On 21 Feb 2004, at 22:04, Juhana Sadeharju wrote:

From: "Branko Collin"
On 21 Feb 2004, at 18:57, Juhana Sadeharju wrote:

Hello. I'm getting spam like this. Many times per day. Sven and Austin, say what, somebody is using your names; why don't you go and file these cases to police? In otherhand if you agree with the spammer by doing nothing, then you're part of the spamming.

What is the crime?

You don't know?

No.

There could be many. Using somebody else's name and address is one, that is up to Sven and others to decide what they do about it.

No, it's up to the law makers of the country that Sven and other live in to decide what is illegal and what not.

Sending a virus is illegal too, right?

Same answer.

And if I would want to do something, I would file a case against the persons whos names appear in the mails. But pretty quickly I would learn the addresses were maybe faked. I don't have to understand these technical issues for filing a case.

And then Sven and others could explain in a court of law, if it comes to that, that their name in a From field does not necessarily mean they sent the message. And if their country has laws against defamation, they might try and use those to fight the virus writers. However, defamation laws I know are almost always part of civil law; you would have to track down the virus writers yourself, which is not necessarily easy.

Your sentiment is right, but I am afraid that cold reality is, that if you try and get a case against the virus writers, you will be laughed out of the police station.

From: Juhana Sadeharju
Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2004 22:04:11 +0200

You don't know? There could be many. Using somebody else's name and address is one, that is up to Sven and others to decide what they do about it.

There's nothing at all that Sven can do about it. Some automated software harvested Sven's address somewhere (probably from somebody's address book). That person's computer is/was infected, but tracking it down would be hopeless. Even if that one individual who was infected is tracked down, there will be hundreds, thousands, or even millions more.

Sending a virus is illegal too, right?

And if I would want to do something, I would file a case against the persons whos names appear in the mails. But pretty quickly I would learn the addresses were maybe faked. I don't have to understand these technical issues for filing a case.

As others have pointed out, faking the sender address is trivial.

The message-id said an hungarian(?) site. Can adm block the mails where the sender address does not match the message-id? These large binary postings are specially annoying for me, a digest subscriber.

A spam block and virus scanner on the list could help, and that's probably the one practical thing the list maintainer could do. However, it won't catch everything, and the spammers aren't standing still either.

I'm leaving this list for now :-(

Hope they have solved this problem by the next time I will join this list again ...

Best regards,
hnl_dk - Henning Nielsen Lund