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Is Spam theft?

AlienX

Thinker
A
Joined
Jun 19, 2003
Messages
129
I live in the UK and many ISP's impose a download limit over a specific time frame. So it effectivly costs people money per k downloaded.

So if someone sends me a mail /popup/ redirects me to a site i don't want to goto then why isn't this theft.

For things like telesales etc you would be most annoyed if the phone call you recieved from them was costing you money - so why the difference here?.

I've always thought a good idea would be a database of products which use spam as an advertising medium that blocked you from buying such products automatically would be cool.
Goto a site selling goods etc thats on the database and it blocks you from sending out your credit card details etc.

AX
 
Get a better isp.

Facetious answer, perhaps. But it works for me.

Cheers,
Rat.
 
Perhaps you could indicate which isp's in the uk dont have some form of download restriction. Some you just dont notice as they are very high but they do exist. All of the ADSL suppliers that I can thing of have a limit - all the sattelite one definitely do, as for narrowband every single one again i can think of has a limit.

All the BT services have a limit and any friaco service also has a limit. The BT ADSL service also has user download limits.

I'm in the UK and i've used more isp's than you can shake a stick at over the years, all bar none have had a download limit of some description in the last 3 years.

All the cable suppliers also impose download limits.

I've had a good think about it and I can't think of any that don't have some limit hidden in the small print of the conditions.

Could you please point out which services within the UK don't have a limit ? ;-)

ta

AX
 
This angle, now that you've made me think about it, could be the 'foot in the door' for anti-spam legislation with some teeth in it.

As I understand it... here in the US, spam was eliminated from FAXs because it used consumables and therefore cost the recipient money.

I can see the same argument being used in your case.
 
I use Nildram. If they have a limit, I'd be amazed, as I haven't reached it yet, and if anyone did, I would.

They don't ban users from running web servers, but they do discourage it.

Looking at my dial-up stats (you can do this on their website), I've transferred something like 3GB so far this month. I don't think I've ever gone over 4 or 5 GB, but if you do, then a dial-up connection, even an adsl one, is not suitable anyway.

As ever, the answer to spam is to get a domain or subdomain, and just give out one user name to friends, and one to everywhere else. You can then set up your mail client to only pick up mail from the server if it matches the rules you specify. Of course, then they're stealing your time, rather than your money or bandwidth.

Cheers,
Rat.
 
The point is that many services do have a limit and it's quite common around the world. So a spammer is very unlikely to know which people are on a limit or free from such limits. Thus fundamentally they will be costing people directly by stealing their bandwidth.

I think it's theft on a basic level, it cost industry billions of pounds per year (UK was 2.6 BN for the last 12 months alone).

As for being on Nildram, you are under a download limit as Nildram only have a certain amount of bandwidth they buy from BT wholesale. The limit may be very generous but it's certainly there. On things like NTL cable there is a 1GB limit per day so about 30 gb per month.

Yes these numbers are big but they can only shrink as more and more people move to broadband. You aint on a tight limit atm but do you really think you will be saying the same thing in a few years time?

All the telecoms companies want to charge per K downloaded and it's the way the industry is trying to go. They see the vast sums of easy money that can be made with a constant charge for bandwidth.

Even now as i've said a spammer cant single out those who dont have aqlimit so each time they spam they will be directly stealing off millions of people QED.

AX
 
Jim_MDP said:
This angle, now that you've made me think about it, could be the 'foot in the door' for anti-spam legislation with some teeth in it.

As I understand it... here in the US, spam was eliminated from FAXs because it used consumables and therefore cost the recipient money.

I can see the same argument being used in your case.
Click to expand...

Just a small point Jim - as of December here in the UK it is illegal for any company to send unsolicited mail to a home users email address. This does not cover your work email but it's a step in the right direction.

The comany I work for issued us all with a mail (hehe techincally spam itself) telling us that we must never send an unsolicited mail to anyone, this was 2 months ago well prior to the actual date in December.l

The US are simply shuffling their feet over this issue.. which is a shame considering that most of the worlds unsolicited mail originates from there ;-).

AX
 
I agree... spam is theft. Even if you didn't have limits on bandwidth, any costs that your ISP has in handling junk email (bandwidth, disk space on mail servers, etc.) gets passed back to you in higher fees. (Even if your ISP has spam filters set up, those require at least some processing power, plus the time of the people to install the required software.)

The Cauce (Committee against unsolicited Commercial email) web site (www.cauce.org) has some good ideas.

For information on the 'costs', see: http://www.cauce.org/about/faq.shtml#costs
 
Theft -- maybe not...?

Technically, I would bet that the spammers could wheedle out of the "spam is theft" issue by saying that the user controls what they download. Now, granted, for 99% of the users out there, they really can't control what they download. However, since their computer is (shall we say) "softwired", they could use software that "ignores" (ha!) spam unlike on a hardwired phone/fax.

With enough high-powered lawyers, they might make a case.

:( :(
 
Thats the point though isn't it - spammers actively try and circumvent spam filtering software - thus by that action alone they adimt to sending material to people who don't wan't it.

Large portions of the net are grinding to a halt with all this garbage flying around. At the end of the day it has to be stopped and the only way to do it is make it not worthwhile for the spammers. Apparently there are only a few companies responsible for billions of spam mails per day.

It's hard to find and catch the spammers but start prosecuting the products that they are advertising as you then have a direct link it's hard to cover. Once the market goes the spammers have nothing to spam. Long prison sentances for the spammers should also reduce the problem somewhat.

For me personally if i get any product spam in any format especially telesales i make a point of not buying said item.
Normal advertising isn't too bad as long as it's not too invasive.

AX
 
Technology...

There is a technological approach to utterly stopping spam -- secure email connections. The question, though, is will the loss of privacy be worth the security?

Secure email connections can be implemented at two levels:

  1. Person to Person
  2. Server to Server
    [/list=1]

    In #1, a person uses something like public key encryption to ensure that only the person that the message is intended for can read it. This also ensures that the identity of the person sending the message is well known (important for stopping spam).

    In #2, a mail server would only forward email passed to it from other "well known" email servers. This would ensure that all email has a guaranteed trail back to the sender of the email (also important for stopping spam).

    Requiring these two capabilities would eliminate spam because the "spam-ees" could easily determine who the "spammer" was. The problem is that this would also remove the ability to use anonymous email. That, in turn, reduces the "free speech" capabilities of email (ie. no more telling off the boss).

    Would it be worth it?
 
I would say in your case spam is theft, but I'm amazed that isp's over there have d/l limits. Isn't there competition? How do they get away w/ this? I can easily (and often do) d/l 20 GB a month, and pay a flat fee.
 
Spam IS theft, if nothing else it is stealing my precious time deleting their utter nonsense every morning.:mad:

The database over solicitors using Spam seems like a good idea i f.inst has never used E-Bay allthough it probably is a good service, i HATE HATE HATE (sorry ranting,-) Pop-Up ads and theirs are quite annoying.

It won't cure the problem 100% because some of the spammers are not interested in trade, they just want you to click into their homepage, but it will remove a lot AND it will send a clear message: "No decent people uses SPAM".
 
The first point of call is to make it illegal.

America needs to follow the UK's lead but seem to be dragging their heels over it.

Another cost is HDD space and the power used to write and delete the info from the drive. The power used is being paid for by you. Yep it's small but so what?

I'm pretty lucky on the spam front but many of my friends are absolutely plagued by it, it costs them time and money to download these unsolicited mails that is costing the sender nothing to send to billions of people.

The only solution is to ban it then punish those actively doing it and those companies using the spammers services. With so few main offenders they wouldn't take up too much cell space ;-).
It's very suprising to read that only 160 companies are responsible for over 95% of all spam - why they are not dealt with is anyones guess.

AX
 
Why? If spam could be wiped out via technology, then do we need laws to go with that? Isn't it a waste of taxpayer's money?
 
Why? If spam could be wiped out via technology, then do we need laws to go with that? Isn't it a waste of taxpayer's money?
Click to expand...

I think it would be more waste of money trying to develop tecnology to deal with spam. I'm sorry but as i see it your approach would only lead to a "war" between spammers and software developers about who first find the flaws in the other parts design, just look at the "war" between virus makers and anti virus software developers.

Outlawing would achieve two things:
1. "Decent" compagnies would not use SPAM as marketing knowing that they could be punished.
2. You could easily clamp down on the big scale spammers.
 
Ove said:

I think it would be more waste of money trying to develop tecnology to deal with spam. I'm sorry but as i see it your approach would only lead to a "war" between spammers and software developers about who first find the flaws in the other parts design, just look at the "war" between virus makers and anti virus software developers.

Outlawing would achieve two things:
1. "Decent" compagnies would not use SPAM as marketing knowing that they could be punished.
2. You could easily clamp down on the big scale spammers.
Click to expand...

My personal belief is that the technology is much easier to develop than the laws. Remember that US laws do not apply to overseas spammers and many (most?) spammers are overseas. Therefore, outlawing SPAM would probably achieve little as the spammers could never really be prosecuted. Perhaps national companies would "choose" not to use spammers, but the international companies might not feel compelled to do so and the fly-by-night companies are a dime a dozen.

You know, it's interesting you bring up computer virus protection. A worldwide secure email system would cut down on email viruses considerably because they could be more easily traced back to the originator (or the broken system that was subverted).

A secure email system would not prevent spammers from "taking over" poorly administered systems to be proxy senders of their spam. However, a system whereby email is required to be sent in a secure fashion (at least) most of the time would permit problems (like spam) to be more easily traced back to the source. In this way, broken systems could be quickly fixed to prevent repeat spamming.
 
A secure email system would not prevent spammers from "taking over" poorly administered systems to be proxy senders of their spam. However, a system whereby email is required to be sent in a secure fashion (at least) most of the time would permit problems (like spam) to be more easily traced back to the source. In this way, broken systems could be quickly fixed to prevent repeat spamming.
Click to expand...

Perhaps you are right but still i think the story of virus making demonstrates that every time you develop a new obstacle the bad guys very quickly find a way around it.

You are right off course that some SPAM operators recide in hideout countries BUT if USA made SPAM illegal like most european countries has done/are about to, it would be much easier to put international pressure on those countries. Even ships from Panama and Liberia has been forced to have lifeboats theese days.:D
 
Actually, I believe most of the world's spam comes from Florida (USA :p ). . .

"Florida has become the world's spam capital, thanks to weak state laws. If spammers are caught out in the state all they can expect is a slap on the wrist at worst," he said.

According to Linford, 180 recidivist spammers account for 90 per cent of the world's spam. Deal with them and you've cracked the spam problem, he believes.

"If these 180 were somehow spirited off the Internet - we'd be left with the Nigerians, and companies spamming by mistake. The spam problem would simply disappear," he said. ®
Click to expand...

The Register

A US anti-spam law would therefore have a significant impact on the problem, at least for a while.

Graham
 
I wasn't meaning making it illegal as being the total solution - just a major part.

Clearly if a 100% foolproof software system was available we would all be using it (at a cost mind you).

Obviously a multi pronged attack is required - Whats wrong with spending tax money on preventing criminals abusing the internets bandwidth?.

What do you think is more cost effective - making spam illegal and locking up a few hundred criminals (data shows many spammers have previous form) or that billions of people need to purchace and maintain anti spam software?

In the UK alone in the last 12 months spam cost the country 2.6 Billion pounds (just for companies not home users). I'd hate to think of the numbers for the USA. Well there you go it doesn't take a calculator to work out that its worth making illegal.

AX
 
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