CAUCE

This Decade in Spam: 2004

2004 saw Bill Gates make an infamous prediction, CAN-SPAM came into play and is immediately criticized by those who must enforce it, DomainKeys & Sender ID battle it out in a popularity contest, and penis enlargement pills may not work as advertised. Scott Richter appears on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, debates a spam cop, and goes into the shmata business. None end well.

January 2004
January 01, 2004 CAN-SPAM came into effect. Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig calls it "an abomination at the federal level"

AOL notes that they blocked half a trillion spam emails from their systems in 2003

Bill Gates proclaims that the spam problem will be solved in two years. Penny Black, charging spammers for each mail they send, revealed.

"Re-imagining the Ordovician Gothic: Fossils from the Golden Age of Spam" goes on display in New York

The Anti-Spam Research Group (ASRG) of the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) continues work on new technical standards to stop spam.

Mydoom virus released into the wild.

February 2004
The Federal Trade Commission calls CAN-SPAM "a mild deterrent"

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development begins work against spam

The Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD) published a survey noting that 52% of consumers were using the Internet less due to spam.

The words "Berkshire", "Marriott", "wireless", "touch" and "comment" are found to help bypass Baysean anti-spam filters.

Jeffrey Horton of Colorado files a class action lawsuit against DM Contact Management Ltd., a British Columbia corporation, Leading Edge Marketing Inc., a British Columbia corporation, Advanced Botanicals, Ltd., a British Columbia Corporation, Leading Edge Marketing Inc., a Bahamas corporation Leading Edge Marketing Inc., a Cyprus company,  Leading Edge Marketing Inc., a dissolved Colorado corporation, Technhpak, Llc, a Colorado limited liability company, and Unipay Processing, Ltd., a Cyprus company and Geoffrey M. Mackay, Andrew A. Mackay, Douglas R. Mackay, Mark D. Scheidt, Matthew Clayton, and Warren S. Brander. He claims the penis enlargement pills sold through DM Contact Management, VigRX, do not work as advertised.

TurnTide garners $1,100,000 in financing for their anti-spam router

AOL sues Charles Henry Miller, Jonathan Beyer, Joseph Conrad and Connor Miller Software under CAN-SPAM..

Earthlink sues Rockin Time Holdings, Damon DeCrescenzo and David Burstyn under CAN-SPAM.

Microsoft deploys 'caller ID for email'.

Sophos says America is the source of half the spam on the Internet.

Matt Blumberg, CEO of Return Path notes that valid email tagged as spam, false positives are 'a real problem'; a study shows 20% of legitimate email never makes it to the inbox.

March 2004
EarthLink, MSN, Yahoo! and AOL note that they each filter 2 billion pieces of spam, daily.

Scott Richter appears on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Clitorious cream sales fail to spike.

Hypertouch files the first-ever CAN-SPAM suit against BVWebTies dna BobVila.com and its marketing affiliate BlueStream Media

Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo! and Earthlink file coincidental CANSPAM suits against spammers. Yahoo's suit is against Canadians Eric Head, Matthew Head, and Barry Head, the unfortunately-named Head Gang.

AOL begins preventing their members from connecting to spammed websites

AOL gives away a 2002 Porsche Boxster won in spam settlement to 73 year-old Charles S. Chase.

April 2004
The EU issues a final warning to France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Finland, Greece, the Netherlands and Portugal for failure to create anti-spam laws in keeping with the EU directive.

Sasser worm released into the wild, taking Delta Airlines offline

Spamhaus applies to ICANN to develop the .mail TLD.

Buffalo spammer Howard Carmack found guilty in New York, sentenced to 3 1/2 to 7 years in prison for identity theft

Scott Richter comes out with a SPAM clothing line

Sendmails Corp. deploys VirtualMDA, offering to pay users to spam on behalf of others.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission files its first CAN-SPAM suit against Christopher Chung, Daniel Lin, James Lin, and Mark Sadek. Chung and Sadek are arrested.

May 2004
Canadian Industry Minister Lucienne Robillard announced the formation of a task force to combat spam. CAUCE is heavily involved in the process.

Microsoft begins using IronPort's Bonded Sender as whitelist on inbound email.

Yahoo! releases DomainKeys technical specification

Symantec acquires Brightmail.

An FTC rule requiring a subject line tag "SEXUALLY EXPLICIT" for dirty emails goes into effect.

Spammer Scott Richter and SpamCop's Julian Haight, whom Richter sued for blocking his mail, debate.

Senator John McCain, chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee calls for more enforcement of the CAN-SPAM act. McCain is never heard from again.

Accused child rapist and spammer Ronnie Scelson claims he is '100% legal' with CAN-SPAM but driven 'underground'.

"CAN-SPAM was the right bill at the right time for all the right reasons," said Ted Leonsis, vice chairman of America Online. Consumers Union president James Guest disagrees.

Microsoft hires private detectives to become part of their anti-spam research team.

June 2004
Washington state wins the appeal filed by Jason Heckel. Heckel is ordered to pay a $2,000 fine for spamming. And $96,197 in legal costs.

Comcast blocks port 25 on their systems, they are the first ISP of any significant size to do so.

Singapore considered draft spam laws.

Microsoft merges 'caller ID for email' scheme with Sender Policy Framework (SPF), SenderID born.

Maryland invokes new anti-spam legislation.

MAPS becomes a division of Kelkea, Inc. Unofficially, the day the music died.

Nucleus Research says spam costs employers $1,934 per employee annually

Microsoft files suit against "8 spammers"

The Direct Marketing Association's Jerry Cersale discusses CAN-SPAM, the legal comb-over,  on the Washington Post website

Scott Richter issued legal threat by Hormel to cease and desist use of their trademark, SPAM. Richter's clothing line folds.

Microsoft and Yahoo! agree to try DomainKeys and SenderID, respectively. They don't, really.

The Anti-Spam Technical Alliance (ASTA) forms,  with membership from Microsoft, Yahoo!, AOL, Earthlink, British Telecom, and Comcast. ASTA eventually becomes MAAWG.org

A Russian teenager becomes the first person convicted in Russia for spamming.

20% of U.S. residents admit buying products advertised in spam.

July 2004
The United Nations wants to standardize anti-spam laws.

The US, UK and Australia sign a memorandum of understanding for international anti-spam investigation cooperation, in what eventually leads to the formation of the LondonActionPlan.org

A California court finds Daniel Khoshnood and Pointcom guilty of spamming, Microsoft wins a $4,000,000 settlement.
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1013738/microsoft-gets-four-million-dollars-for-spam

Scott Richter and OptInRealBig.com agreed to pay a $40,000 fine for spamming and $10,000 toward the investigative cost to the state of New York

The Australian Communications Authority (ACA) notes a dramatic drop in Australian spam since their opt-in anti-spam law was adopted.

Verizon Wireless files suit against Jacob Brown and 50 unidentified individuals for mobile spamming.

The Federal Trade Commission files suit against Creaghan A. Harry, winning a TRO to shut his spamming activities down.

August 2004
AOL buys Mailblocks, who had previously sued Earthlink for patent violation.

Pfizer begins legal pursuits against Viagra spammers

The OECD set up an anti-spam task force.

Microsoft holds a meeting with the E-Mail Service Provider Coalition to convince them to use Sender ID

Cisco acquires anti-spam unknown start-up P-Cube for $200,000,000.

Vundo worm aka the Virtumundo worm is released into the wild.

The Australian Prime Minister spams his constituents via loophole in the anti-spam law.

Eileen Harrington, associate director of the Federal Trade Commission's consumer protection bureau discusses CAN-SPAM with the Washington Post readers.

September 2004
The Apache Software Foundation and the Debian Project reject the Microsoft Sender ID standard. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) follows suit. The IETF subsequently disbands the MARID anti-spam group.

Savvis disgorges itself of spammers, after a member of their postmaster team, Alif Terranson submits a 200-page report to management, then Spamhaus. Spamhaus shows them the error of their ways.

Microsoft files suit against Cheapbulletproof.com, and nine others.

Microsoft and Amazon file against Gold Disk Canada (The Head Gang, against whom Yahoo! filed earlier in the year) for phishing. Canada continues to study the problem.

Microsoft files a lawsuit against Leonid Radvinsky, Activsoft Inc. and Cybertania Inc.

The FTC suggests congress consider putting a bounty of spammers' heads to better secure public cooperation which they feel is lacking.

October 2004
In the another round of CAN-SPAM lawsuits, Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo! and Earthlink file coincidental lawsuits against spammers, mostly John Does. Yahoo!'s suit names East Coast Exotics Entertainment Group Inc. and Epoth LLC

The London Action Plan is kicked off with 27 countries present, China promises to support the initiative.

AOL says it might love Microsoft's Sender ID, after all.

The trial of Jeremy Jaynes, his sister Jessica DeGroot and Richard Rutkowski vs. AOL begins

November 2004
Jeremy Jaynes found guilty, sentenced to nine years in prison, Jessica DeGroot fined $7,500, Richard Rutkowski acquitted.

Yahoo! deploys DomainKeys in earnest on outbound mail.

Former Spam King Sanford Wallace found guilty of distributing spyware

Microsoft spams Bob Poortinga, who tells the Washington Post about it.

Delf-HA Trojan released into the wild, has SMS spam payload.

FTC holds 'Authentication Summit'. Companies asked to 'work together'. Kumbaya not sung.

Earthlink deploys Yahoo!-championed authentication scheme DomainKeys on outbound mail.

Lycos Europe deploys a screensaver that launches distributed denial of service attacks against spammer sites.

December 2004
SPAMCON Foundation President Laura Atkins determines that after a year in play CAN-SPAM is ineffective.

Microsoft files more John Doe CAN-SPAM suits against spammers for breaking Sexually Explicit provision of CAN-SPAM.

The Maryland anti-spam law is deemed unconstitutional; case against Joseph Frevola dismissed.

Bloggers note an uptick in blog comment spam. A new channel comes of age.

Former AOL engineer Jason Smathers pleads guilty to stealing 92,000,000 screen names and email accounts. His plea is rejected by the judge.

AMP Dollar Savings Inc., Cash Link Systems Inc.and TEI Marketing Group ordered to pay a total on $1,000,000,000,000 (one billion) fine to Robert Kramer owner of Iowa-based ISP CIS. Business Week writes up the case.

This Decade in Spam: 2003

2003 was the year of CAN-SPAM, AMEY (AOL, Earthlink, Microsoft & Yahoo!) legal initiatives, the FTC Spam Conference, Scott Richter being sued for spamming, and the Sobig and Blaster viruses.

January 2003
Ferris Research notes that spam costs U.S. corporations $8.9 billion per year

SQL Slammer virus released, infects 75,000 victims within minutes.

A Harris Interactive poll of 2,221 people indicate that at least 70% favour a government ban on spam

Sobig variant A released into the wild. the worst is yet to come.

Turing tests, in the form of CAPTCHAs, deployed. The blind are annoyed.

The first annual spam conference at MIT takes place. Attendee notes:  "I think we need legislation protecting good faith efforts to stop spam" - Joshua Goodman, a Microsoft researcher

AT&T invokes rDNS requirement for inbound email in attempt to block spam, after 24 hours of high false positives, backs off the rule

In a ruling in the New York state attorney general Spitzer vs. Monsterhut case Justice Lottie E. Wilkins of the New York Supreme Court in Manhattan ordered Monsterhut Inc. and its executives to stop committing "fraudulent, deceptive and illegal acts".

Verisign company Network Solutions mails its customer list to a 'few thousand' of its customers.

The Direct Marketing Association sues the U.S. government to prevent the creation of an opt-out 'do not email' list

February 2003
American states Colorado and Missouri consider 'do not email' lists

A Public Opinion Strategies poll indicates that 90% of Americans polled support legislation "that would require warning labels on sexually explicit or pornographic spam and establish criminal penalties for spam that contains misleading information about the identity of the sender".

Microsoft files several 'john doe' lawsuits against Hotmail dictionary attacker spammers, indicates they will file three more similar lawsuits.

Barry Shein, president of the Boston-area ISP The World suggests legalizing spam charging spammers for its distribution. Bill Gates eventually floats the same idea a year later, which he calls Penny Black. Neither initiative go anywhere.

Microsoft attempts to dilute Washington state law against spam.

AOL & Microsoft support federal legislation against spam.

March 2003
The Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) convenes the Anti-Spam Research Group (ASRG).

AOL blocks 1 Billion spam in a 24 hour period.

Utah court dismisses the Terry Gillman vs. Sprint Communications class-action lawsuit. Gillman had signed up for 3rd party offers on a website, who sold his address to Sprint.

Hotmail limits the number of email users can send to 100, down from 500 per day

The United Kingdom considers an anti-spam law. The government takes in consultations from industry.

Salon features a day in the life of a spam fighter, Suresh Ramasubramanian

Japanese mobile phone carrier DoCoMo wins $54,000 USD against mobile phone spammers. The Internet does not record who lost the money, or the case.

April 2004
SEC sues Jonathan Randall Curshen for pump & dump using spam

Burns and Wyden reintroduce CAN-SPAM anti-spam legislation in the American senate

AOL files first suit against spammers since January 2001 against Michael Levesque and George A. Moore Jr. CAUCE makes note of the need for federal legislation.

Symantec files suit against Maryland Internet Marketing, George "Dr. Fatburn" Moore and John Smitherine

FTC files against Brian Westby after having received 46,000 complaints, for failing to honor an unsubscribe request.

Danish company Fonn Danmark found guilty of violating Denmark anti-spam law , fined $2,000

Australia makes note of intentions to introduce anti-spam legislation

NetGlobalMarketing CEO (and former Geraldo Rivera producer) Alyx Sachs, now a spammer, interviewed in the New York Times.

Server Beach disconnects 89 Web sites operated by US Moneywerx, a spammer, based upon information from SPEWS.org. NetGlobalMarketing was a client of Moneywerx.

Virginia introduces a statute making spam that involves fraud a felony

Senator Charles Schumer introduces legislation in American Senate, forges alliances with conservatives, including 'do-not-email' provisions.

May 2003
the U.S. Federal Trade Commission holds a Spam Forum. Spammers, anti-spammers attend. Fisticuffs narrowly averted as EMarketersAmerica.org files suit against several anti-spammer in attendance.

MailBlocks sues Earthlink for violating anti-spam technology patents

CAUCE notes in the Washington Post that some blacklists become "little more than tools for people's personal vendettas."

EarthLink wins $16M Judgment from 'Buffalo Spammer' Howard Carmack who is subsequently arrested for fraud related to his spamming activities.

17 law enforcement agencies and the Federal Trade Commission issued a public warning about open relays in 11 languages. Open relays are noted to be significantly on the wane, and open proxies and other hacking techniques far more prevalent as a way to send spam.

Congressional hearings at the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation take place. Bill Gates does not attend, but sends a letter of support.

The Internet Engineering Task Force Anti-Spam Research Group indicate they expect quick results from their efforts

First editorial noting U.S. Senate bill (that which eventually become CAN-SPAM) would legalise spamming.

June 2003
The FTC asks congress for expanded rights to work internationally to fight spam

Microsoft "mistakenly" sued Simon Grainger for spamming. 14 other lawsuits stand

Yahoo! filters FTC do-not-call notifications to bulk folder

Robert Fleming, president of the eMarketing Association feels that the spam threat is 'overblown'

Ronnie Scelson, charged a year earlier with molesting, illegally detaining and raping a teenage girl claims 'at least he is not a spammer' in USA Today. Alan Ralsky suggests Scelson keep a lower profile.

Senate Commerce Committee unanimously approved the Burns-Wyden 'Can Spam Act'

July 2003
UK holds All Parliamentary Internet Group (APIG) Spam Summit

AOL adds IM and chat anti-spamming provisions to their Terms of Service

Robert Wientzen, president of the Direct Marketing Association defines spam as "e-mail that misrepresents an offer or misrepresents the originator--or in some way attempts to confuse or defraud people."

Venture capital into anti-spam software firms spikes.

AOL has 18 people working in their anti-spam group. Indiana University spends $1,200,000 on mail software that is overwhelmed by email volume within 3 years of deployment.

PC Magazine asks if Challenge/Response will save the world from spam. The world doesn't respond, neither does spam.

Hormel files first initiatives to protect its trademark SPAM, asking people to use lower-case to refer to email.

August 2003
Amazon.com files lawsuit against Enzymatic Therapy. Mistakenly.

Sobig F released, sets record for sheer number of emails.

A study noted that 14 billions spam are sent daily. Earthlink notes that spam cost it $5,000,000 in damages

August 11 Blaster worm released; August 29 - Jeffrey Lee Parson arrested for Blaster worm.

Operation Slam Spam, a cooperation between the Direct Marketing Association and the Federal Bureau of Investigation begins.

September 2003
Texas launches law requiring spam to have subject labeling. The state attorney general makes note it may be difficult to file charges under the law

The alliance between viruses and spam noted to be causing mayhem.

The Internet Society of China blocks 225 spam servers and comes under attack by spammers.

Verisign launches Site Finder service, redirects typo'ed urls to advertisements.

The United Kingdom makes spam a criminal offence

Anti-spam blacklists come under denial of service attacks from zombie'd computers

ROKSO spammer Richard Colbert is interviewed in the New York Times

Alleged EMarketersAmerica.org mastermind (and convicted cocaine salesman) Eddy Marin forges domains into spam.

California upgrades its anti-spam law. CAN-SPAM renders it moot.

October 2003
FTC Chairman Timothy Muris makes comments about the agency's anti-spam initiatives in Apsen.

Phillip Nixon sued under Missouri state anti-spam law
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2003-10-09-mo-spammers-sued_x.htm

California wins $2,000,000 judgment against PW Marketing, owners Paul Willis and Claudia Griffin. They are forbidden from engaging in Internet marketing for a decade.

U.S. Senate passes anti-spam CANSPAM legislation with a vote of 97-0, Information Week says 'the bill's enforcement is questionable'. David Kramer, attorney, says "The American people deserve better than this poor excuse, spawned by the marketing industry." CAUCE agreed.

Big companies add to spam, according to the New York Times

EU Anti-spam directive comes into force.

Sober worm released into the wild.

November 2003
Brightmail says 'Half of all email is spam' (up from 8% they saw a little over a year previous).

USA Today notes that "Marketers (are) trying to influence Congress on spam"

Bill Gates writes a piece for the Washington Post supporting the CAN-SPAM Act

Charles T. Booher threatens to kill Canadian Douglas Mackay, CEO of DM Contact Management Inc. for spamming him. DM Contact claims affiliates, not they, are responsible for the spam.

The Can-Spam Act of 2003 was passed by a vote of 392-5 by the house of representatives. "For the first time during the Internet era, American consumers will have the ability to say `no' to spam," said Representative Billy Tauzin, the Louisiana Republican and head of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

December 2003
Australia opt-in Spam Bill 2003 becomes law.

W32/Mimail-L virus targets anti-spam organizations

George W. Bush signs CAN-SPAM bill into law. A CNN Columnist notes CAN-SPAM probably won't work. A Washington Post columnist agrees

New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer and Microsoft file lawsuits against Synergy6 Inc., OptInRealBig.com, and Scott Richter.

The EMarketersAmerica.org bid to sue anti-spammers is thrown out of court, anti-spammers out-of-pocket for legal defense.

AOL case against four Florida-based email administrators allegedly helping spammers thrown out of Virginia court on technicality

Virginia files charges against Jeremy Jaynes and Richard Rutowski. Spamhaus lists Jaynes as one of the ten largest spammers, worldwide

Yahoo! notes the development of Domain Keys technology.

This Decade in Spam: 2002

2002 marks a year when politicians Sean Connery, Bill Jones & Elizabeth Dole used spam to various effect, Ellen Spertus won $4.26 in her suit against a spammer, Joey McNichol was sued for calling someone a spammer in Australia, and Joel Hodgell lost a case and had to pay a spammer's legal fees. The FTC determined that unsubscribing from spam did nothing positive nor negative, Bonded Sender, Habeas, and Cloudmark all launched their services.

January 2002
The Direct Marketing Association creates mandatory ground rules "Commercial Solicitations Online Guidelines" for members sending e-mail. DMA VP Jerry Cerasale noted "We view spam as sending a commercial e-mail to someone with whom a marketer has not had any prior business relationship and as being sent to someone who has not asked for the e-mail, these rules are the bottom line, the lowest common denominator." The DMA issues the guidelines to their members in February.

CAUCE questions The DMA's ability and willingness to enforce their own rules. CAUCE is proven right, again, in the fullness of time, when the rules have little effect on DMA members.

A California appellate court overturned a June 2000 decision deeming the CA anti-spam law unconstitutional; spam must have subject line tags. Ferguson vs. Friendfinder & Conru Interactive moves forward. CAUCE applauds the decision.

Ellen Spertus wins $4.26 against Kozmo using California anti-spam law.

AOL accidentally blocks Harvard early admissions emails. Harvard is not currently on any commercial email whitelists.

Bernard Shifman becomes a moron spammer. UPDATE: Bernard Shifman reformed his ways, asked politely, and I removed all relevant content from my site about a year ago - neil schwartzman

TRUST-e launches Trusted Sender email seal program. Within weeks, there are complaints about spam being sent with the seals, and poor compliance actions taken by TRUST-e.

Tom Geller steps down as Director of the SPAMCON Foundation

February 2002
The FTC launched a crackdown on deceptive junk e-mail

Spain began to consider anti-spam legislation

Spam from China became a serious issue

California gubernatorial candidate Bill Jones spams all the way to Canada, is blocked, calls his email 'free speech. Mr. Jones loses the spam, and gubernatorial campaigns.

Millions of AT&T customers' email was slowed due to spam

March 2002
Spam to corporate sites begins to become dire (warning: contains quotes from CAUCE board member Chris Lewis)

A debate organized by the Libertarian (and rabidly anti-anti-spam law) CATO Institute sees participants lambasting the DMA and CATO's proposed approach to spam.

April 2002
The FTC's International Netforce launches a law enforcement effort against deceptive spam and Internet fraud

AOL settles their case against Netvision Audiotext dba Cyber Entertainment Network. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

The FTC determines that unsubscribing from spam email does nothing - it does not unsubscribe victims from the email stream, nor does it 'confirm' the email and result in more spam, contrary to popular wisdom.

Lawfirm Morrison and Foerster (aka MoFo) files against self-proclaimed DMA member Etracks under California anti-spam law. The DMA refers the matter to their legal department. CAUCE supports the legal initiative.

Napster founder Jordan Ritter makes noises about an anti-spam tool, Folsom, that eventually becomes Cloudmark

Lotus Notes developer Ray Ozzie makes noises about an anti-spam tool, Groove, that eventually goes nowhere.

FTC files against Rik Covell and Adam Lewis dba BTV Industries; National Communications Team; LO/AD Communications; and Nicholas Loader for bait & switch spam scam.

Brightmail notes a 600% increase in spam volumes over the previous year.

May 2002
Tidbits.com survey finds 31% received more than 100 spam messages per week, 27% receiving 20 or fewer per week, 42% see between 21 and 100 spams per week.

Motorola wins their spam lawsuit against Paging America

Burns-Wyden Can-Spam bill passed out of the Commerce Committee. Burns drops to column in CNET

Australian firm The Which Firm dba T3 Direct sues Joseph (Joey) McNichol for having complained about spam online, resulting in them being listed on the SPEWS DNSBL.
CAUCBE (CAUCE Australia) sets up a legal defense fund)

USENET Death Penalty issued against UK ISP Telewest

New York State attorney general Eliot L. Spitzer files against MonsterHut.com for spamming 750,000 victims.

The European Parliament adopts an opt-in anti-spam directive.

June 2002
Sean Connery spams in support of his possible run for Scottish parliament. Roger Moore becomes CAUCE favourite Bond.

Spamfighting begins to use cloud computing: Cloudmark Spamnet launched, allowing individual users to vote email as spam.

R. James Woolsey, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, has his name forged in the from line of a spam for sexy screen savers.

Ironport Bonded Sender program launches.

July 2002
Brightmail spots 5,000,000 unique spam runs, 8 times as many as the year previous.

Connecticut State anti-spam law comes into force, joining 21 other U.S. state laws.

9/11 scam spammer Ronnie Scelson arrested, charged with molesting, illegally detaining and raping a teenage girl. Spammers hits an all-time low.

August 2002
Washington state wins their case against Jason Heckel, spammer fined $98,000

Paul Graham, the co-creator of what is now the Yahoo Store, launches first manifestos about baysean spam filters. They work. For a while.

A class-action lawsuit, Terry Gillman v. Sprint Communications is launched in Utah, asserting that Sprint failed to use the subject line tag "ADV." in mailings. The Utah law came into force May 08.

Optix Pro trojan released

Lyris' SparkList service subscription lists hacked, 2,000,000 addresses stolen.

Joel Hodgell loses case filed in Washington State against Daniel Amato, George Amato and  Samson Distributing, also known as SDI Labs, in King County District Court's small-claims division in Seattle. Hodgell forced to pay $7,000 for Amato's legal costs.

September 2002
Consumer Lobbyists Telecommunications Research and Action Center accused of spamming. Falsely.

AOL Time Warner, Verizon, the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, and the Direct Marketing Association's lobbying of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce against spam law begins in earnest.

California adopts anti-spam for mobile phones law.

The California attorney general files an anti-spam suit against Paul Willis and Claudia Griffin, and PW Marketing accusing the company of illegally spamming millions of Californians.

October 2002
Verizon settles their lawsuit against Alan Ralsky. Under the terms of the settlement, Ralsky is no longer allowed to mail Verizon customers.

Windows messaging system pop-up spam spotted for the first time

Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon proposes an anti-spam law

Beast trojan released

The DMA comes out in favour of an anti-spam law. Spammer Thomas "Empire Towers" Cowles voices his support for their approach, which eventually becomes the CAN SPAM act.

The EU opt-in anti-spam directive comes into effect.

November 2002
U.S. Federal, State, and local law enforcers tackle deceptive spam and Internet scams. Again.

FTC files against GM Funding, for failing to honor an unsubscribe request.

MessageLabs says spam volume "drastically increased" during 2002. In January 2002, the company identified approximately one in every 199 UK e-mails as spam. In June, this figure was one in 36. But figures for November suggest a rate of one in eight. September was even worse – at one in five. MessageLabs found that US spam levels have also increased dramatically, with one in every three e-mails currently classified as spam. 42% of spam emails contain viruses according to Messagelabs.

The FTC charged James R. Haddaway and five others with deceptive spamming.

Senator Elizabeth Dole sued by Ken Pugh for spamming him during her campaign for office.

December 2002
Habeas launches whitelist, invoking trademarked haiku

AOL announces win of $7,000,000 in anti-spam suit against Jay Nelson / CN Productions. The case started in 1998, and was won October 25, 2002.

This Decade in Spam: 2001

2001 was a year fraught with legal wrangling in Washington State, Arizona, the U.S. congress, and the EU, false positives, ORBS operator Alan Brown being sued and threatened with arrest, and a spate of new email viruses.

January 2001

AOL filed suit versus Cyber Entertainment Networks, John Bennett and Joseph Elkind. The suit is aimed at holding website owners responsible for the actions of affiliates.

The Media3 Restraining Order against MAPS lapsed.

eBay changed user preferences from opt-out to opt-in. eBay eventually backs off. UPDATE: Some users have yet to forgive eBay.

R113, the Wireless Telephone Spam Protection Act introduced to U.S. congress by Rep. Rush Holt

Jupiter Research predicts 'topic-based' bulk filters that will allow some bulk email recipients want into the inbox at Hotmail & Yahoo!'

False positives of legitimate organizations such as peacefire.org, hosted on ISP Media3, but blocked by Hotmail's use of MAPS RBL come under scrutiny.

1,000,000 British Internet users at ISP Pipex taken offline by spam.

February 2001

eBay blocks users from seeing one-another's email addresses in an attempt to limit spam

The Anna Kournikova virus hits e-mail servers

"Spam costs users 10 Billion Euros per year" - European Commission

Telewest Blueyonder temporarily blacklisted by Hotmail, Yahoo

March 2001

Verizon Online Services, Inc. files lawsuit against Alan Ralsky. Ralsky did not learn from the experience, and is currently in prison, for spamming.

Genuity / CenterGate Research Group / UltraDNS founder Rodney Joffe threatens class-action suit against Phoenix-based mortgage company Acacai for mobile phone spam

The DMA gains support from the Bank of America, the financial and retail industry associations and key members of congress in their opposition to HR718 prior to a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing. The bill passes unsullied, but is referred to the House judiciary committee.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission files charges against five spammers including PinkMonkey.com for pump & dump spam runs. The company quickly settles, promising not to do it again.

Ohio considers a state anti-spam law

Verio blocks EFF founder John Gilmore's infamous toad.com open relay. Gilmore claims it infringes his right to free speech. Verio claims the block infringes on his right to free spam, and leaves it in place.

April 2001
AOL blocks Earthlink mail. Eventually, they kiss and make up, and sue spammers together.

"The average U.S. senator can expect as many as 55,000 e-mails a month, mostly "spam"" - Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn

HR1071 the Anti-Spamming Act of 2001 tabled by Rep. Bob Goodlatte

Spam costs Brazilian Internet users $42,500,000 USD per month

JCPenney named 'worst corporate spammer' as the company ignores unsubscribe requests.

The FTC comes out in support of S630 - Senator Burns' anti-spam bill

May 2001
MAPS blocks an AT&T IP Range assigned to BeaverHome, sub-leased to spammers MonsterHut

The Sadmind worm spreads

U.S. Bill HR718 is deemed so watered down by a House judiciary committee as to be unsupportable by CAUCE. HR 1017 and S 630 are also deemed 'heavy handed' despite being opt-out, by the DMA. They too are watered now, and never passed.

'MAPS claims in suit with Black Ice Software dismissed' - Black Ice Software. 'That is not correct' - MAPS

DNSBL ORBS / Alan Brown sued for defamation by registrar Domainz, threatened with arrest warrant. ORBS stands accused of listing those sites that would not allow probes for open relays as being actual open relays. Xtra, Wellington, New Zealand ISP Actrix and accounting firm KPMG secure an injunction requiring ORBS to remove them from the blacklist. ORBS and its associated ISP Manawatu close suddenly. Brown leaves New Zealand, reputedly at first for the U.K. and eventually Holland. His whereabouts remain unknown, and an arrest warrant remains open in New Zealand.

Paul Cummins reopens ORBS in the UK. "Alan Brown and I are in dispute, he is saying I'm not to use the name ORBS. I'm saying get stuffed." - Paul Cummins

June 2001
MAPS begins to requires subscription-only access their RBL and other DNSBL Services, halting updates to their free services.

The Washington state Supreme Court upholds the state's anti-spam law

Brightmail spots 880,000 unique spam runs in June 2001

Motorola has files spam suit against Paging America

Kelly Thompson of MAPS admits to having been referred to as an "Uppity Chick" by spammers, in print media. Kelly's last name is now Molloy, she is the Manager of Ironport's SpamCop, and happily, she is still uppity.

July 2001

Japanese telecom company NTT DoCoMo spends $217,000,000 USD to block mobile spam

The Sircam worm is released. It makes a media splash. The Code Red worm is released

British MEP (and former east-enders star) Michael Cashman sucessfully scraps opt-in as a pernmission regime in the EU.

August 2001

MAPS pulls Harris Interactive IPs from the Realtime Blackhole List DNSBL

Code Red II begins aggressively spreading onto Microsoft systems, primarily in China.

DMA admits e-MPS is a failure with only 75,000 addresses registered for the service.

The Nimda worm is released, exploiting vulns left by Code Red and Sadmind. Viruses become the new spam-=sending platform, far outpacing open relays, most of which are closed, or blocked by DNSBLs.

'8% of all email spam' declares Brightmail

September 2001
The EU Parliament rejects spam laws, deciding to let individual member countries to determine their own anti-spam laws

September 13, 2001 - Spammers hit an all-time low. The first spams exploiting terrorist attacks of 9/11 are spotted, conning donations to fake victim-support charities.

October 2001

The Klez worm is first identified

Verizon settles lawsuit against mortgage spammer Acacia. Rodney Joffe's suit continues.

The Washington State law upheld as constitutional, the case against Jason Heckel proceeds.

November 2001

26% of all spam spotted by Trend Micro deemed 'non-English'.

December 2001

Peacefire.org's Bennett Haselton wins in Washington State small claims court against spammers.

December 24: The DMA's Bob Wietzen infamously suggests that if people were merely emailed $1 coupon for Tide, they would like spam. Ho, ho, ho. Consumers disagree. Vehemently.

This Decade in Spam: 2000

Today, we open our look back at the past decade in spam with the year 2000. 

Y2K is possibly best described as the year the Mail Abuse Protection System got sued. A lot. MAPS, as many will remember, was the preeminent anti-spam blacklist at the time, in use by many major receiving sites, and they took some controversial steps to block some major email senders of the day, who in turn, launched lawsuits to prevent that from happening.

As well, some state and federal laws came up for consideration or were struck down in the United States, Hotmail deployed a 'This is Spam' button, and Ferris Research made a fearless prediction.

January 2000

DMA launches e-MPS - a 'do not spam' list of email addresses. CAUCE and other anti-spam groups decry the service as useless window dressing intended to placate legislators with ostensible industry self-regulation and stave off legislation. In case anyone is keeping score, CAUCE was right, the D.M.A. very wrong.

February 2000

St. Kitts & Nevis diplomat Jonathan Randall Curshen arrested and charged by U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission with spam-based pump & dump stock manipulation.

The cases were eventually tried in 2003 and 2006, and settled in 03/2009.

James Sheret Jr. and Glenn Conley charged by U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission with spam-based pump & dump stock manipulation with phony "AOL Investment Snapshot" branding.

March 2000

Federal bill HR 3113 Unsolicited Electronic Mail Act of 2000 introduced to congress with companion bill S. 2542 Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2000. Neither passes into law.

Washington state anti-spam law ruled to be violating the U.S. constitution, the case against Jason Heckel (dba Natural Instincts) was dismissed; the decision was eventually reversed.

Hotmail deploys inbox spam filtering

A survey revealed that Internet users did not trust marketers to self-regulate against spam (not much has changed, since)

April 2000

China noted to be a worrisome new source of spam.

May 2000

The ILoveYou virus was launched, it eventually infected 10% of all computers on the 'net.

A Tidbits.com survey finds 7% of respondents receive more than 71 spam messages per week, 40 percent receive 10 or fewer spam messages in the same time period.

June 2000

Colorado bill HB 1309 "Colorado Junk Email Law" becomes state law.

The California state anti-spam law ruled is ruled unconstitutional in the Ferguson vs. Friendfinder suit.

Denmark passes a national anti-spam law.

July 2000

Harris Interactive files a law suit against AOL, HotMail, MSN, Qwest, and several other ISPs for blocking HI email, citing use of Mail Abuse Prevention System (MAPS) Real-time Blacklist (RBL).

Yesmail files suit, gets a restraining order against their inclusion on the MAPS RBL.
August 2000

Yesmail & MAPS arrive at a mutual agreement, lawsuit withdrawn

Symantec invests $18 million in spam-filtering company Brightmail

September 2000

Harris Interactive settles law suit against AOL, HotMail, MSN, Qwest, et al.
October 2000

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission sends letters to 1,000 spammers, warning their chain letter spam scheme was illegal and instructing them to stop promoting their chain letters, to return any money they had received by participating in the program, and to forward a copy of the FTC's warning letter to everyone they had spammed.

November 2000

Newly formed anti-spam organization Spamhaus exposes AT&T Pink Contract with Nevada Hosting. Nevada subsequently refused service.

24/7 Media sues MAPS, wins Temporary Restraining Order, preventing blacklisting of their IPs.

December 2000

Media3 Sues MAPS for RBL Listing

Register.com wins a lawsuit against Verio over Verio's spamming of email contacts in WHOIS records.

Verizon was taken offline briefly by spam.

Ferris Research predicts in Businessweek:

"It's only going to get worse; Within the next five years, 40% of your incoming e-mail is going to be spam, up from 10% today."

This Decade in Spam

CAUCE looks back at the notable events of the last decade in our industry.

2000
Y2K is possibly best described as the year the Mail Abuse Protection System got sued. A lot. MAPS, as many will remember, was the preeminent anti-spam blacklist at the time, in use by many major receiving sites, and they took some controversial steps to block some major email senders of the day, who in turn, launched lawsuits to prevent that from happening.

As well, some state and federal laws came up for consideration or were struck down in the United States, Hotmail deployed a 'This is Spam' button, and Ferris Research made a fearless prediction.

2001
2001 was a year fraught with legal wrangling in Washington State, Arizona, the U.S. congress, and the EU, false positives, ORBS operator Alan Brown being sued and threatened with arrest, and a spate of new email viruses.

2002
2002 marks a year when politicians Sean Connery, Bill Jones & Elizabeth Dole used spam to various effect, Ellen Spertus won $4.26 in her suit against a spammer, Joey McNichol was sued for calling someone a spammer in Australia, and Joel Hodgell lost a case and had to pay a spammer's legal fees. The FTC determined that unsubscribing from spam did nothing positive nor negative, Bonded Sender, Habeas, and Cloudmark all launched their services.

2003
2003 was the year of CAN-SPAM, AMEY (AOL, Earthlink, Microsoft & Yahoo!) legal initiatives, the FTC Spam Conference, Scott Richter being sued for spamming, and the Sobig and Blaster viruses.

2004
2004 saw Bill Gates make an infamous prediction, CAN-SPAM came into play and is immediately criticized by those who must enforce it, DomainKeys & Sender ID battle it out in a popularity contest, and Scott Richter appears on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, debates a spam cop, and goes into the shmata trade. None end well.

2005
2005 saw Scott Richter file bankruptcy to avoid paying fines, Alan Ralsky arrested, and CAN-SPAM evaluated for renovations. AOL gave away gold. Spammer gold.

2006
Spam grows 143% in 2006. Christopher 'Rizler' Smith threatens to kill a witness in his trial, Alan Ralsky partner Daniel Lin pleads guilty. Datran Media settles a lawsuit filed against them over what is called "the largest deliberate breach of Internet privacy discovered by U.S. authorities". Goodmail stuns California  senators, Blue Frog hops off into the sunset, pump & dump is discovered to increase stock prices. Sanford Wallace is fined for distributing spyware, AOL wants to dig up some turf. e360 Insight wins its case against The Spamhaus Project. Australia wins against Wayne Mansfield.

2007
Scott Richter made the news again in 2007, MySpace sued him for phishing and spamming their members. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission became active in shutting down pump & dump spamming organizations. Several major companies, including the Bank of America and Pfizer were found to be hosting zombie computers. Physician, heal thyself. New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore adopted anti-spam legislation. Robert Soloway was arrested for spamming and a raft of other crimes. Mark Mumma lost his case against Cruise.com and the defendant is awarded $2,500,000 in damages. Jeremy Jaynes appealed his conviction. Xavier Ratelle was the first person charged under the U.S. Safe Web Act.

2008
Alan Ralsky was arrested and charged. His co-conspirators begin testifying against one another. Robert Soloway & Newport Marketing Corporation plead guilty. Jeremy Jaynes' conviction wass overturned on constitutional grounds. Walt Rines and Sanford Wallace are found guilty of spamming MySpace. Eddie Davidson is sentenced to 21 months in a minimum-security prison, escapes, and tragically kills his wife and daughter, before taking his own life. Scott Richter loses a CAN-SPAM case to MySpace. Adam Vitale is found guilty under CAN-SPAM, rounding off his various convictions to 22. Lance Anderson and his gang were charged with spamming under American, Australian, and New Zealand law. American ISPs McColo and Atrivo are shut down, taking down botnets, temporarily. Former Neo-Nazi and 'bum fighting' video empresario Adam Guebuez of Montreal Canada is found guilty under a CAN-SPAM action launched by Facebook. They win a quarter of a billion dollars.

2009
In 2009, Sanford Wallace was sued under CAN-SPAM by Facebook. The BBC controlled a botnet. Canada introduced serious anti-spam legislation, which didn't make it through the legislative process. Alan Ralsky pled guilty and went to prison with his co-conspirators. ISP Pricewert was taken down by the FTC for hosting botnet controllers, MEGA-D takes a hit as a result. Fireye took down the remnants later in the year. Habitat UK spammed Twitter using Iranian election hash tags. James Gordon lost his case against Virtumundo. Herbal King spammers Lance and Shane Atkinson are fined under New Zealand, Australian and American anti-spam law. Vodafone was fined for spamming for Coca-cola. ASIS lost its CAN-SPAM case against AzoogleAds.

The Root of All Email

by J.D. Falk

This week, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) published a number of what they call "RFCs," which originally meant "Requests for Comment" -- the standards documents which specify the technical underpinnings of the internet. Two of these, numbered 5321 and 5322, replace earlier documents defining the very core of internet email.

On the surface, each of these seem surprisingly simple; one aims "...to transfer mail reliably and efficiently," while the other defines itself as "...a definition of what message content format is to be passed between systems." Yet without general industry-wide acceptance of (and compliance with) these standards, internet email simply would not exist.

This week also marks ten years since the death of Jon Postel, who arguably had more influence over the creation of the internet than any other single person. One of Jon's most enduring recommendations is to "be conservative in what you send and liberal in what you receive," which Vint Cerf (who had only slightly less influence over the early internet), described as "...a reminder that in a multi-stakeholder world, accommodation and understanding can go a long way towards reaching consensus or, failing that, at least toleration of choices that might not be at the top of everyone's list."

This philosophy is the root of all email, from the earliest standards discussions to the latest theories of authentication, reputation, and deliverability.

Commentary on the FTC Spam Summit

The following speech was prepared with the intention of using portions of it during the FTC Spam Summit, but CAUCE was not given the opportunity to participate due to time constraints.

My name is Neil Schwartzman. Beyond — as I noted yesterday — representing Return Path Inc. here at this conference, I have a second life, as it were, as the Executive Director of CAUCE in North America. CAUCE is the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email, a consumers' rights advocacy group.

I am here today to question. Yesterday we heard how the tenor of the discussion about spam became more mature. How, in the period of time that has elapsed since the last summit, things have developed as an industry.

That may be true, but I question if the discussion at hand here this week is truly a big tent effort. I see few anti-spammers here. I see only one blacklist operator, and no filtering service providers here. I see no consumer organizations here. Heck, I don't see but one spammer on the panels.

I didn't see anyone challenge him during his attempts to cast himself as a legitimate business man, no-one mentioned his attempts to bribe staff at at least one large receiving site to accept his mail, or his efforts to open a school for spammers. Where is former FTC Commissioner Orson Swindle and his "couple of public hangings" when you need him, and them?

Spam has changed, and so must CAUCE

We were shocked, not so very many years ago, when AOL reported that spam was 30% of their incoming mail. Now, some of the world's largest ISPs report that it's well beyond 80% -- in some cases higher -- and increasing.

Back then we knew who the spammers were, they stayed in one place and thought of themselves as "high volume" email marketers -- but now, the leaders of the email marketing industry know they must respect permission, and can't engage in the spammy behavior of their predecessors. We predicted that a private right of action in civil court would be sufficient to keep those same marketers in line, and now we know that's correct -- but today, much of the spam volume is sent by career criminals and malicious hackers who won't stop until they're all rounded up and put in jail.