Date: 10 Mar 2002 01:53:51 -0800 From: swear@blarg.net (Gary W. Swearingen) To: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> Cc: "Gary W. Swearingen" <swear@blarg.net>, Greg Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.ORG>, Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Rejecting spam, accepting valid mail (was: Mail blocked) Message-ID: <iselisd9zk.lis@localhost.localdomain> In-Reply-To: <3C8B01B9.D7BE84DC@mindspring.com> References: <4.3.2.7.2.20020307094130.01f59240@nospam.lariat.org> <4.3.2.7.2.20020306234510.01ee0180@nospam.lariat.org> <4.3.2.7.2.20020306234510.01ee0180@nospam.lariat.org> <4.3.2.7.2.20020307094130.01f59240@nospam.lariat.org> <3cg03ccef4.03c@localhost.localdomain> <4.3.2.7.2.20020307221616.00cb9980@nospam.lariat.org> <20020308190102.B679@sydney.worldwide.lemis.com> <d1lmd1dwzm.md1@localhost.localdomain> <3C8B01B9.D7BE84DC@mindspring.com>
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Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> writes: > "Gary W. Swearingen" wrote: > > > > defraud, tr.v., To take from or deprive of by fraud; to swindle. > > > > Or see http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=defraud > > Actually, his use of the term is correct, as it applies to > the fields being interpreted as claims of identity, as far > as U.S. wire fraud statutes are concerned. > > One of the original crackdowns on crackers, and one that is > still used today as one of the charges against them, is > wire fraud, by claiming a fradulent identity, when providing > the identity to a remote system. That's interesting, as it implies that there are hundreds of thousands of federal criminals (eg, a big % of usenet posters and hotmail/yahoo users) running free. It's worth looking into, though, I suppose. But I'm not certain that the law is using the same meaning of "fraud" as you and Greg; it has several meanings, only one of which means a simple use of false identity. The other meanings are along the lines of THE ONLY dictionary-meaning of "defraud", which has a necessary "in the cause of committing theft" component. To accuse someone of defrauding people is to accuse him of being a thief. (To accuse someone of being a fraud, COULD mean only that he's not using a real identity, though it could easily be misunderstood as calling him a thief too.) I suspect that the Feds claim of "fradulent identity" involves some round-the-barn consideration that the false identity was used in an attempt to steal in some sense. They can probably even make it strech to fit almost every case, by considering a few wasted electrons or something and some implied contract that you're offered the use of a web form in exchange for entering valid info and entering invalid info is somehow stealing the use of the form. In your last-mentioned case of "fradulent identity", it is used to obtain (what most will agree would be) stolen services and so such crackers ARE defrauding the remote system. Maybe the argument (Greg's?) would be that if he puts up a message ID filter, and I happen to slip past it (or only if I intend to or am aware of his filter, maybe?), then I'm using his electrons against his will and thus stealing from him. I supposed it'd probably win in some courts. A few more scary thoughts like this and the lawsuit stuff that shows up on Slashdot, and I'm apt to return to a life without the Internet. Do they still have libraries? To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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