Re: [tlug] Email address munging in the TLUG archives

[Curt Sampson <cjs@example.com>]

On Mon, 4 Dec 2006, Godwin Stewart wrote:

> On Mon, 4 Dec 2006 18:29:14 +0900 (JST), Curt Sampson <cjs@example.com>
> wrote:
>
> > If you want to have some real effect, take the day or so you were
> > going to spend over the next year on installing and maintaining your
> > obfuscation system and use the time instead to help one of the many
> > organizations out there that collect evidence against spammers, track
> > them down, and deliver them to the authorities.
>
> There's only one problem with that: the authorities don't care on the
> whole or they're impotent.

It's a continuum: it's not that they don't care at all, it's mostly that
the particular combination of knowledge about the problem and time to
work on it tends to make them go after other malefactors. At this point
in time, it often help from those outside of law enforcement to do the
research and indicate the extent of the problem.

> How does, for example, the FTC go about nuking a spammer based in
> Russia, where spamming isn't illegal?

They don't, but Russian spammers are not really the source of the
problem. A great number (probably even a majority) of spammers are
American, and simply using overseas resources. If you stop the guys that
are paying the Russian to send spam, the Russian will stop spamming.
He's there only for the money; nothing else.

cjs
--
Curt Sampson            <cjs@example.com>             +81 90 7737 2974
  The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism
  by those who have not got it.    --George Bernard Shaw