Spammers ... gotta love em

Friday Jun 15, 2007

So I "run' the SunSPOTWorld.com forums, etc. If you interact with any forums, websites, or are generally "available" on the internet, you know what it can do to your inbox. In a word: SPAM. And not the edible kind either. The really annoying kind.

SPAMBots are forever registering at the forums, and for some time were posting inappropriate messages to the Sun SPOT Forums. These are standard phpBB forums, with some mods, and the SPAMbots have figured out how to register for those. So now all new registrations have to be approved by me. Ugh. I delete upwards of 20 or 30 spambot registrations a day, on an average day. Some people need more to do in their lives.

As part of the SunSPOTWorld.com site we also have a couple of email aliases that visitors can use to ask questions, inquire about sales, etc. (I wonder how many of you can see this coming already?) You guessed it! The spammers have started sending spam to these addresses.

I try to be tolerant. Really. (No, really, I do. In my own way :-) ). So the folks over at the Google Earth Store (and no, I'm not dignifying them with a link!) started sending such spam to one of our aliases. they sell the "TrackStick" GPS tracker (again, no link folks. I'm not going to reward anti-social behavior!) The first few I deleted. But today, I was, apparently, in no mood. So I wrote them back and said:

This is SPAM, sent to an alias that COULD NOT have signed up for such email. It is a private notification email alias.

Continue this practice and I will ensure that Google revokes your right to use their name, that the FTC fines you for each SPAM message sent, and that other legal unpleasantness rains down on you.

STOP THIS IMMEDIATELY!!! SPAM is anti-social, anti-business, and will make your life worse than it could ever make it better. By doing this you are part of the PROBLEM, not part of the solution, and you are BREAKING THE LAW.

Okay, so yeah, it was a bit strong. Oh well.

I get this back from the spammer:

I didn't know I was committing a crime by sending you an email.

Yeah, I shoulda let it go ... but I'm not wired that way. (sadly)

So I wrote back (ever heard the one about why you never wrestle with a pig? Yeah, you get covered in &*%$^ and the pig has a good time. Trust me, I know that one. I have learned that lesson, the hard way, many times. Ok, so maybe I haven't learned it all the way ... )

So I wrote back and said:

Unsolicited Commercial Email is called SPAM. It is prohibited under California State Law, and Federal Law under the CANNED-SPAM Act. If you are unaware of the illegality of sending unsolicited commercial email, you could be in deep serious, as you can be held both criminally and civilly liable for up to $500 PER EMAIL for sending unsolicited commercial email (which is email sent to users who have not asked to be emailed for commercial purposes).

Guess what? The guy keeps this going! Remember what I said about wrestling with a pig??

Actually, it is only SPAM if there isn't a person on the other end. In most cases the sender's information is forged. What I sent you may have been unsolicited but is in no way illegal. In fact, my email not only had the proper return information, it clearly stated our phone number and gave you a way to opt out.

In a few states, it becomes illegal ONLY if the sender hides their identity. It is illegal in all other states when you use it in an attempt to deceive, steal or cheat the recipient. It would also be illegal if we were trying to sell drugs or adult materials.

To further clarify, we have sent the very same emails directly to FBI, CIA and all other federal government servers who are very large customers of ours. In fact, the White House has called us directly to ask about our products as shown in the emails. If it was illegal, they would have been calling for a very different reason.

And one final point: Have you ever been able to have a conversation with any other email sender that you thought was SPAM?

So apparently this guy is under the (mistaken) impression that as long as he doesn't forge headers, or try to hide his identity his unsolicited commercial email is not SPAM. He seems to think it's not spam if he answers the email telling him to bugger off. How cute.

So, being a slow learner, I respond again. This time loaded for bear:

Regardless of whether or not the FBI, the White House, or anyone else responds to your messages, it is SPAM. I will refer you to http:// www.spamlaws.com/state/ca.shtml and the relevant sections:

§ 17529.1.  For the purpose of this article, the following
definitions apply:
     (a) "Advertiser" means a person or entity that advertises
through the use of commercial e-mail advertisements.
     (b) "California electronic mail address" or "California e-mail
address" means any of the following:

     (1) An e-mail address furnished by an electronic mail service
provider that sends bills for furnishing and maintaining that e-mail
address to a mailing address in this state.
     (2) An e-mail address ordinarily accessed from a computer located in this state.
     (3) An e-mail address furnished to a resident of this state.

     (c) "Commercial e-mail advertisement" means any electronic mail
message initiated for the purpose of advertising or promoting the
lease, sale, rental, gift offer, or other disposition of any
property, goods, services, or extension of credit.
     (d) "Direct consent" means that the recipient has expressly
consented to receive e-mail advertisements from the advertiser,
either in response to a clear and conspicuous request for the consent
or at the recipient's own initiative.
     (e) "Domain name" means any alphanumeric designation that is
registered with or assigned by any domain name registrar as part of
an electronic address on the Internet.
     (f) "Electronic mail" or "e-mail" means an electronic message
that is sent to an e-mail address and transmitted between two or more
telecommunications devices, computers, or electronic devices capable
of receiving electronic messages, whether or not the message is
converted to hard copy format after receipt, viewed upon
transmission, or stored for later retrieval. "Electronic mail" or "e-
mail" includes electronic messages that are transmitted through a
local, regional, or global computer network.
     (g) "Electronic mail address" or "e-mail address" means a
destination, commonly expressed as a string of characters, to which
electronic mail can be sent or delivered. An "electronic mail
address" or "e-mail address" consists of a user name or mailbox and a
reference to an Internet domain.
     (h) "Electronic mail service provider" means any person,
including an Internet service provider, that is an intermediary in
sending or receiving electronic mail or that provides to end users of
the electronic mail service the ability to send or receive electronic
mail.
     (i) "Initiate" means to transmit or cause to be transmitted a
commercial e-mail advertisement or assist in the transmission of a
commercial e-mail advertisement by providing electronic mail
addresses where the advertisement may be sent, but does not include
the routine transmission of the advertisement through the network or
system of a telecommunications utility or an electronic mail service
provider through its network or system.
     (j) "Incident" means a single transmission or delivery to a
single recipient or to multiple recipients of an unsolicited
commercial e-mail advertisement containing substantially similar
content.
     (k) "Internet" has the meaning set forth in paragraph (6) of
subdivision (e) of Section 17538.
     (l) "Preexisting or current business relationship," as used in
connection with the sending of a commercial e-mail advertisement,
means that the recipient has made an inquiry and has provided his or
her e-mail address, or has made an application, purchase, or
transaction, with or without consideration, regarding products or
services offered by the advertiser.

     Commercial e-mail advertisements sent pursuant to the exemption
provided for a preexisting or current business relationship shall
provide the recipient of the commercial e-mail advertisement with the
ability to "opt-out" from receiving further commercial e-mail
advertisements by calling a toll-free telephone number or by sending
an "unsubscribe" e-mail to the advertiser offering the products or
services in the commercial e-mail advertisement. This opt-out
provision does not apply to recipients who are receiving free e-mail
service with regard to commercial e-mail advertisements sent by the
provider of the e-mail service.

     (m) "Recipient" means the addressee of an unsolicited commercial
e-mail advertisement. If an addressee of an unsolicited commercial e-
mail advertisement has one or more e-mail addresses to which an
unsolicited commercial e-mail advertisement is sent, the addressee
shall be deemed to be a separate recipient for each e-mail address to
which the e-mail advertisement is sent.
     (n) "Routine transmission" means the transmission, routing,
relaying, handling, or storing of an electronic mail message through
an automatic technical process. "Routine transmission" shall not
include the sending, or the knowing participation in the sending, of
unsolicited commercial e-mail advertisements.
     (o) "Unsolicited commercial e-mail advertisement" means a
commercial e-mail advertisement sent to a recipient who meets both of
the following criteria:
     (1) The recipient has not provided direct consent to receive
advertisements from the advertiser.
     (2) The recipient does not have a preexisting or current
business relationship, as defined in subdivision (l), with the
advertiser promoting the lease, sale, rental, gift offer, or other
disposition of any property, goods, services, or extension of credit.

§ 17529.2.  Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a person or
entity may not do any of the following:
     (a) Initiate or advertise in an unsolicited commercial e-mail
advertisement from California or advertise in an unsolicited
commercial e-mail advertisement sent from California.
     (b) Initiate or advertise in an unsolicited commercial e-mail
advertisement to a California electronic mail address, or advertise
in an unsolicited commercial e-mail advertisement sent to a
California electronic mail address.
     (c) The provisions of this section are severable. If any
provision of this section or its application is held invalid, that
invalidity shall not affect any other provision or application that
can be given effect without the invalid provision or application.

Since we have had no pre-existing or current business relationship, and we have not provided direct consent to receive such advertisement emails from you, it is SPAM. SPAM is NOT merely forged, or illicit emeail. It is *any* _UNSOLICITED_ Commercial Email. Unsolicited means, as defined above, not based on a prior or current business relationship who has not provided direct consent.

I'm not going to debate the point with you. It likely won't change your business practices. But SPAM is SPAM. And your repeated sending of this Unsolicited Commercial Email to this account ({delted}@sunspotworld.com) is clearly a violation of the Anti-SPAM act in California, as there is NO WAY that this email address could have initiated a business relationship.

Best regards,
dg

Not surprisingly, the guy writes back yet again in an attempt to justify himself. For the love of all that's holy, give it up!

But where is it illegal?

Why do you make it sound like a crime almost as bad as murder? The delete key is all that you need to hit. Or better yet, hit "unsubscribe". Unlike SPAMMERS, we actually honor that request.

Our company's entire focus is on sending legitimate emails and other forms of online advertising. All major web based corporations engage in email campaigns. It is the dishonest ones that bother most people and cause problems for legitimate companies like ours. I do not apologize for using marketing which has turned our product into a multi million dollar brand.

Ok, so I guess as long as no one dies from it, it must be okay. Cool. Now that's an approach I can get behind!

It's also fun how now it's up to me to hit the delete key. Suddenly his lack of understanding of the SPAM laws is now my problem, and I should just delete all SPAM. Great. If the delete key was the solution to SPAM, there wouldn't be any.

The really sad part of the whole thing is that the device he's selling actually looks pretty cool. If he hadn't been spamming me, and a total doofus about the whole thing, I might have actually bought his product. But buying things that spammers sell only encourages them to continue being spammers, so I won't do it.

And, were I a smart person, that would be the end of it. But we all know it goes on. (what is the line from Calvin and Hobbes? "This goes on?" "For pages. Tiresome, isn't it?").

So, wiping the mud off, and getting ready to go one more round with the Porcine grappler, I write:

It is a crime. And unsolicited commercial email is the bain of the internet.

Nice attitude. I didn't ask for it, and you're making it my problem.
Fantastic.

More work for me. I didn't subscribe in the first place. I shouldn't have to unsubscribe.

I really, REALLY don't care. I don't appreciate getting advertisements in my email box. I have enough to do without having to delete the thousands of them that come in.

But congratulations, you just made the bit-bucket. And the "never buy anything from these folks" category. And now the "tell anyone who asks not to buy from them either because they have an attitude, and are spammers."

The dishonest ones bother people MORE, but all spammers bother people.

As I said, I have better things to do.

I then create a rule in Mail.app (I use Mac OS X) to reply to any further email from this guy with a one-line "Your email has been deleted without being read" and delete the email.

According to the log, he wrote one more time, to say:

I guess we should shoot the mail man for delivering all that junk mail. We should also ban television commercials.

I would get used to legitimate ads. The people that use email to market want all other forms of unsolicited email to be illegal so that ours don't get lost in the bin with all the rest.

*sigh*

Finally, we get to the "everybody is doing it" excuse. Took long enough!

The upside of putting this guy in a kill file is that I'm not tempted to respond to him anymore. It has taken all day to get the $&%^ off of me from the wrestling match, and I'm not eager to get re-covered in the stuff. Especially since the constant influx of SPAMBots, spammers, etc. at SunSPOTWorld.com is never-ending.

["Nuclear war would really set back cable." -- Ted Turner ]

I feel better already

Friday Jun 08, 2007

After reading this blog entry (Crossbow and Microsoft Create .NET Wireless Sensor Development Framework) I feel much better.
We took a certain amount of grief over the price of the Sun SPOT development kits. Some folks complained that they were too expensive, etc. Reading the above, I feel that we have been thoroughly vindicated in our pricing structure.
Plus their kit comes with " ... an evaluation copy of Microsoft Visual Studio 2005." Heck, we give you a full version of NetBeans right on the CD!
Anyway, As I said, I feel that we are now fully vindicated, and way ahead on this one. We are turning Sensor Network application development from a hardware problem to a software problem. And we're leading the charge.

["All snakes who wish to remain in Ireland will please raise their right hands." -- Saint Patrick ]

A Day Without a Feature

Thursday Jun 07, 2007

So I've been working on a new tool for Sun SPOTs, called "SPOT Manager" (the marketing types made me put the space in there). Inside the group, we call it the "SPOTKnocker" which is actually one of its more tame pseudonyms.

The SPOTKnocker is a tool that I started writing just to make my life easier. Just goes to show you that what you think might make things easier often can make them more difficult. But it was a chance to improve my Java programming skills, and I was doing it for myself anyway, so I continued.

Then I made the mistake of letting my boss see it. And thus the title of this blog entry. Roger would play a little, and say "you know, it would be cool if it could ... " and I'd be off on another feature.

The tool started as a way for me to keep track of the various versions of the Sun SPOT SDK that I had installed on my machine -- everything from early test releases to current production releases, to the next latest and greatest release were always needed. How could I keep them straight? And how could I easily install the latest released engineering version? So I came up with a simple GUI to manage my SDKs. Here's what that first panel, how the application started out, looks now:

I could 'activate' any given SDK, or delete it, or rename it, or add comments to it. It was very helpful to me. But feature-creep began right away. Being able to control the Sun SPOTs themselves was the next big thing, so I added that. Now I could control the version of the firmware on the devices themselves and easily upgrade, downgrade, and query one or a collection of Sun SPOTs. So Another panel was born.

Of course, there has to be a way to configure the tool itself, for proxies, etc. so another panel was born (I won't bore you with the look of that one).

And what about controlling another Sun SPOT application in development, SPOTWorld? (Randy hasn't been forced into a space yet :-) ). So another panel was born.

And what about capturing output, rather than having it all spewed to come terminal, or /dev/null? Yep, you guessed it, another panel was born.

And having the tool be able to upgrade itself in place?? Yeah, a great idea, but another feature.

At one point, I decided I wanted just one day to go by without a request for a new feature (Proxy support? Delete everything? Multiple update sites? Update the demos? Update the NetBeans Modules?)

It's a slippery slope, and one, I have found, that never seems to end! At least I have been able to put a "1.0" version stamp on it and release it with the latest release of the SDK (we call it 'Orange' but you will know it as Sun SPOT v2.0). So look for the SPOT Manager (aka SPOTKnocker) in a Sun SPOT Development Kit near you soon!!

[The rhino is a homely beast, For human eyes he's not a feast. Farewell, farewell, you old rhinoceros, I'll stare at something less prepoceros. -- Ogden Nash ]

Free Sun SPOTs are cool!

Tuesday Jun 05, 2007

This 'Deputy Tester' program sounds really cool, and I hope to take part in it for other things. Not for this one, for obvious reasons, but I’ve got two free Sun SPOT Java Development Kits (value $550) for the ZDNet readers who… seems cool to me for obvious reasons!

So all of you that want a free Sun SPOT Development kit, get to it!!!

[You can only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough. ]