Mapping the Spam

demaria writes "The folks at cluelessmailers.org have made a map of spam. It shows the relationships among spammers and other entities (legitimate or not), including organizations that track spam, advertises with, shares addresses, emails through, and all sorts of other data. I can't imagine how hard it was to put this together, it looks like a giant circuit design layout, but shows just how big and interwoven the spam problem is."

Comments

Brilliant! Hacktivism!

[toupsie]

I agree. Instead of pinging and scanning my servers 24/7, go after the real assholes of the Internet. Script Kiddies, you have the tools, you have the time, you have the disregard for the law, do something worthwhile for a change.

Re:Spam problem

[doorbot.com]

With a decent ruleset for Sendmail and an array of RBLs, I haven't gotten any spam at my "main" address in quite some time. Eventually I want to implement SpamAssassin for additional protection. The most important thing is to reject messages while in the SMTP conversation! Do not accept them and then forward to /dev/null.

I'd like to thank Pacific Bell, however, for the barrages of spam I get there. I don't even bother to check the account more than once a week since I know it's just spam.

Re:Spam problem

[fmaxwell]

Spam is not "noise". It is e-mail abuse. It is not randomly caused by electromagnetic or other interference. It purposely injected into the e-mail stream. It contains specific messages and is delivered to specificied recipients. You act like it is some kind of natural phenomenon. It's not.

Claude Shannon said that communications channels have a source of noise (i.e., interference or distortion) which changes the message in unpredictable ways during transmission. What a spammer sends to me does not change other messages in unpredictable ways. It does not distort other messages. Spam is simply a source of unwanted messages.

If we stop complaining, we reduce the cost of spamming and it increases. Period.

Re:Where's the Asian spammers?

[CMBob]

Well, I had to start somewhere...

Like the Map says, it's by no means a complete picture. I just started with one email, then another, and began finding connections.

Asian stuff generally gets nuked immediately; I rarely even bother reporting it anymore.

*sigh*

...Bob

Bob West
Clueless Mailers Webmaster

Re:Spam problem

[pjrc]

... when you get email from them the email client would scan your address book to see if they were on your approved sender's list.

That's nice if you only communicate with people you already know. Not so good if you have a public website, a company, or you participate in public forums (like slashdot) and people you do not yet know will make contact with you.