Spam is Bad

Petition Wisconsin Legislature

Lick A Stamp…

Yes… actual paper letters! It takes a little more effort to print a letter and address an envelope.

If you’re not sure of who your legislators are, check the Wisconsin State Legislature website look-up services:

Who are my state legislators?

The letter doesn’t have to be long: Two paragraphs is more effective than 10 pages. And you don’t need to write different letters, the same one can be sent to your State Representative and your State Senator. (Just remember to change the mailing address!)

And if you save spam, enclose one or two copies of some of the more offensive or obviously fraudulent ones you’ve received. Let them get a taste of this stuff. (However, we don’t want to get them angry with us so don’t flood them with 50,000 copies! One or two will be fine.)

We don’t provide you with “form” letters here, because Legislators can smell a form letter a mile a way. As a result, it’s important that you write your own unique letter, putting your own spin on the issues. Look through the news articles and use quotes and phrases that hit home for you.  Also visit CAUCE’s Legislation page.

To recap, here are some of the important points you might want to include:

• “Junk” email lets the advertisers make a profit while recipients pay the bill. This “Cost Shifting” was the problem with junk faxes, and is just as bad with junk email. If businesses are going to make profits, they should be required to pay the costs of doing business.
• Remind them that this is *not* an issue of censorship, rather it’s about stopping deceptive and damaging business practice.
• Tell them that you support a system that requires an “opt-in,” where individuals don’t receive advertising they don’t want, and don’t have to fight to get themselves dislodged from mailing lists.
• Tell them that you oppose “filtering” or “Opt-Out” approaches because those approaches do not require the advertisers to bear their own costs. Filtering requirements cost ISPs and consumers more money, not less!

Write your Legislators
and mail them today!

Regarding ICLS.net, we have posted a PDF of the scam faxes being sent by this company at http://www.kleininternet.com/newsletters/faxscam.pdf

THIS EMAIL AND REMOVE.ORG IS VERY SUSPECT! DO NOT PAY .95 MEMBERSHIP FEE. EMAIL WAS SPAM. THERE IS NO WAY THEY CAN STOP SPAM WITH THE TECHNIQUE THEY ARE USING. ACTUAL EMAIL FOLLOWS HERE:

—– Original Message —–
From: Lori Butler
To: Sharron Kelly
Cc: Karla Anderson; Megan_Jim_Davis@hotmail.com; EdWaldon@lycos.com;
Andrea Manning; Bill Barnes; Mark and Karen Whyte-Iowa; danrogers3@alaska.net;
alex.urban@gci.net; stephens_03@attbi.net; Laura Clark-Glacial
Sent: Wednesday, July 02, 2003 10:19 AM
Subject: Concerned Parent
Hello,

I am very concerned about all the spam and adult related material that I have been receiving in my email box. Since my children also use the same email, it is even more of a problem. I have tried to get my name and the kids off these lists, but it seems as if that has just made the problem worse.

I complained to my Internet provider, but they said that there was nothing they could do because there is no law against sending spam. They recommended several software programs for filtering out the spam and pornography, which I did try. Unfortunately, it didn’t stop the majority of the inappropriate material that we were being exposed to.

I brought up this subject at a recent PTA meeting and was informed by a fellow parent of a non-profit organization called Remove.org. They are dedicated to stopping spam and pornography in email. They actually shut down irresponsible marketers who send adult related material and spam.

I have registered my email address with Remove.org and have been very pleased with the results. I would encourage you to do so as well, especially if your child has his own email account.

You can find their website at www.remove.org

Please forward this letter to everyone you know so that we can stop this problem.

Sincerely,

Lori Butler

———————————————————————–
>
>
>To have your email address added to the national opt-out directory
>please click on the following link: http://www.remove.org.
>
>
———————————————————————–

unsubscribe from this mailing list: click here
or send a blank to: r.ngm.0-1c3efbb-39a5.kleininternet.com.-tom@s.ew01.com
pkwl5

Some of the more interesting spam scams of recent months trick PayPal customers into divulging personal or financial information by asking them to log into Web site that looks very much like PayPal’s own.

They’ve been around for a while but appear to be growing more sophisticated and more convincing of late, Vancouver’s Derek K. Miller writes in TidBITS. But you can still spot them easily, he says, if you know what you’re looking for. Among the handy giveaways:

Every one I have seen has errors in design or language that are unlikely in correspondence from a legitimate company. The writers might misspell words or use them sloppily (such as writing “e-mail” in one place and “email” in another), use slightly inconsistent font sizes, or have spaces missing between words. Often the phrasing that isn’t stolen directly from PayPal’s own pages is off-kilter and strange, obviously not written by professionals. Another giveaway is URLs that point at IP numbers or other domains rather than the paypal.com domain.

We received a couple of these messages at the office a few weeks back. Frankly, we were impressed by how convincing the scam site looked at first. But two things gave it away: 1) the scam site used an IP address instead of a recognizable domain name; 2) the recipients didn’t have PayPal accounts.

SILICON.COM — July 7, 2003 –Fake domain name renewal spam warning — Firms told to be wary of unsolicited requests for .biz and .info registration fees

Businesses are being warned about a spate of rogue firms spamming domain name holders with fake renewal notices asking for money.

The spammers are targeting owners of .biz and .info names with emails warning that their domain name is about to expire and asking for a fee to renew it.

Cambridgeshire Trading Standards and Cambridgeshire Police are now investigating a company calling itself Dot Biz Domain Renewal that was spamming thousands of .biz registrants asking for renewal fees.

Ken Sorrie, director of domain name reseller Internetters, is calling for a crackdown on the spammers and said they are taking advantage of the first .biz and .info renewal dates in October and November to try and cash in on people’s uncertainty about the process.

He said: “This kind of foul play is bringing the industry into disrepute. Because some companies are unable to get business through respected methods, they resort to spamming. There is now enormous pressure for ICANN to introduce a code of practice and enforce registrar contracts.”

Internetters is also warning that some domain name registrars are withholding or making it difficult for people to get hold of authorisation codes needed to move the registration of their web address to another company.

He said: “What also concerns us is that some registrants are not aware that if they want to move away from their registration company they need to obtain their authorisation code from that company to pass onto to the new registration company. Many unscrupulous resellers are either not giving the authorisation codes to their customers, or are imposing ‘release fees’ to move away.”