Someone’s been a bad, bad boy at seminary
The next exhibit in the “you can’t really hide on the Internet” hit parade happened on July 15, 2005, when Matt Bass, currently a student at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology was order by a judge not far from here to pay Baylor University $77,000. According to the The Emory Wheel‘s headline, Mr. Bass [...]
Iowa man charged with phishing
According to the The Seattle Times, a Davenport, Iowa, man was arrested and charged with sending e-mails directing Internet users to a bogus Web address resembling a Microsoft site to obtain credit-card numbers and other personal information. This is something termed “phishing” where someone tries to get you to turn over information that they can [...]
Smathers Sentenced
In 2003, an AOL employee named Jason Smathers used a co-worker’s access to steal all 29,000,000 screen names of AOL’s subscriber base. The reason? Mr. Smathers was offered $28,000 by a spammer looking to tout an offshore gambling site. AOL fired Smathers. The United States Attorney’s office prosecuted. Fast forward to December of last year. [...]
Charity Begins By Giving Me All of Your Money
I know the subject of this email is simply “Charity” but really, if we’re going to have truth in advertising, then we need to be upfront about what it’s going to take for Mr. Usman Faruque to give me one thin dime. The only problem is that after giving him all of my money to [...]
Email Costs Man Job
In the past I have talked about professionalism. One of the biggest referers to my business’ website is people coming from Google searching for “Bernard Shifman” (where the first page of my articles on Mr. Shifman occupies the #3 spot as I write this). One of the lessons from the incident was stated as “Pride, [...]
Misconduct Probe in Colonie, NY
Two Colonie, NY, paramedics have filed a federal lawsuit accusing officials in the Albany suburb of retaliation for issuing faux criminal subpoenas to Time-Warner Cable. The Albany County District Attorney’s Public Integrity Unit has also launched its own investigation. The lawsuit accuses the town of Colonie, Supervisor Mary Brizzell, emergency services Chief Jon Politis, town [...]
AOL Spammer’s Gold Sweepstakes
Are you fed up with spammers? Then how would you feel about getting some of their stuff? AOL is sponsoring the AOL Spammer’s Gold Sweepstakes using money and valuables forfeited by someone that AOL identifies only as “a 20 year old New Hampshire spammer”. The lawsuit was filed by AOL in 2004. This narrows the [...]
Efficiency? What Efficiency?
Image via Wikipedia The 5th Circuit makes an interesting observation in its Central Hudson analysis in footnote 24 of its recent White Buffalo Ventures decision: …courts’ tendency to favor the server efficiency interest in name but the user efficiency interest in substance. The 5th Circuit had, properly, rejected the University of Texas’ argument that spam [...]
5th Circuit and Server Efficiency
Much has been made, at least privately, of the 5th Circuit’s refusal to accept the “server efficiency” argument put forward by the University of Texas in the recent White Buffalo Ventures decision. The answer to why the “server efficiency” argument was rejected is placed within the plain language of the decision. Notice: We reject, however, [...]
CAN-SPAM in court
Tech News on ZDNet reports that “[a]n online dating service does not have the right to blast unsolicited e-mail at thousands of University of Texas e-mail addresses, a federal appeals court ruled.” It seems that White Buffalo Ventures thinks it has a constitutional right to spam. In February 2003, the company filed a Public Information [...]
