In a very interesting turn of events Spammers are not happy about getting a taste of there own medicine and have started an essential war between one company that is fighting back against spammers. [Wired]
I did not realize this but apparently there is a fairly organized group of about 5000 people that pick a spammer site a day to go after. The results have been pretty good in a sense they are fighting fire…
The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced, in a public report, that a system of monetary rewards would help improve the enforcement of the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2002 (CAN-SPAM Act.) That Act, which became effective on January 1, 2004, required the FTC to conduct a study and provide a report to Congress on a CAN-SPAM "bounty system." While the fact that bounties may be offered to those who help authorities in nabbing spammers doesn't unusual, what is very much out of the ordinary is the projected bounty amounts necessary to make them effective.
AT&T received a U.S. patent earlier this month that will give intellectual property (IP) attorneys ground on which to stand when pursuing spammers.
Spam is an ever-increasing annoyance for e-mail users. Most people have some form of spam filtering application that reduces the instances of the frequently offensive unsolicited commercial messages. Many of these filters seek to identify spam based on the address from which the message is sent, but spammers are already wise to this trick, and spoofing is now commonplace. By hiding or misdirecting their transmission source, spammers make it exceedingly difficult for most users to determine from where the spam message actually came.
Two LA spammers were ordered to pay $2 million and received various business restrictions in Santa Clara County Superior Court, this past Friday. This is the largest judgment won by government prosecutors against senders of unsolicited e-mail. The spammers are also the object of a Federal Trade Commission suit; however, both legal cases are civil suits, so there's not much chance that the spammers will see the inside of a jail cell anytime soon.
California Governor Gray Davis must be bucking for the Geek vote in the October 7th special election in which he could be recalled from office. Today he stood tough and signed an antispam law that prohibits anyone from sending unsolicted commmercial e-mail (UCE, aka spam) to a California e-mail address.