Anti Spam - SpamUnit

The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 is a landmark spam law in the United States, but it’s not the only antispam law on the table. The individual states also have powers to make their own spam laws - and New Jersey is the latest one to do just that. The “New Jersey CAN SPAM Act” aims to crack down even tougher on spammers than the national CAN SPAM law. Among the spam techniques forbidden by the potential new law are the use of false information to register for webmail accounts to bypass spam blacklists; also illegal would be unauthorised access to other computers - such as via botnets or virus control - for the purpose of using them as a spam sender.

The penalties are harsh. Lawbreakers could be jailed for up to twelve months and fined $1,000 for the smallest offences, with tariffs ranging up to $25,000 and 10 years in prison for the more serious breaches of New Jersey Spam law. American spam law, then, is serious both on state and national level, but whether these penalties can get rid of spam in New Jersey remains to be seen; after all, spam is an international business.

The law has passed the NJ Senate and will head to the NJ Assembley shortly. If it proceeds past there, it will become law, and spammers will surely depart New Jersey with haste. But will it makes a difference to regular New Jersery internet users?

Read more at MSN

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One of the most persistent professional spammers listed since 2003 on Spamhaus ROKSO (Register Of Known Spam Operations) database, has been arrested in Seattle Washington in a joint operation conducted by the Washington State Attorney General’s Office, the FBI, FTC, Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigations and the United States Postal Inspection Service.

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Slashdot (http://it.slashdot.org/it/07/06/12/1328213.shtml) reports that alleged CAN SPAM violator and so-called “spam king” Adam Vitale has pled guilty to charges filed against him. He and an associate, Todd Moeller, apparently sent tens of millions of spam messages to 1.2 million AOL subscribers. They used several different servers and email headers to hide their tracks and evade AOL spam filtering, but justice seems to have eventually caught up with them. Allegedly, the spammers made at least $40,000 a month from their email marketing exploits, but, in doing so, broke the law.

While the guilty plea is encouraging from a spam-killer point of view, the sentencing is a much bigger deal. The judge’s decision, due for September, will show just how far antispam laws have come. With a maximum sentence of eleven years in jail, the spam king could potentially be away for a long time: whether this acts as a deterrent for future spamming remains to be seen. Technology has had trouble delivering a spam free reality; maybe the courts can finally make stopping spam a reality, at least in the US, is a harsh sentence is delivered. Nonetheless, some remain skeptical: apparently less than 1% of all spam messages comply with this spam law.

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World Spam Law Round-up: Plenty of countries, tired of the growing problem of junk spam mails in their jurisdictions, are enacting new spam laws. In Singapore, the Spam Control Act 2007, comparable to the CAN SPAM act of the USA, comes into effect on June 15 2007. This law stipulates harsh financial penalties of up to S$1m (approx. $650,000 American dollars) for the senders of junk spam emails within their borders. They hope that this will lead to spam-free networks, at least in their own country. They also want it to discourage foreign spammers from flooding Singaporean inboxes, but this seems unlikely to work.

A similar problem exists in Hong Kong. Their law came into play on June 1 2007 but has so far had limited success. Since Hong Kong is only responsible for around 1% of the world’s spam, and prosecuting those in foreign jurisdictions has proved troublesome, internet users in the Chinese region notice little change. However, as it’s a relatively new innovation, time will tell whether or not it has a lasting effect.

Finally, China has taken a new approach to a growing problem - it has begun punishing mobile spammers. The burgeoning cellphone industry in China is not without its issues; certain companies, even large, well-known ones like Tencent - a leading internet, messaging and mobile company - have fallen foul of the administration, facing sanctions and fines for junk messaging mobile customers. In China, mobile spam is not quite as big a business as email marketing but it’s growing all the time: in a few years, asking “what is spam” may give very different results as the cell phone industry grows. Perhaps other countries will soon follow China’s lead in this regard.

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While the trial of spam king Robert Alan Soloway has been catching all the headlines, it’s worth looking at some of the other top spammers who are the targets of the FBI’s “Operation Bot Roast.” Along with Soloway, two others have already been charged, with more possibly on the way. The first of the other two is James C. Brewer of Arlington, Texas. Well-known to those who keep spam blacklists, this man apparently installed botnet software on Chicago-area hospital computers (see post 11.) The other is the least well-known of all, but is worthy of mention. Jason Michael Downey of Covington, Kentucky, is also a famed botnetter. Using spam virus software, he is also allegedly not only involved in zombie PC, but also fraud; his charge relates not directly to spam mail but to Fraud and Related Activity in Connection with Computers.

Of course, this could just be the tip of the iceberg. The FBI are rumoured to have even more targets, mostly relating to botnetting as opposed to simply junk spam: their problem lies mostly with fraud and hacking, rather than with marketing. However, they realise that the actual act of spamming is a major concern for users, so they offer tips on their website (see: http://www.fbi.gov/page2/june07/botnet061307.htm) about spam protection, spam filtering and how to use spam blocker software. They also recommend spam firewall programs be left on it at all times: all sound advice.

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