http://www.circleid.com/ Postings from J.D. Falk on CircleID en Copyright 2008, unless where otherwise noted. 2008-08-08T10:43:00-08:00 http://www.circleid.com/posts/aclu_anti_spam_laws_and_the_first_amendment http://www.circleid.com/posts/aclu_anti_spam_laws_and_the_first_amendment an article published by the Technology Liberation Front, Cato Institute adjunct scholar Tim Lee dissects a recent argument by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) regarding free speech & anti-spam laws. It's been interesting to watch the ACLU wrestle with anti-spam legislation. Their entire purpose is to work through the legal system to protect our civil rights, as defined in the First Amendment -- which is why I've been a card-carrying member since before I was old enough to vote... More...]]> 2008-08-08T10:43:00-08:00 http://www.circleid.com/posts/88715_technologists_vs_marketers http://www.circleid.com/posts/88715_technologists_vs_marketers wants to redefine long-standardized terms such as "header" and "message." More...]]> 2008-08-07T13:49:00-08:00 http://www.circleid.com/posts/88711_spam_kings http://www.circleid.com/posts/88711_spam_kings gave Jeff Slaton the name "Spam King." Less than a year later, Sanford Wallace earned the title -- and soon had to share it (and his upstream provider) with Walt Rines. Others have come and gone; Sanford and Walt reappear every few years, together or separately, only to be sued away again... it seems as if any spammer noticed by law enforcement is immediately crowned "the Spam King," even when there are multiple such crownings happening at the same time. More...]]> 2008-08-07T11:42:00-08:00 http://www.circleid.com/posts/871611_good_news_three_spam_cases http://www.circleid.com/posts/871611_good_news_three_spam_cases Adam Vitale was sentenced to 30 months in prison and ordered to pay $183,000 in restitution for a week of spamming AOL back in 2005... In Illinois, an FTC settlement requires Spear Systems and company executives Bruce Parker and Lisa Kimsey to give up $29,000, stop making "false or unsubstantiated claims about health benefits" of their products, and bars them from violating CAN-SPAM ever again... And finally, in Seattle, the Robert Soloway case continues... More...]]> 2008-07-16T11:38:00-08:00 http://www.circleid.com/posts/86273_maawgs_spam_reputation_systems http://www.circleid.com/posts/86273_maawgs_spam_reputation_systems Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG), of which Return Path (my employer) is a very active participant, met recently in Heidelberg, Germany. Among other exciting projects, they finished two new best practices documents which have been lauded in the press as a big step towards stopping botnet spam... More...]]> 2008-06-27T14:59:00-08:00 http://www.circleid.com/posts/84111_if_it_spams_like_a_duck http://www.circleid.com/posts/84111_if_it_spams_like_a_duck against Spamhaus and others. If they were trying to clarify the right of ISPs to protect their users from spam, then they've certainly done a good job -- especially in this particular case. If it wasn't clear before, Judge Zagel's explanation should satisfy even the most pedantic of filtering opponents: "ISPs acting in good faith to protect their customers are not liable for blocking messages that some spammer claims are not spam..." More...]]> 2008-04-11T12:19:00-08:00 http://www.circleid.com/posts/84210_trust_in_email_authentication http://www.circleid.com/posts/84210_trust_in_email_authentication CAUCE supporters already know, forging 'From:' or other commonly seen email headers is trivially easy. It's one of the most frustrating oversights in the creation of Internet email technology -- though of course that's only obvious in hindsight; it was just fine for the pre-Internet networks of the late 1970s and early-mid 1980s. Since then, things have changed -- and the most interesting recent technological advancements in email have been in the realm of sender authentication, which encompasses ways to verify that the apparent sender of a message actually is the entity which sent it. More...]]> 2008-04-02T15:44:00-08:00