Boy are we off-topic...was Re: Spam Control Considered Harmful

Fri Oct 31 15:49:35 UTC 1997

On 30 Oct 1997, John R. Levine wrote:

> >> And what will the FBI do when spammers leave the US...
> 
> This is really a red herring -- any spam control law, even one of the
> bad ones like the Murkowski bill applies to any resident of the U.S.,
> even if he hires someone in Moldova to send out his spam.  To escape
> U.S. law the spammer has to move his entire business offshore.  In
> practice we're unlike to see much offshore spam because the goal of
> spammers is to collect money from suckers, and it's a whole lot harder
> to do so if you don't have a domestic mailing address and bank
> account.

So (hypotheticaly, if I were a spammer) if I rent a P.O. box from some
mailbox rental place using a fake ID, buy an account overseas with another
fake ID, and use that account to relay spam through old broken mail
servers all over the world...servers that don't insert in the header the
true IP of the sender...the FBI will somehow stop me?  I suppose they
could steak out the P.O. box, but lots of spam doesn't involve sending
money.  How about the offshore area codes (I think 809 was one) spammers
urge you to call to collect your free prize or avoid having your credit
record destroyed?  You call and the telco bills you for them.  They need
no presence in the US, and I'd therefore assume are untouchable by the
FBI.

Since none of this does my Cisco any good, shouldn't we move the
discussion to a more appropriate list, or create one for it? 

Perhaps netop-spam...a spam discussion list for network operators?  If it
doesn't already exist, I'll be happy to create it.

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