$1 billion anti-spam lawsuit

Unlike previous attempts, this lawsuit looks like it actually has a chance at succeeding. While I'm generally no fan of tort lawyers, I'd be more than happy this time around if all the profits these spammers made ended up in the hands of lawyers. By greatly increasing the cost of spamming, hopefully the flood of spam will be reduced to a trickle.

I love spam. Makes it harder for all the government agencies to spy on us and further reduce the little liberty that is left in cyberspace. For this goal I am more than willing to endure the spam flood. I value every one of those e-mails.

Kiessling, that is a fine example of lateral thinking. It makes me feel better about spam already!

Welcome SPAM!

Uhhh - okay how does it make it harder for NSA to spy on us or any other 3 letter agency? And since I don't have anything to hide I am not worried about it but I sure am starting to see way too much spam. It seemed until the last few months I had largely succeeded in avoiding spam all these years but it really is flooding now and they say it has increased a lot for everyone. It certainly doesn't help speed the Internet either. Oops - sorry I forgot your not in the U.S. Keissling - I don't know how Germany is about spying on it's citizens but having had a German GF a few years ago I didn't think it was that bad there - is it? But I still don't see what effect it would have on preventing anyone from 'spying' on you. It's annoying stuff and sucks some poor old or less Internet savvy people into losing money. I'll be cheering for anything that stops it.

matrixshaman said:

...since I don't have anything to hide I am not worried about it...

Click to expand...

How do you know that you don't have anything to hide? Modern governments have killed people...because they didn't like their poetry. During the Cold War a Russian named Vicktor Suverov lamented that it didn't matter what your status was with the State -- things change and what was once acceptable may easily become forbidden overnight -- that anyone may become a criminal at any time in the future.

Perhaps thats a little over the top, but so is the notion that, '...since I don't have anything to hide I am not worried about it...'

I only wish that the many issues surrounding privacy were that simple.

Kiessling said:

I love spam. Makes it harder for all the government agencies to spy on us and further reduce the little liberty that is left in cyberspace. For this goal I am more than willing to endure the spam flood. I value every one of those e-mails.

Click to expand...

+1

Still, I haven't seen any of those male organ enlargement ones lately. :candle:
Those were funny to read before I tossed them. :laughing: :wave:


Seriously, I would like to see lawyers stay out of this one.
I have worked security in office buildings where there were just a few attorneys, out of dozens that I knew there,
who had nice cars, homes, top floor and/or corner offices, etc.. from stuff like this.

There are at least several email sites that come to mind, which are fairly stout with thier spam filters and/or "junk folder" features.
The one in my sigline has been one of those.

matrixshaman ... the sheer amount of traffic generated by SPAM makes a general screening process for government agencies (or anyone else for that matter) a lot harder, especially since the traffic is more or less senseless and random.

Apart form that ... what Sub_Umbra said.

These days we're converted into a surveillance state par exellence.
Here in Germany they are about to pass a law about mass-collecting data and storing it for 6 months ... and they speak of all available data ... like phone calls made, web sites viewed, e-mails sent, etc.
We'll be citizens made of glass very soon. Which is something worse then we ever had on this planet IMHO.

Just think about the methods at the disposition of our authorities today or in the very near future:

- mobile phones: location and call tracking and surveillance
- bank transfers and credit cards: location tracking, money tracking
- complete control over nearly all your money, it is blocked in a second if so desired
- cameras in public places with (soon) face recognition
- cameras at traffic points with license plate recognition
- in Germany we have Toll Collect with cameras on all Autobahns ... that make 4 photos of each car passing by ... and those will be stored for 6 months
- soon we'll have an obligatory health card with all health related data collected
- RFID chips everywhere
- biometric data in passports and soon in general biometric libraries to be made avaiable to authorities with a mouse click
- in Germany they want to pass a law that allows authorities to scan your computer without you knowing it or being subject to investigation
- in the years to come the Galileo satellites will go online with all the tracking possibilities associated
- complete data storage and surveillance of all online traffic including e-mail communication and visited websites is inbound
- phone surveillance is a basic for years now
-etc.


This is hell.

So ... for me ... every little detail that makes it harder for them is worth it. Even SPAM. I grin when I see 100+ SPAM e-mails in my inbox per day. I grin.

bernie


P.S.: I am afraid.

Actually, I have a mobile phone assigned to me with gps tracking for work provided by my client.
No matter where I drive, They know where I am.
I cover 600 miles a day.
Sorry if this is a little off track, but the technology is here already and it is maturing.

Government tracking can only get stronger as technology moves further along.
More spam? I'll live with it.

Sheesh, Kiessling,

You're obviously right but I so wish you weren't.

What's more frightening to me than the state of freedom-reducing technology is it's misuse. I don't mean by the apparent evil machinations of some dictatorial Government but more commonly by the lack of time and training and exactitude of the poor sods who have to implement it all. All the data security and the care and attention that this sensitive information should be handled with.

Already here in the UK we have had private and potentially damaging personal information leaked into public domains by mistake!

Technology is getting more intelligent and powerful but most of us are still banging the rocks together and trying not to fall out of our tree!!!


Grin and bear it!!!


Oh, and of course...


Be lucky....

Unfortunately, when it comes to government, ultimately we get what we collectively deserve.

Statistically, individual privacy has little or no value to most. The majority simply does not care about it. They have never given it a second thought. The true value that an individual places on his privacy may be seen by noting all of the things people will give up personal data for -- these offers usually use the word FREE which in these cases implies no value. Most think nothing of giving up personal data in exchange for a FREE mail in rebate. To them, their own address, phone number, email addy and other data have no value. Their privacy has no value to them -- therefore, it will go away.

I'm all for the encryption of personal data and personal communications. (Nearly everything going in and out of this computer is seamlessly encrypted and decrypted as I use it -- including this web page and this individual post.) It's not that I'm doing anything illegal. It's not that I've deluded myself into thinking that the government can't read my traffic. They can. I do it simply because I don't want them to be able to do it for free. If they want to read my communications, fine. They may explicitly decide to expend the resources to do so. The important thing is that they can't just scoop it up en massse with 300,000 other web communications and scan them all for free.

History has shown that abuses will always happen eventually if there is any opportunity. Nearly all email and web traffic is sent 'in the clear' and may be read by any government or individual but privacy is really of no concern to the vast majority.

The two primary abusers of personal and private information are governments and marketing firms. Governments have some restrictions on what they can obtain and/or how they obtain it, mostly as a result of the rights of citizens. Marketing doesn't have those same restrictions. It doesn't really matter, though, under what restrictions the governments work., The governments reserve the right to seize and subpoena whatever data marketing may obtain.

Don't be misled by the concept of marketing research. Simply referring to the process as marketing or envisioning them as a subordinate or less significant departmental designation obscures the true power.

The significance of the role they play in commerce can be demonstrated by considering that Google and Microsoft just finished a bidding war reaching the highest bids they've ever made, with Google winning by purchasing the marketing firm Doubleclick at a higher cost than they've paid for anything.

Between governments and marketing research, there are no areas of privacy any longer, no expectation of privacy, and no rights of privacy. Together they rule the world, and the more powerful of the two is marketing.

Wow, I hadn't heard that Google bought Doubleclick. Wow.

Some very good and wise posts in this thread ... thank you, Gentlemen.

One problem I see is that the protection od said privacy will cost us more and more recourses and yield no benefit ... thus reducing our efficacy at whatever other task we're trying to accomplish ... be it raising offspring or working.

It is a battle we cannot win, but that steals our time. And time is a most precious recourse.

bernie

Google for me is in the "evil" camp. As is MS and others.

The irony is ... like I said ... the cost of avoiding both ... the cost in TIME ... is ridiculously high.
So I use them. And hate them. And the world.

bernie


P.S.: what is Doubleclick?

A place to start about DoubleClick.

DoubleClick was founded in 1995 as Internet Advertising Network by Kevin O'Connor and Dwight Merriman. DoubleClick was initially engaged in the online media business, meaning it helped web sites sell advertising to marketers. In 1997 the company began offering the online ad serving and management technology they had developed to other publishers as the DART services. During the internet downturn, DoubleClick divested its media business, and today DoubleClick is purely involved in ad management from the technology end — uploading ads and reporting on their performance.

Click to expand...

-Bill

Kiessling said:

I love spam. Makes it harder for all the government agencies to spy on us and further reduce the little liberty that is left in cyberspace. For this goal I am more than willing to endure the spam flood. I value every one of those e-mails.

Click to expand...

Kiessling said:

So ... for me ... every little detail that makes it harder for them is worth it. Even SPAM. I grin when I see 100+ SPAM e-mails in my inbox per day. I grin.
QUOTE]


i still don't get this. how does HAVING SPAM keep the government from spying on us.

how does me having many messages in my e-mail inbox keep them from watching what i do?

confused.

Click to expand...

i still don't get this. how does HAVING SPAM keep the government from spying on us.

how does me having many messages in my e-mail inbox keep them from watching what i do?

confused.

Click to expand...

I think the idea alluded to is that the SPAM in your mailbox increases the sheer volume that must be scanned for information about you. It also increases the number of decisions that must be made about how relevent a given piece of info is to you.

It could be said that SPAM increases the NOISE in the SIGNAL/NOISE ratio.

It is not the "having SPAM" part ... it is the bazillions of SPAM e-mails flying round the globe and also in my account that make any screening or surveillance attempt much harder due to the sheer volume of data processed.
Once you are singled out for surveillance this won't help of course. It is a general issue.

BB ... thanx.

bernie

I really don't see SPAM as an issue for agencies like the NSA. Given that they use methods like MD5 checksums to fingerprint email they only have to identify the first one and then the next gazillion like messages are easily recognized as such. 97% of the 3 Million messages we process at work are SPAM and our system is about 98% accurate in killing the SPAM in that 97%.

As for Google...while they can get my IP (which changes from my ISP) I use the Customize Google Addon for Firefox as well as a cookie manager to assure they can't easily track me.

If you really want to cover you tracks get TOR and use PGP for email. TOR will encrypt and anonymize your web surfing. PGP will encrypt email but the recipient must have the tools and skills to decrypt it so that's not always practical either.

While on on my privacy roll checkout TrueCrypt. I use it and all of my data: browser cache, temp directory, email, cookies favorites, etc., is sent to the encrypted partition. That way if my laptop is stolen they get a nice piece of hardware with Windows but NONE of y my data.