TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: NBC TV Lookat, was: Internet Porn

NBC TV Lookat, was: Internet Porn

Danny Burstein (dannyb@panix.com)
Sun, 7 Aug 2005 23:39:49 UTC

In <telecom24.358.15@telecom-digest.org> Steven Lichter
<shlichter@diespammers.com> writes:

> Dateline NBC ran a good program on this problem, that included
> tracking down the companies and the spammer, plus an inside look at a
> porn convention, in Las Vegas.

Actually,. I thought it was pretty miserable. They did a credible job
of tracking down the spammer and showing the layers of camelf^h^h^
subterfuge they use, but among other major difficulties:

a) the show claimed these folk (spammers and
the porn merchants) hadn't violated any laws.

In the same clip they showed the spammers saying
"They'll sign up with fake names or fake credit cards"
(and lots of other clearly illegal actions).

b) they had to do the sappy, happy, ending deal
where they tracked down the original spammer (maybe..)
and he apologized to the recipient for causing her grief.
Sure he's sorry. Stick a national tv camera in front
of someone and they'll say anything...
(watcha wanna bet he's still doing it?)

Oh, and they quoted one of the CAUCE folk (hopefully
out of context) as saying:

"I think many spammers, once they see the kind of damage they
do, some of them may feel sorry. Some of them may get a sense
of how much pain they cause people,"

- sorry, I don't buy that.

c) they showed the original e-mail spam that got them
started ... *with a fake ID on it*, and nowhere did they
followup on how much grief the splillback of these _illegal
identity fraud_ mails cause the innocent third parties.

I could go on and on ...

My compliments to Dateline host John Hockenberry and crew for getting
as far a they did, but they left out plenty.

Transcript is up at:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8841299/

_____________________________________________________
Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key
dannyb@panix.com
[to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]

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