[4399] in comp.os.os2.announce archive
Editorial: Thoughts on the First Spam Freedom Day
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Mick Brown)
Fri Oct 16 23:57:22 1998
To: os2ann.DISCUSS@bloom-picayune.mit.edu
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1998 23:11:06 -0400
From: mick.brown@newsguy.com (Mick Brown)
Reply-To: mick.brown@newsguy.com
[followups directed to news.admin.net-abuse.email]
==========================================================================
Today is the first anniversary of AGIS.net removing megaspammer Sanford
Wallace's Cyberpromotions spamhaus. AGIS disconnected cyberpromo.com on 16
October 1997. All the dedicated spammers that were on AGIS.net circuits were
removed by the spring of 1998, and I don't remember seeing any AGIS related
spam in a LONG time.
Are we any better off? I'm not sure. The spammers scattered, and the DMA has
lobbied hard to legalize spam. So far as I can tell they and similar Direct
Marketing Organizations are responsible for much of the spam language in the
recent USA Senate 1618 and House of Representatives 3888 bills (see
http://www.spamfree.org and http://www.cauce.org for more information).
The Direct Marketers Association http://www.the-dma.org represents companies
who rent lists of names, addresses, and phone numbers. They usually don't
represent the manufacturers or resellers, and certainly not Joe Average. They
represent the folks who call you at dinnertime and the folks who are
responsible for the increasing numbers of hang up calls in early evening.
Although their members are responsible for invading the sanctity of your
home, they claim that their membership list is a "trade secret" or
"proprietary information" so you cannot find out who they really represent.
They are currently advertising a conference on how to direct pharmaceutical
ads at you http://www.the-dma.org/news4/pharm/pharm.html . I really don't see
how they can do that without looking at your medical and drugstore records.
The DMA http://www.the-dma.org/busasst6/busasst-onmarkprivpr6a7.shtml#C is
saying that harvesting your email addresses from public and private fora for
use in unsolicited messages is fine if the marketer sends email informing you
of his intentions to use your addresses and an opportunity to opt out.
The DMA advises their members that they may ignore the requests of consumers
to remove names, addresses, and phone numbers if the consumer pays a third
party to contact all the hundreds of direct marketers in his behalf.
http://www.the-dma.org/texis/scripts/news/newspaper/+2hWNreSqbnmXe+_KHwwwr/displayArticle.html
The DMA does not seem to require use of telephone or mail preference opt-out
lists that the DMA runs.
It appears to me that the DMA and similar organizations are not acting in the
interest of their customers (businesses who sell products) nor the consumer
but in the interest of the telemarketers and mailers who get paid on a
per-name used basis. The DMA is making consumers jump through unnecessary
hoops to get on do not call or do not mail lists. They lobby against laws
that would allow you to fill out a form at your post office to stop getting
junk mail, they lobby against laws that would allow you to check boxes on
your phone bill to get off the annoying telephone solicitors lists.
The people who run those lists mine information about you from every source
they can. One of those companies is called IBM Midrange Professionals (from
whois "midrangepros.com") which collects information about home addresses,
phone numbers, job titles and lots of other information from company
websites, the Internic whois database, and classifieds sites.
WWW.midrangepros.com sent out a spammed mailing on 4 Jun 1998 for
www.developer.ibm.com advertising IBM tools and strategies for Mr. Bill's OS.
I was shocked to see a post entitled "All is lost spammed by IBM Corporate"
... and investigation showed that it was true. Further investigation pulled
up a post claiming to quote a communication from one of IBM's official
spokesmen Tim Blair tblair@us.ibm.com in
http://www.dejanews.com/getdoc.xp?AN=341405599
| . . . First, I should explain IBM's interpretation
| of 'spamming'. The term clearly has a negative connotation, and by our
| interpretation, involves senders who knowingly conceal their identities, or
| continually send you emails after you have requested that they stop doing so.
| The flip side of this is that there are legitimate reasons for distributing
| mass emails (in the same way mass mailings are distributed to our physical mail
| boxes.)
| IBM and other ISPs are working on developing tools that enable customers to
| "filter-out" unwanted email.
I don't see how Tim's IBM approved spam differs from spam as we know it...
except IBM claims to be working on spam filter software to sell us... to
protect us from IBM approved & other spam.
None of my queries to Mr. Blair, various IBM VP's or Product Managers, to
IBM's CEO, Mr. Gerstner, or official contacts at IBM have disputed that Mr.
Blair's comments represent official IBM policy. In fact IBM has almost
uniformly ignored my queries other than indicating that they passed the buck
to higher ups. IBM has since removed the page to Write Lou from the home
page.
I also queried these folks in reference to a spam sent by IBM via FDDS. See
the Thread starting at http://www.dejanews.com/getdoc.xp?AN=359817707 which
contains a copy of the IBM Corporate spam. IBM spanked partner www.iwsc.com
hard when they spammed, IBM has been almost silent when they did almost the
same thing.
IBM still has not responded whether it stands behind Mr. Blair's policy
statement on behalf of IBM. Mr. Blair has not denied that he wrote it. IBM
Midrange Pros is still gathering data on your employees and your business and
targeting them for telephone, mail, and (probably) email solicitations. (To
be fair one official IBM contact denied that midrangepros.com is an IBM
business unit.)
-- Mick Brown
Things individuals can do:
Register your email preferences at http://www.safeeps.com to show what
unsolicited commercial email you are willing to receive. (If you don't want
any kind of spam don't check any of the boxes.)
SafeEPS is run by a wealthy acquaintance who manages the Mail and Telephone
Preference systems for the DMA. Rodney is also highly anti-spam. He was
instrumental in removing lots of spammers when he ran one of the smaller
backbone networks. Adding your name to the 40 million already in the safeEPS
system he runs is another vote against spam held and confirmed by a party
trusted by most marketers and many of the anti-spam community.
Find out how to report spam. At a minimum report the spamvertised website and
the email addresses in the body of the message. If unsure don't report the
from address which is almost always forged. If more people do this, the
reluctant networks will start removing websites of spamvertisers. tracerte is
in your /tcpip/bin directory whois is on hobbes.
Http://www.ao.net/waytosuccess/nospam.html has spam fighting tips and
information, and I'll upload some links to OS/2 software useful in spam
fighting to my http://forums.delphi.com/m/main.asp?sigdir=pro_internet web
board tonight or tomorrow.
If you have stock in a company that provides services to spammers (e.g.
Bellsouth, AT&T, Cable & Wireless (cw.net cwi.net cwix.net), Worldcom
(ans.net, compuserve.net, uu.net, alternet.net), Sprint all have persistent
spammers in their networks, there are others too) write to the board
concerning why they are permitting their downstream customers to continue to
spam. Request that they amend their acceptable use policies to fine spammers
and shut them off whether they spam directly or indirectly in email, usenet,
web boards, or IRC.
AT&T has amended their AUP & reporting requirements so that if you don't give
your name address phone company etc. they state they won't investigate or
terminate even if other evidence shows their customers are abusive
www.cerf.net http://www.cerf.net/cerfnet/aup/enf-procdrs.html and
http://www.cerf.net/cerfnet/aup/abuse-report.html . AT&T has been accused of
and settled suits for violating telephone privacy laws see
http://consumer.net . AT&T won't stop calling my neighbor nor my roommate
although it is illegal for marketers to ignore do not call requests, and they
want your personal information before they'll investigate their abusive
customers.
See http://consumer.net and similar organizations to see how US businesses
are violating your rights to be left alone.
Spam and other intrusive unsolicited marketing is not just a waste of
resources of my ISP, my email quota, etc. it is usually a violation of my
privacy.
Why can't I send a form to my post office to stop junk mail or indicate the
types of junk mail I'd like? Why can't I check boxes on a form and indicate
what telephone solicitations I'm willing to accept? Why do the folks who
really are investigating me (DMA ATA AMMA etc. members) (a` la the "Are they
Investigating You?" TCPS spammer) get to determine what ads I see?
