On Friday, September 16, 2005, 11:19:18 AM, Richard Grabowski wrote:
Dear David,
I am an attorney in California. Our firm represent ISPs and have begun to actively pursue SPAMMERS under the California fraud laws and the Federal Can SPAM act. I have been following yours and your colleague's messages on [SURBL-Discuss]. Our primary problem is identifying SPAMMERS in a way that we can start a federal action against them. "Redirect" problems add to our other problems of identifying SPAMMERS. Currently we are trying to Identify defendant's by tracking them to the retail site they represent. We then include the owner of the retail site, the registrar of the domain (in almost every case this is YES NICK LTD), and any technicians we identify along the way. Ignore the arguments you have heard about what can and cannot be brought under the current law - I really think this has been produced by attorneys who are defending SPAMMERS to get ISP's and federal/State prosecutors not to bring actions, or to set up some kind of future defense.
I am looking for any help you or your associates might be able to provide. I realize you must be skeptical. Therefore you can check my credentials at the CA State Bar site (look it up on google) by doing an attorney search on my name - Richard Grabowski. I am located in Eureka, CA. In addition to being an attorney I have over 30 years experience as a technician in the IT and Telecommunications industry. I worked for GTE, DMR and BusinessEdge as a senior enterprise architect.
I am looking for tools, freeware or paid, that help track domains, email servers, senders, etc. Anything that will help identify the actual source of the SPAM in a quick and efficient manner. I am working with high end technicians that have extensive experience in this area, but I am always looking for more help.
[...]
The only case I know of is a joint action by the FTC and CA State Atty Gnl.: FTC and People of CA v. Optin Global, Inc. and Vision Media Limited, Corp. You can find the federal filing at: http://www.ftc.gov/os/caselist/0423172/050413comp0423172.pdf
We are using this filing as the template for our filings.
Hi Richard, We're certainly glad to hear you're interested in suing spammers. If successful, such suits could help stop their pollution and abuse of the Internet.
Certainly I'd agree that the government has not had much effect on the issue other than to apparently institutionalize (i.e. protect) certain forms of spam.
May we ask what ISPs you're working with and some of the anti-spam technicians who we may have heard of? We have contacts with many ISPs, abuse desks, anti-spam folks, law enforcement and others, but none seem to be familiar with your efforts so far, though admittedly you've only recently started practicing law.
As far as tools for identifying spammers, that task can be difficult since so many professional spammers use false or misleading information for creating accounts, use intermediary brokers and agents, etc. Every anti-spam operation has its own tools, but they'd probably be more willing to help if they had some evidence of concrete and specific action on your part. It would be useful to know that you're working against spammers and not for them. After all, these things can be a two way street/double-edged sword.
Jeff C. -- Don't harm innocent bystanders.