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Man Sneaks Spam Lawsuit In While He Still Could
from the good-for-him dept
I'm curious to see if anyone has noticed a decrease in the amount of spam they receive since January 1, when the new federal spam law went into effect. Personally, my spam levels are identical to what they were in the month of December, suggesting spammers couldn't care any less about the federal law. Of course, one of the (many) bad things about the law is the fact that it wipes out a variety of (stricter) state level anti-spam laws. I'm assuming this includes the anti-spam law in the state of Washington that let individuals sue spammers for $500/message. Luckily, Jim Gordon, appears to have filed his latest spam lawsuits late last year, early enough that the Washington state laws still mattered. He's suing a Pennsylvania spammer, Commonwealth Marketing Group, $500 for each of 1,200 spam messages he believes he's received from the spammer. He sent them a letter asking them to stop and they ignored it. The spammer's responses are typical. First they claim the guy requested emails from the spammer - and then add a cryptic statement: "our computers are programmed to identify him." Next, they turns the case around and suggest that it's really a "scam" being pulled by Gordon to extort money out of them. The firm's CEO also claims that their emails are completely legitimate and not misleading at all. He says this with a straight face despite the fact that the company's owner is currently serving a 15-month prison sentence for fraud. Apparently, the company pitches credit cards via spam to low income people, forcing them to buy a vacation package on the card. After they've charged the vacation package the car has $13 of remaining credit, causing the cards to be rejected anywhere they're used.
Reader Comments
(Flattened / Threaded)
Spam! CMG!
I've actually filed complaints about CMG with the BBB and even they can't get CMG to talk! Never thought of complaining about the spams for the USA Gold ($5000) or USA Platinum ($7500) emails! What a great idea!
I actually fell for the USA card and the scam is, you pay $149 to get the card, and a voucher for your $149 which you can spend in their shop to help improve your credit.
What they don't tell you: All purchases you make, you must pay 50% immediately, and then you can use the voucher for the other 50% of the cost. That's not nice!
To make it worse, the products they sell at extreme prices you can find for 20% or less.
Mostly pocket knives and cheap cookware. It's just sad. After several tries I finally got a real person to talk to and showed them that I coud get their products for almost nothing compared to their prices and they explained. It's not a credit card, it's a tool to make bad credit get better, and they supposedly report each successful purchsae you make to the three credit reporting companies. Should have checked them out first!
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Funny that you say that...
My spam count was significantly down from just before Christmas until yesterday. But today it is back to the same old level and rising.
Looks like what we need is not anti-spam laws but more Christmas ;-) Seems spammers take Christmas holidays as well and are now returning to work.
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Re: Funny that you say that...
I noticed the same thing. My 4 day pending folder at mailblocks usually sits right around 1200 emails - it was down to around 600 last night - but I just saw that it is back up over 900 today.
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No decrease
No decrease; if anything there's more.
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spam filter
I cut my spam load by about 90% when I added the word "Xanax" to my spam filter.
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Xanax
Hell,
I cut my stress levels by 90% by TAKING my Xanax before opening my inbox ...
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