Re: Ethics of Deterrence

Eren Reshef wrote:

I'll go further and tell you you're a criminal.

It's trivially easy for someone to put an URL of a website I own into a spam.

And if you attack my website in response, and I had nothing to do with the original spam, you will have law enforcement knocking on your door.

You're in California, I'm in California, should be as easy as a phone call.

Did you mention something about the US Constitution? God, I *hate* when ignorant people claim that the Constitution gives them rights with no restriction -- you are welcome to certain rights as long you don't infringe on others' rights in the process of exercising yours. People who whine about their First Amendment rights being impugned often forget that.

Steve Sobol, Professional Geek 888-480-4638 PGP: 0xE3AE35ED Company website:

blog, resume, portfolio: snipped-for-privacy@JustThe.net Snail: 22674 Motnocab Road, Apple Valley, CA 92307

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well Steve, you are forgetting a couple of important factors: although yes, it is 'trivially easy' to put someone else's URL (for a web page) into spam a third party wants to send out, if you have a web page, your web page would have to have one or more 'forms' on it for people to use to fill in their credit card numbers in order for other folks to come along and deface your web site, wouldn't it? Wouldn't it be quite a coincidence if you, the innocent web site owner happened to have forms all over your web page which related to the product or service being spammed by some other person, _and_ through some 'human error' your web site got chosen? I really have to wonder if you read any of the FAQ on how the BlueSecurity.com system works ... let's say for example, I am offended by a piece of spam I recieve; I forward it to BlueSecurity; someone there who has a modicum of intelligence (about as much intelligence as the people who write up filtering software) looks at it, quickly finds mid the HTML crap on the source page an IP address which _appears to be_ the offender. He (the investigator) goes to the URL; is it in fact the product or service being spammed? If not, then he junks it. If it is the product being spammed, and it has 'forms' around the page for things like credit card numbers, comments or names/addresses, etc then it gets put somewhere. Now the investi- gtor finds a thousand more pieces from the same spammer, referring to the same URL, then acts on it. It is not a willy-nilly process where 'you' sent me spam so I 'crash your system'. They only release the 'do not spam me further' notices (which simply goes to that URL and fills in the aforementioned, already located 'forms') once they have discovered the _actual offender_, not some innocent bystander.

They got a lot of money from somewhere to put investigators to work tracking down _good_ URLs of spammers. Admittedly they cannot get anywhere with much of the crap which comes to them, but they do find some of them. And it is _not_ DDOS since the spammer is first given ample warning, and assistance as needed in cleaning his list.

Oh, I know ICANN would not approve of it, nor would many of the old- time netizens who prefer being in denial about spam/scam, etc. ICANN tolerates it since it does the dirty work they don't have to do; driving small web site owners and netizens off of 'their' network, then when anyone like Blue Security gets a sum of money for their 'start up costs' and proceeds to catch and punish eve a few of the spammers, the ICANN-favored users start chanting against it, with all sorts of warnings: it won't work; even it does a little it is a stupid thing; those spammers may claim _their_ First Amendment rights and get _you_ in trouble, yada yada yada ad nauseum ...

Oh, and by the way, if

'suddenly stops working' sometime soon, well ... its just ICANN doing their thing, trying to silence anyone who tells you how naked they and their merry band of choristers are. Anytime you cannot get through on telecom-digest.org, remember that snipped-for-privacy@massis.lcs.mit.edu is still a good address and points to the very same place. PAT]