meat) but now that he's realized that the spam he gets isn't actually personally addressed to him (slow guy, I guess), he's decided to spam the spammers back with fake spam of his own. Of course, someone should probably tell him that spammers aren't using real email addresses and he's now (a) annoying other people with more spam and (b) putting himself at risk of being accused of breaking anti-spam laws.

Why my address book is spamming you

Why my address book is spamming you 12/07/2003 09:46 PM
ZDNet Dec 7 2003 9:15PM ET

Spamming for Dollars
(washingtonpost.com)

Spamming for Dollars
(washingtonpost.com) 05/20/2004 12:48 PM
washingtonpost.com - Fighting spam has turned into such a big business that anti-spam companies are becoming a hot commodity of their own.

Other News: Spamming with SenderID

Other News: Spamming with SenderID 09/10/2004 10:40 AM
Spammers misuse Microsoft's SenderID to sneak through filters.

Political Spamming In India

Political Spamming In India 04/21/2004 06:22 PM
While we've complained about political spam campaigns here in the US, it seems to have been taken to another level in India, where campaigns are spamming both email and text messaging accounts with wild abandon. In fact, the campaigns have done deals with wireless carriers to send messages to all of their subscribers. This seems politically stupid. If you're on the fence about a candidate, will having them bug you with a "vote for me!" spam message make you any more inclined to vote for them - or will it make you question what they think of protecting your inbox.

Apologies for spamming friends with
SMS.ac

Apologies for spamming friends with
SMS.ac 02/05/2005 09:30 PM

I was going to do more research before I posted this, but since it appears that I've created a minor epidemic in my local community, I'm posting this a bit uninformed. I received an email inviting me to SMS.ac, which I would normally ignore, but it was from someone who's judgment I trust. I clicked through the signup process without finally completing it, but unwittingly gave the service access to my MSN IM information. This spammed my whole buddy list with invitations. It was unintuitive to unregister even though I hadn't completed the registration process. Also, I heard from someone that if you don't unregister, the service continues to send invites to people you add to your buddy list. Anyway, I have no idea if the service is interesting, but the the fact that you invite your whole buddylist before you actually try the service and the difficulty and deleting your account makes me skeptical about it.

Anyway, I'll post more information when I get it and apologies for sending invites to people to a service I'm not even using.

This is the first time I've used rel=nofollow in a post. ;-)

Comment - TrackBack

AT&T Patents Spamming Techniques

AT&T Patents Spamming Techniques 11/17/2003 12:46 PM
Lots of folks appear to be puzzling over this one. Dan Gillmor is noting that AT&T appears to have received a patent on getting around spam filters. Yes, you read that right. They've got a patent on faking out spam filters. There are just so many directions to go with this story... First, some people are wondering if perhaps AT&T is hoping to use this in an anti-spam strategy by suing spammers - saying they've violated the patent by getting around filters. That seems highly unlikely in practice - and extremely unlikely to hold up in court. So, then why would they file for such a patent? It's possible they want to offer a service to spammers that would help them get around filters - and this way they can stop other companies from offering the same thing. Of course, the more important point is that this is a patent for getting around spam filters. How is that possibly patentable? I've certainly violated this patent a bunch of times when emails I've sent to friends got caught in spam filters and I needed to adjust the content. How can this possibly be considered "non-obvious" by even the most dim-witted patent reviewer?

Perl spamming script available

Perl spamming script available 12/22/2004 01:49 AM
On September 12 I posted an entry here asking about Perl scripts to spam friends with party invitations.  My young genius friend Will Crawford was over for lunch today and we implemented the proposed improvements to Ryan Tate's original design.  The final script is available at http:// philip.greenspun.com/software/brunch-spam.pl.txt and enables you to populated a structured text file with email addresses, full names, an affiliation reminder, and keywords (so you can have a mass invitation or one just to poker friends or one just to friends with young kids).

Evesham slapped for spamming

Evesham slapped for spamming 12/18/2003 10:39 AM
Tut, tut

Help! my Belkin router is spamming me

Help! my Belkin router is spamming me 11/07/2003 11:02 AM
Nagware promotes censorware

Spamming Referer Logs

Spamming Referer Logs 01/04/2004 12:03 PM

Spammers have sunk to a new low: spamming HTTP referer logs. Now that a lot of bloggers display referrer hits, and a lot of bloggers monitor them to see where they're getting links from, spammers have started sending HTTP requests with their site as the referer, just to get people to follow the links out of curiosity.

Doc Searls noted this phenomenon with Joe Leiberman's comapaign site. The URL "http://www.joe2004.com?starprose" appeared in his referer logs. Since Doc has no link from Leiberman's campaign site, and the lone querystrign arguments indicates that someone is trying to track a clickthrough, it seems that this was inserted there just so a webmaster would follow the link. Looking through my logs, I have this referer too.

Also, just like Doc, I have a referer in my logs to a blog solely about the Paris Hilton sex video. Needless to say, there is no link on that site to Gadgetopia. And here's one to a porn site in Germany. And, yes, I followed both these links because I was trying to figure out why, how, and in what context they linked to my site.

I don't know if I'm more irritated that spammers are pushing their way into every last piece of Internet life, or if I'm more irritated that I fell for it. Before I saw the think on Doc's site and put two and two together, I was blitely following these refer links, trying to figure them out. Score one for the spammers, I suppose.

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yahoo spamming bl0ggers?

yahoo spamming bl0ggers? 08/06/2004 06:37 PM
i got a couple of these myself. tread lightly, yahoo, and bloggers will help

The Mob Muscles In On Spyware And
Spamming

The Mob Muscles In On Spyware And
Spamming 12/09/2003 03:40 PM
It's the natural next step, apparently. People have been saying for a while now that organiz ed crime has discovered the wonders of spam and spyware and are actively recruiting techies to help them do so. However, once organized crime gets into an illegal market, the next thing they want to do is corner it for themselves. Thus, independent producers of spyware and spam are likely to get a knock on the door from their (not so) friendly internet neighborhood mobster asking for a cut of the action. While it would be nice to have some infighting in the spamming/spyware world to let them bother each other for a while, the end result is likely to be a very well organized scamming group that will be very difficult to take down.

How to skirt filters when spamming

How to skirt filters when spamming 06/06/2005 12:06 AM

Spamming the Wrong Message

Spamming the Wrong Message 04/14/2005 07:00 AM
Imposing a jail sentence on one of the world's top spammers feels good, but it's really attacking the problem from the wrong end. Commentary by Adam L. Penenberg.

Congress Pretends To Ban Spam, While
Spamming Itself

Congress Pretends To Ban Spam, While
Spamming Itself 12/29/2003 04:52 AM
It's no secret that Congress has a nasty habit of passing laws that include an exemption for themselves (which really should make you wonder). It's no surprise, of course, that the recentl y passed "CAN SPAM" law includes so many loopholes that many people (including us) think it's more a blueprint on how to spam, rather than a law forbidding spam. Among the loopholes is one that makes it perfectly legal for Congressional representatives to send spam, and, man, are they taking advantage of that. Apparently, many members of Congress are buying up email lists to spam possible constituents to get them to "sign up" for special email lists. While those email lists are opt-in, the fact that they're getting the word out via spam seems particularly bad. They claim that since they get more people opting-in than opting-out that people don't mind. That ignores the fact that most people won't opt-out, but will simply trash the email. This just adds more evidence to show how little many of our Congressional representatives actually understands what they're talking about when it comes to technology issues.

Spamming Phillies Fan Found Guilty

Spamming Phillies Fan Found Guilty 01/06/2005 05:24 PM
A while back, we wrote about the angry Philadelphia Phillies fan who was so upset with how the baseball team was run that he hijack ed computers around the world, sending out an angry spam denouncing Phillies management, and to top it all off, forging the return address to make it look like it was a local sports reporter who wrote the email. Not a huge surprise, but the guy has now been found guilty of "fraud, identity theft, and computer hacking." The best part, though, is his defense (he defended himself). He claims "he did not believe what he did was a crime or that it would cause harm to the newspapers." And you wonder why they tell people not to defend themselves in court.

Two facing charges in spamming operation

Two facing charges in spamming operation 12/11/2003 11:51 PM
Boston Globe Dec 11 2003 11:11PM ET

Wordpress Banned by Google for Spamming

Wordpress Banned by Google for Spamming 03/31/2005 02:54 PM

Is Microsoft Spamming Search Engines?

Is Microsoft Spamming Search Engines? 09/21/2004 10:32 AM
WebProNews Sep 21 2004 1:51PM GMT

New York Tells Spammer To Keep On
Spamming

New York Tells Spammer To Keep On
Spamming 07/19/2004 08:09 PM
Considered one of the top spammers worldwide, Scott Richter and his OptInRealBig spamming operation have been officially slapped on the wrist by New York State AG Eliot Spitzer. NY (and Microsoft) made a big deal of suing Richter last year, but the end result is a measly $40,000 fine (plus $100,000 in "investigative costs") as part of a settlement. This is just a bit lower than the $20 million fine Spitzer threatened Richter with when the case was announced. As with all of these types of settlements the company "admits no wrongdoing." The only other "concession" that Spitzer got out of Richter was a promise to send a copy of every spam message he sends to Spitzer's office. Yes, for a small fine, it looks like Richter gets to add Eliot Spitzer's email address to his spam lists. Richter's lawyer (who also happens to be his father) suggests that the settlement was so low because the state had no case. They were particularly annoyed by the fact that OptIn was referred to as a "deceptive spammer" when the truth of the matter is that it's a very very obvious spammer.

Are eBay Affiliates Spamming Google with
Your Words?

Are eBay Affiliates Spamming Google with
Your Words? 11/02/2003 08:44 AM
Auctionbytes.com Nov 2 2003 7:21AM ET

'Spam King' Agrees to Stop Spamming For
Now

'Spam King' Agrees to Stop Spamming For
Now 01/05/2005 10:14 PM
Slashdot Jan 6 2005 12:31AM GMT

Briefly: Teen guilty of mobile spamming

Briefly: Teen guilty of mobile spamming 06/24/2004 11:39 AM
roundup Plus: AMD offers fix for chip glitch...eEye sees defense contract win...Start-up promises bendy solar cells...Seagate sues small-drive maker.
Grok Description matches for MS sues 200 for spamming
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MS sues 200 for spamming

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