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It would seem that the guy raked in around US$400,000 from just one of his spams -- a sad indictment on the IQ of many Net users and perhaps a good indication of just why spamming is still so popular and economically viable.

Can you believe that around 10,000 recipients of this spam were stupid enough to respond and hand over their credit card details?

Is the message about ignoring spam simply not reaching these people or are they just total morons?

Here's an idea that might help stamp out spam: Why don't credit card companies remove their buyer-protection from any transaction that occurs in response to spam?

Right now, if you buy something over the Net and it's not delivered or turns out to be a fraud, you can claim your money back via the credit card company. Remove this protection and people might think twice about responding to spam -- thus putting the spammers out of business.

But is a nine-year prison term excessive?

Well for the simple crime of spamming, yes, I believe it is. But let's not forget that we're actually talking about fraud here. The "work from home" scheme being promoted was fake and people were never going to get the returns promised by this spammer.

When you look at it that way, stealing US$400,000 is probably worth every minute of a nine-year sentence, maybe more.

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But what kind of maximum sentences are our politicians going to attach to NZ's long-awaited anti-spam laws?

Given just how much money this US spammer earned from his evil ways, I really don't know that simply fining a spammer will be good enough.

If a spammer can earn $400K by sending out millions of emails, what's the point in fining him $100K? That still leaves him with a very nice profit margin and turns the state into little more than a business partner.

Perhaps a custodial sentence is necessary therefore, just to make sure that those who spam repeatedly really do suffer some penalty.

Of course the fact that the US spammer was done mainly for fraud raises another point... do we actually need anti-spam laws?

Surely if we make provision to toughen up our fraud laws we can achieve the same thing.

Spammers who use faked header information are engaging in fraud and should be charged with such.

When a spam that pitches some product or service purports to be from xyz.com but actually comes from abc.com then the sender is guilty of fraud. In effect they are using a fraudulent document (an email) to obtain pecuniary gain and I believe that's already a crime with significant penalties available.

The problem is that authorities just aren't interested in pursuing such fraud. Why then, should we think that they'd be any more interested in prosecuting spammers -- even if we do have spam-specific laws?

So, my questions for today are: what constitutes a reasonable penalty for spamming? Do we really need anti-spam laws? And will those laws actually be enforced?

Play safe
Oh, and please play safe tonight while you enjoy your Guy Fawkes celebrations -- not that it's much fun since they banned skyrockets and bangers. We can't let people enjoy themselves too much or trust them to act responsibly can we?

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