CAUCE

Megaspammer Robert Soloway pleads guilty

Large scale spammer Robert Soloway, whose criminal trial was scheduled to start next week, pled guilty to most of the criminal charges against him

CAUCE board member John Levine comments on the case in his blog.

Ralsky indictment is good news for all email users

by J.D. Falk

I've always maintained that spam does not make one great, but Al Ralsky kept a relatively high profile for long enough that his unwelcome intrusions into our inboxes — and our friends' inboxes, and our parents' inboxes, and our children's inboxes — will be long remembered.

Today the entire email industry is cheering the arrest and indictment of Ralsky and his gang, which was reported in the Detroit Free Press this morning. It's obviously good news for anti-spammers, who have been clamoring for prosecutions of illegal spamming activity for more than a decade. But it's also wonderful news for the email marketing industry, which has been trying to show the world that they aren't spammers. Now, the marketers can point to Ralsky's illegal activities and state with one voice: "we do not do these awful things."

But I think the marketers have to ask themselves: is there anything Ralsky was doing which isn't illegal per se, but might still be considered spam-like in the eyes of your subscribers? Perhaps a subject line which is only slightly misleading — not enough to violate CAN-SPAM, but enough to violate the trust your subscribers have in your brand. Perhaps treating opt-in as a license to blast them over and over, until your message falls on deaf ears.

If a sender acts like a spammer, even if they aren't bad enough to get arrested, how different are they from Al Ralsky and his ilk?

And likewise, I think the anti-spammers have to consider whether following "big name" spammers is worth the effort. It seems certain that for every high-profile blowhard like Ralsky, there's another dozen who are just as prolific — but, like most other criminals, never seek attention.

This is a great triumph for all who want to preserve email as a viable communications medium. We congratulate the United States Department of Justice and the FBI for their impressive work, and the Spamhaus Project for keeping a close eye on Ralsky's activities for so long.

But this is not the end of spam; far from it.

This article was also published by Return Path.

Spamhaus makes progress in court

Spamhaus, the well-known anti-spam organization has been in court, sued by Chicago area bulk mailer E360. A year ago E360 got a default judgement against Spamhaus for $11 million, which Spamhaus later appealed. The appeals court has ruled, and it looks promising for Spamhaus.

CAUCE board member John Levine comments on the latest decision.

Famous spammer Sanford Wallace is sued yet again

Sanford Wallace, a famous spammer from the 1990s is back, in a legal tangle with MySpace, for sending a whole lot of spam to MySpace users.

CAUCE board member John Levine writes about it in his blog.

Spam: You've Come a Long Way, Baby

CAUCE board member Ray Everett Church writes at internetnews.com:

According to the majority of the testimony at this month's "Spam Summit," held by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the state of the fight against spam is pretty much the same as it has been for the last several years.

The two days of presentations can largely be boiled down to the following bullets:

• Spam volumes continue to increase, being driven by the growth of "botnets" — networks of hijacked computers run by hackers and rented out to spammers.

• Spam is one of many high-tech tools being used by organized crime, international terrorist organizations, and can be expected to play a major role in future conflicts between nations.

• Anti-spam technologies are improving, but deployment of sophisticated technologies such as cryptographic-based email authentication is sorely lacking.

Oh, and the spam wars are a lot less exciting than they used to be. Case in point: unlike last time, there were no fist-fights at this year's shindig. ...

Read the rest at Internetnews.com

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?

Why does my government allow spam?

Governments are catching up with spam laws, but sadly many have not legislated this yet. Canada has no spam laws, even though the "Federal Anti-Spam Task Force" recommended this in 2004. Country specific laws can be found at Spamlaws.com

The United States has legislated email with CAN-SPAM (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act) in 2003. This law require several elements of a commercial email message conform to a minimum set of standards. Here is a rundown of the law's main provisions:

• It bans false or misleading header information
• It prohibits deceptive subject lines
• It requires that your email give recipients an opt-out method, which must be processed within 10 days of receiving by the sender
• It requires that commercial email be identified as an advertisement and include the sender's valid physical postal address

Unsolicited bulk e-mail that complies with these rules is legal under CAN SPAM, even though such UBE is widely considered to be spam.

The Internet community is also working on several global initiatives to help stem the tide of unsolicited commercial email, CAUCE recently endorsed the Senders BCP published by MAAWG, written mostly by Email Service Providers with input from ISPs, Corporations and RBL providers.

Welcome to CAUCE North America

CAUCE North America Debuts - New anti-spam advocacy group combines CAUCE Canada and CAUCE US

Montreal and Los Angeles, June 06, 2007 -- Neil Schwartzman, chair of CAUCE Canada, and Scott Hazen Mueller, chair of CAUCE U.S., today announced the formation and launch of CAUCE North America to build upon the work of their previously separate organizations.

CAUCE North America is now the premiere anti-spam advocacy group, representing the interests of the millions of Internet users in North America. The combined group will work towards equitable solutions for the original threat posed by spam since the 20th century, and Spam 2.0, the 21st-century blended threat posed by the merging of spam, viruses, phishing and malware.

"When we launched the original CAUCE, back in 1997," said Scott Hazen Mueller, founder of CAUCE U.S. and now President of CAUCE North America, "spam was an isolated problem and it was seen by many as unimportant. Now, spam is part of a multi-pronged assault by various criminal organizations attacking the very basis of trust on the Internet. If this threat is not met soon, users will continue to migrate away from the Internet for their commercial needs."

press contact: press@cauce.org

Tel . +1 303 800 6345

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.

CAUCE Accepting New Members

CAUCE North America wishes to announce the launch of a new support program, now featuring many levels of individual and organizational membership for those wishing to actively assist with our important work and goals.

CAUCE actively advocates on behalf of consumers to governments, legislators, law enforcement agencies and industry associations about matters related to the blended threat of spam, viruses and spyware.

Whether you are an individual or an organization of any sort, please consider a CAUCE membership.