Walling off Asian E-mail to Prevent Spam

SomeoneYouDontKnow writes: "Seems there's been lots of spam news lately. This piece from Wired describes how frustrated sysadmins in the West are responding to a torrent of Asian spam by simply refusing all e-mail from that part of the world. As anyone who's ever reported spam to Asian ISPs can attest, getting a response of any kind is almost impossible, so some ISPs are simply giving up on receiving any mail from them. Setting up barriers like this is regrettable, but when the originating ISPs refuse to take responsibility for the actions of their users or close their open mail servers, there would seem to be no other choice. Has anyone ever had any kind of constructive conversation with one of these ISPs to see why they are unable or unwilling to do anything?"

Comments

Culture differences, etc.

[Alien54]

As seen in the article:

Cultural issues also contribute to the problem. Many spammers in Asia say they do not understand why spam is a problem.

"It's a sign of respect that someone sends you an electric business card. It means he wants you as a customer," said Zhao Peng, owner of a computer store in Hong Kong.

Of course what is a sign of respect there, may be a sign of disrepect in the here.

never mind the chinese open relay problem, which is also a real hassle.