The Boston Diaries

The ongoing saga of a programmer who doesn't live in Boston, nor does he even like Boston, but yet named his weblog/journal “The Boston Diaries.”

Go figure.

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Speaking of spam

The Court of Appeals of Virginia upheld yesterday what is believed to be the first conviction in the nation under a state anti-spamming law that makes it a felony to send unsolicited mass e-mails.

A North Carolina man was convicted in Loudoun County two years ago of illegally sending tens of thousands of e-mails to America Online customers. Prosecutors said Jeremy Jaynes flooded the servers at the Internet company's headquarters in Loudoun with bulk e-mail advertisements for computer programs and stock pickers.

Jaynes was sentenced last year to nine years in prison on three counts of violating the state's anti-spam law and was allowed to remain free on $1 million bond while his case was appealed. Thomas M. Wolf, an attorney for Jaynes, said he plans to appeal yesterday's decision.

Via Wlofie (in email), Anti-Spam Conviction Is Upheld

The headline is a bit misleading—it should be “Spam conviction is upheld” not “Anti-spam conviction is upheld” as it's a spammer that was arrested and sentenced to jail, not an anti-spammer.

But that nitpick aside, the good news is that spammers can now see their day in jail. The bad news—spam will probably not be done from the US much longer.


What I expect to happen

Do I really expect to mess up spammers that much by setting my backup MX record to 127.0.0.1? To cause their servers to melt under the load of ever lasting spam circulating through their servers, perpetually delivered back to themselves for anohter round of attempts?

Not really.

First off, the spammers that are sending email to the backup MX server is already using custom (or customized) software to begin with—the SMTP spec states that servers contact the MX servers in priority order (with the highest priority one being considered the primary), which is something the spammers aren't doing.

Second, it's likely that they're using botnets (large collections of compromised machines) to do the actual sending of email, and the chances of the machine in question running an SMTP server are pretty low. So the likelyhood of me causing their servers to melt down are very low.

What I am expecting to see is a drop in the number of spams I receive. And possibly causing a headache or two (hopefully).

Obligatory Picture

[The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades]

Obligatory Contact Info

Obligatory Feeds

Obligatory Links

Obligatory Miscellaneous

You have my permission to link freely to any entry here. Go ahead, I won't bite. I promise.

The dates are the permanent links to that day's entries (or entry, if there is only one entry). The titles are the permanent links to that entry only. The format for the links are simple: Start with the base link for this site: https://boston.conman.org/, then add the date you are interested in, say 2000/08/01, so that would make the final URL:

https://boston.conman.org/2000/08/01

You can also specify the entire month by leaving off the day portion. You can even select an arbitrary portion of time.

You may also note subtle shading of the links and that's intentional: the “closer” the link is (relative to the page) the “brighter” it appears. It's an experiment in using color shading to denote the distance a link is from here. If you don't notice it, don't worry; it's not all that important.

It is assumed that every brand name, slogan, corporate name, symbol, design element, et cetera mentioned in these pages is a protected and/or trademarked entity, the sole property of its owner(s), and acknowledgement of this status is implied.

Copyright © 1999-2024 by Sean Conner. All Rights Reserved.