Showing posts with the label john levine

Does a spam investigator need a license?

Joel "Jay" Fink’s business is at risk – that business being a wonderfully niche endeavor involving a hunt through your spam archive looking for things that may be legally actionable against the spam sender – it sounds like my dream job, honestly. Anyway, the risk come…

Why can't we just delete .ru?

Over on his blog, John Levine explains why we couldn't just delete all .ru domains  (or .su domains or Russian IP addresses) from the internet. His is the practical take; why the generally open nature of internet routing and DNS means that any attempt to lock out Russia at …

Your periodic reminder: Please register with abuse.net

If you're an email marketer, a compliance or deliverability specialist at an ESP, if you work for an email platform, or if you're a marketing manager who manages a lot of outbound email streams, I ask that you register all of your domains with abuse.net. Abuset.net…

Spam in a post-GDPR world?

Spam levels are down a bit, according to various reports . Is GDPR to thank? Truth be told, Spamhaus says, that GDPR actions taken by legitimate companies sending legitimate mail might have reduced the amount of mail they send, wanted or unwanted, but those companies weren'…

Revisiting Spam, the Documentary

Remember this blast from the past? Back in 2007, email expert John Levine sat down with Canada's CBC News to be interviewed for what became "Spam, the Documentary." It wasn't widely available in the US then, but appears to be viewable on YouTube right now. …

Masking WHOIS Information: No Abuse.net for you

The WHOIS process and protocol isn't just some nerd thing that goes back a hundred years; it's a valuable public directory for savvy internet users to be able to identify who owns a given domain nam e . Spam and security investigators find it a valuable tool -- even if…

SpamArrest Loses in Court

Here's my take on it, and here's John Levine's take . I really like John's breakdown of the clickwrap license issue and detail on how the parties included email addresses in filings, leaving it to the judge to point out that this was totally unnecessary.

CAN-SPAM Ruling: Domain Ownership Masking Deceptive

Over on CircleID, John Levine shares his thoughts on the default judgment in Zoobuh v. Better Broadcasting . Though it's a default judgment, the judge actually seems to have spent some time researching the law and didn't just blindly affirm everything the plaintiff pre…

Neutraceutical Spammer Sentenced to 2 Years

John Levine shares his tale of the sentencing of Brian McDaid, "Neutraceutical" spammer. Looks like it is indeed possible to get jail time for violating CAN-SPAM.

Holomaxx Link Roundup

In addition to my own post mentioning the lawsuit , a number of other wise folks have commented on the Holomax lawsuit(s) against Microsoft and friends. None of whom seem to think Holomaxx has much of a chance of winning when going up against the ISPs. Ken Magill: A HolomaXx W…

Does the First Amendment forbid spam filtering?

I asked fellow blogger (and email expert) John Levine the following: "The Supreme Court overturned the Jaynes conviction on First Amendment grounds, yes? I'm wondering what that could mean from the spam filtering perspective." Find his very detailed answer here .

Does CAN-SPAM Cover Affiliate Spam?

Over on his blog, John Levine expertly dissects what went wrong in ASIS vs. Azoogle, an anti-spam lawsuit where, yet again, a judge doesn't find for the plaintiff. At the heart of the matter? Three issues; a sloppy plaintiff, a judge who believes (or was led to believe) th…

The Pernicious Effect of Gordon vs. Virtumundo

This is an interesting one. John Levine writes : "Bennett Haselton, who runs the Peacefire anti-censorship site, is one of the more successful anti-spam litigants. He says he's filed about 140 suits, mostly in small claims court, and has won the majority of the suits t…

Judge rejects TD Ameritrade breach settlement

In early 2007, Ed Falk , John Levine, and other trusted anti-spam and network security folks started to note that email addresses given only to TD Ameritrade were beginning to receive spam from unrelated entities.

SCOTUS Declines Review of VA Anti-Spam Law Case

" The Supreme Court has passed up a chance to examine how far states can go to restrict unsolicited e-mails in efforts to block spammers from bombarding computer users." Read about it on CNN.com . Many smart people have already pointed out to me that the net effect …

Virginia Spam Law Overturned: Doesn’t Matter

Hey, there’s been a lot of news floating around out there about how we’re all doomed to suffer from more spam because the conviction of Jeremy Jaynes (aka Gaven Stubberfield) for sending illegal spam was recently overturned . What it boils down to is this: This applies to the V…

Thanks, James Gordon

Remember James Gordon? The guy who sued Virtumundo, and lost? If you don't remember, here's some history: Ken Magill laughs at Gordon here . Mickey Chandler talks about it here . Ed Falk talks about how Gordon lost so badly that Virtumundo was awarded legal fees .