Posted on 09/16/2004 3:30:13 PM PDT by Bobby777
WASHINGTON - What would it take to get someone to turn in one of those spammers who send millions of unwanted e-mails? At least $100,000, the Federal Trade Commission figures.
Six-figure incentives are the only way to persuade people to disclose the identity of co-workers, friends and others they know are responsible for flooding online mailboxes with unsolicited pitches for prescription drugs, weight loss plans and other products, according to an agency report Thursday.
The commission said a government-funded reward system could work if the payoff was between $100,000 and $250,000 — higher than rewards in most high-profile criminal and terrorism cases. For example, the FBI (news - web sites) pays $50,000 for tips leading to the arrests of most of its top 10 fugitives.
The FTC, in a report requested by Congress, did not take a position on whether such a system was a good idea.
The report said any reward should come from taxpayer funds because collection of civil penalties from spammers will not be enough to finance the system, according to Allen Hile, assistant director in the agency's division of marketing practices.
"All of our cases end in a court order, but substantially fewer end up in assessment and payment of civil penalties," Hile said.
The agency said potential informants probably would be people who work with the spammers or are close enough to have knowledge of their illegal activities.
Congress asked the FTC to study the feasibility of a bounty system as part of the "can spam" legislation that went into effect in January. The law prohibits senders of spam from disguising their identity by using a false return address or misleading subject line, and it bars senders from collecting addresses from Web sites.
"Americans are being inundated with spam, and we need to keep trying different approaches until we solve the problem," said Sen. Jon Corzine (news, bio, voting record), D-N.J., among those who has pressed for rewards as a way to eliminate spam. "Monetary rewards can provide a real incentive for private citizens to come forward and identify spammers."
But the idea may be premature, according to the Direct Marketing Association, the largest trade group for direct and interactive marketers.
The group believes it would be wise to give the law and law enforcement efforts more time to work before "rushing into a system like this," spokesman Louis Mastria said.
The Justice Department (news - web sites) recently announced an Internet crime crackdown that resulted in dozens of arrests and convictions on charges including the use of spam e-mail to steal credit card numbers.
The industry also has been aggressive. In March, Microsoft, America Online and others sued hundreds of people suspected of sending spam.
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Associated Press reporter Ted Bridis contributed to this report.
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http://www.ftc.gov
No. The definition has to do with un-solicited email. Period.
I suggest a bounty of $50,000 for a spammer, or $100,000 for just the spammer's head.
There's an idea. various dollar amounts for various vital organs. That might put a dent in the problem.
The two are not unrelated.
Spammers provide the equivalent of an Internet "numbers station" which terrorists (or ordinary criminals) can easily use to send coded messages without risk of traffic analysis (the messages are sent all over the place, so there's no way to locate the recipient who knows how to extract the real message).
This is so obvious that I would be very surprised if it's not already happening, which is why I don't have any reservations about pointing it out in public.
Fortunately, it can be easily stopped -- just bring in a few major spammers and anal-probe them for their customer records -- their obvious violations of established fraud and computer-crime laws provide plenty of probable cause -- and this comm channel becomes too risky to (continue to) use.
Nonsense. Those are both examples of people who have explicitly given permission for all and sundry to use those addresses to make contact en masse -- it's inherent to the business of politics and media.
The offense of spamming is use of bandwidth belonging to people who have not given permission.
It's like the difference between walking into an open business and walking into somebody's house if I find the door unlocked. (If a spammer uses filter-evasion tricks, which is usually the case, the latter case becomes equivalent to "walking into somebody's house after picking the lock".)
Ok. But remember I told ya so...
***Rewards should only be paid if the gov't could get the money from the spammer. They should not be paid out of tax money.***
Then the person who turned in the spammer would be in court for 15 years trying to get the money. And the lawyers would get most of it.
Not if the gov't just grabbed the spammer's house and sold it (AFTER the conviction, of course)
well said!
LOL
boy that's IS a tough decision ... LOL
how about fining the advertisers who use them? ... that could pay for it ... $10 per spam email ...
Refill your ink cartridge? House Loan? Viagara? Cialis? OEM Software? Transfer $7 Million from Zimbabwe? Give Us Your Bank Card Number and Password? Online Degree?
I hate it all ... I just reported a fake Citibank phishing scheme to the FTC the other day.
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