Porn Spam indictments…
The Security Fix is reporting that the Justice department will imminently indict four people accused of sending large volumes of porn spam in violation of the CAN-SPAM act which requires explicit junkmail to be specifically labeled “SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT” in the subject line.
These would be the first indictments related to obscene spam. Among other things they are expected to be indicted for money laundering as well and according to the writeup…
According to the Justice Dept., America Online received more than 600,000 complaints in six months about the spam allegedly sent by the four. The messages advertised subscription-based adult Web sites
600,000 complaints in 6 months. I wonder how many didn’t complain?
The big concern I had with the CAN-SPAM act was if they would be able to enforce it. It will be interesting to see what comes of this. I do wonder though if there’s not a relatively high cost in tracking and charging spammers for small reward?
Personally I think it’s great that they’re pursuing this, it would be nice if ALL junk mail contained a certain phrase in the subject (of course mine has ***SPAM*** in the subject but that’s due to spamassassin…) I mean, “Commercial Advertisement” would work… then those that wanted it could relish all they wanted and everyone else would have an easy way to filter it out. I don’t see the spammers winning by trying to sneak junk into the inbox of people that are trying so hard NOT to see it. That just increases the adversarial relationship making people more hostile towards commercial emailings.