AOL going after spammers again?

[Mike AI]

http://www.msnbc.com/news/900367.asp?0cv=CB20

http://rss.com.com/2100-1032-996899.html?t...=feed&subj=news (http://rss.com.com/2100-1032-996899.html?type=pt&part=rss&tag=feed&subj=news)

America Online on Tuesday said it is filing five lawsuits against individuals and companies that are allegedly purveying bulk unsolicited e-mail, or spam, to its members.

The lawsuits, filed with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, seek at least $10 million in total damages along with court orders to immediately stop the alleged practices.

Spam, one of the most reviled by-products of the Net, creates headaches for computer users and for Internet companies such as AOL, MSN, Yahoo and EarthLink that offer e-mail as part of their services. Subscribers have routinely criticized AOL for the proliferation of unwanted e-mail in their in-boxes, causing the company to take a litigious policy towards alleged spammers.



AOL has taken spammers to court and has won lawsuits that resulted in monetary fines and a discontinuation of its practices. In April 2002, AOL won an injunction along with a "significant" monetary settlement against Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based Netvision Audiotext.

Microsoft has also taken the legal route by suing alleged spammers on behalf of its popular free e-mail service Hotmail. In February, Microsoft filed a lawsuit against undisclosed defendants accused of employing a "dictionary attack," where a computer program goes through dictionary entries to fish out Hotmail account passwords.

The problem has also alerted federal lawmakers to craft policy to punish spammers. Last week, a pair of U.S. senators reintroduced a bill, called the CAN-SPAM Act, that would make it a federal offense to send spam using false return e-mail addresses. AOL supports the bill.

The defendants named in AOL's latest round of lawsuits are alleged to have engaged in fraudulent and misleading e-mails peddling pornography, software products, college degrees, male organ growth, steroids and mortgage leads. Some defendants are named; others are so-called John Does.

AOL said the defendants allegedly sent 1 billion e-mails that resulted in 8 million complaints among its members.

[Winetalk.com]

I personally cancelled AOL due to the spam I was getting,
spam costs AOL money...

[Vick]

America Online on Tuesday said it is filing five lawsuits against individuals and companies that are allegedly purveying bulk unsolicited e-mail, or spam, to its members.

That is so ironic

AOL blatantly advertises every opportunity they have, and while it (should) be a profitable business proposition meanwhile AOL is winning $ in litigation and trying to portrait themselves in a positive spin to the general public

Both ends against the middle and they still lose $???

But I do like the new set of coasters AOL puts in my postal mail box every month or so


From http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/030415/tech_aol_spam_4.html


"The lawsuits come as AOL struggles to offset a slump in its dial-up subscriber base and advertising and contend with federal probes into its accounting practices.

As part of its turnaround efforts, AOL has stepped up efforts to keep its subscribers happy by reducing spam and curtailing pop-up ads, for example. AOL typically blocks 1.5 billion spam e-mails daily on its Internet service."

[Rolo]

Anti-Spam industry will be big in the future IMHO

[Forest]

i wish someone would do something about the spam in my Real mailbox

the fucking fliers down here are horrible

bags full everday

[Mike AI]

Forest you are correct about junk mail in mail boxs.... I really think that most e-mail spam SHUOLD be protected just like normal postal junk mail by the First Amendment. Though congress could make sure people followed certain ways of delivering it - can't forge headers, real return address, etc....


The REAL ironic part about AOL is that I get AOL spam to join AOL on my main e-mail accounts at LEAST once a day. I know AOL is not sending itself, they are contracting through "mainstream bul mailers" but it is still fucking spam.

Why don't we get together all the people getting this AOL spam and sue them?

[Forest]

Originally posted by Mike AI@Apr 16 2003, 09:40 AM
Why don't we get together all the people getting this AOL spam and sue them?
i smell class action law suit there

I have a Great attorney here that only does those

hmmmm
:salute:

[Mike AI]

http://news.mywebpal.com/news_tool_v2.cfm?...=localnews&om=2 (http://news.mywebpal.com/news_tool_v2.cfm?pnpID=348&NewsID=448920&CategoryID=263&show=localnews&om=2)

Lynn Says: Internet Spam is Difficult to Stop


04/16/03
By Lynn L. Martin
Email this story to a friend

AOL, the nation's largest Internet Service Provider (ISP) has around 30 million subscribers. Over 1 billion pieces of junk mail (spam) addressed to AOL users generated more than 8 million complaints.

It is difficult to imagine the cost to AOL. If one employee could investigate 50 of complaints per day, it would require 160,000 full time employees to do the job.

AOL, unable to afford 160,000 employees dedicated to the problem, is fighting back. The firm has filed a barrage of five law suits against more than a dozen individuals and companies accused of being major purveyors of "spam."

Sadly, AOL is only one defender against the onslaught of junk email. The flood of spam is growing so fast that it may soon account for half of all U. S. email traffic. Somebody at each business and at each mail account must wade though this hair-pulling annoyance.

A user generally has to look at the email mess piece by piece because some of it is legitimate, which is why he/she obtained the email address in the first place.

According to Ferris Research, Inc., spam will cost U. S. organizations more than $10 billion this year. The figure includes lost productivity, and the added computer capacity to handle the e-mail load.

The millions of unsolicited messages run the gamut from credit card offers, diets, financial schemes, pornography offers, and body part enhancements.

As a comparison, about 40% of the mail handled by the U. S. Postal Service is marketing oriented.

Most people do not realize that whenever they open an HTML based (more "designed looking" than just pure text) email, any graphics included in that email ends up saved on their computer in the temporary Internet directory. This "saving" has occurred even though the user may delete the email immediately after opening it. The graphics in the temporary folder were written with the opening click "to get ready" for you to read the e-mail.

I still do quite a bit of computer repair. I warn people about this problem because the directory containing such graphics is a "system" directory and is hidden by a warning screen that says something like, "You don't really want to go here because you could mess up your computer's operating system."

Yet, that hidden directory can contain graphics the computer user didn't purposely put there. The controlling party in that case was the author of the spam messages.

If your computer is growing sluggish it could be your hard drive is accumulating junk like this and is filling up. I note the Oklahoma legislature is forming laws requiring computer techs to "report" any illegal porn they find on systems on which they work. I'd like to know how the tech will know whether the spammer or the computer user caused the images to end up in a temporary Internet directory.

AOL and other ISP's try to track down the spam generation culprits. For AOL, the front line in the war against spam is inside an unmarked building in Northern Virginia, where a bank of computer screens tracks the volume of e-mail pouring into AOL's system.

On a recent afternoon, an unexpected spike suggested the work of "dictionary" spammers. This is where millions of email addresses are automatically generated by randomly combining numbers and letters with the @aol.com ending.

So if a generated name, such as Mary746, is placed with the AOL ending. The address ends up mary746@aol.com. The spammer sends out millions of these generated addresses and some of them work.

So the AOL detectives do their work in a back room. This is because some of the web sites they need to examine feature sexually explicit images that some colleagues in the workplace are likely to find offensive.

The team first determines whether AOL's spam filters, which block 1 billion messages a year, need to be adjusted. Meanwhile, another monitor displays the address code for the network and computer that may have sent the suspected spam.

The address is immediately checked against a list of registered domain name owners. The immediate problem, of course, is that some of the addresses show up on the display as "unknown" (just like your caller ID). Many others are obvious fakes, making it difficult to track down and ask them to stop, or to sue them if they don't.

Here are some tips on reducing the amount of spam you receive:

1. Use a long email name. If you have a long name with numbers and letters included, it is far more difficult for a computer to match that with random generation.

2. Have multiple accounts. By using separate accounts for e-commerce and another for personal use, you decrease the chance that your personal address will get spammed.

3. Avoid chat rooms and web-based discussion groups. Spammers are constantly harvesting the Internet for new addresses. They do so by using software to search the web pages. Online chat rooms and news groups are easy targets.

4. Avoid online contests and surveys. These are another prime vehicle for spammers to gather email names.

5. Sadly, "unsubscribe" requests on spam seem only to generate more spam. So I'd skip sending those.

[joee]

I can tell you directly how AOL affected me... MUCH DINERO!!!!!!
However I have plans to file AGAINST AOL and several other major ISP for dfefrauding their OWN members;-)))

Sergie here ya go.. Dinner you missed with MOM last night as G-d Paases over:-) http://www.icecoldcash.com/passover/index.html

ICE is kicking ass..... Anybody seen Zebra? Chad Prader? Have hi m email me please...... :wnw:

[Peaches]

Originally posted by joee@Apr 17 2003, 02:18 PM
Sergie here ya go.. Dinner you missed with MOM last night as G-d Paases over:-) http://www.icecoldcash.com/passover/index.html


Hey, Joe - I think you can buy cameras with FLASHES on them now! :nyanya:

Glad you're back!! :) :) :)

[Winetalk.com]

darn!
I have'n been at seder for 10 years
;-((((

Next year in Jerusalem!
;-)))