[58465] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: identity theft != spam
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steven M. Bellovin)
Thu May 15 13:27:53 2003
To: Randy Bush <randy@psg.com>
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Date: Thu, 15 May 2003 13:27:15 -0400
From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <smb@research.att.com>
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
In message <E19GMJA-0001Em-90@roam.psg.com>, Randy Bush writes:
>
>
>this exemplifies the corporate and legislative attempt to confuse
>spam == uce with forgery. if they can make the latter the issue,
>this leaves the way completely clear for unsolicited commercial
>email from the corporate sector which now fills our post boxes with
>ground trees.
>
>randy
>
This is actually a follow-on to an article in the 7 May Wall Street
Journal (http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB105225593382372600-search,00.html?collection=wsjie%2F30day&vql_string=Carmack%3Cin%3E%28article%2Dbody%29
if you subscribe).
A brief summary is that Earthlink was going crazy trying to stop his
spam because of his other activities. Other mechanisms, like yanking
his account for violating the AUP, were ineffective because of the
identity thefts.
Of course, I'm sure that no one on this list is surprised to hear that
spammers break the law....
--Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb (me)
http://www.wilyhacker.com (2nd edition of "Firewalls" book)
