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

Good job /.!

[realdpk]

Linking to a page with a 870+KB image is really lame. Could have at least linked to a page that just described what the map was, so the user could click on to the map. Save cluelessmailers.org some big money.

Re:Good job /.!

[cetan]

Well, I'm happy to give up some bandwidth for these guys, it's a cool map. Here's a mirror.

http://www.cetan.com/mirrors/spammap.html

No need to mod me up, I'm not a karma whore.

Re:Good job /.!

[DustMagnet]

So why didn't you provide a link like this overview or like this smaller version or even a google cache.

It seems to me, that you comment is really extra lame.

Re:Good job /.!

[jimmcq]

There is a preview of the map at http://www.cluelessmailers.org/spamdemic/mapprevie w.html
Google cache

Re:Good job /.!

[Sj0]

Personally, I find that the signal to noise ratio for spam is WAY to high in my hotmail box(I don't use it anymore, and I got it back when it was just hotmail sans MS), to the point where I wade across hundreds of spam messages(many with decieving subject headers) before I hit an actual message.

Now they know we know

[EverlastingPhelps]

The only problem with this is that it lets the spammers know how much they need to change their MO to slide under the radar. I did get a warm feeling from seeing all of it though.

"You are going to let them in here? They're gonna see everything! Waaaeeeh, they're gonna see the big board!"

Thanks

[cOdEgUru]

For giving me all the domain names that I need to block out.

Wish there was some way I could block out that stupid Hotmail email begging for money to increase account size.

Map of Spam

[CaffeineAddict2001]

The country of spam is surrounded by the "White Gelatin Coast", it is divided into various sovereign mystery meat nations. How this country was formed is unknown and best left a mystery.

what no hotmail

[oliverthered]

All the spam i get mapps through hotmail, and it's normally from msn

He thinks the problem is spam

[fabiolrs]

"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."

The only problem I see here is understanding that damn giant thing! :))

Re:He thinks the problem is spam

[fishbowl]

"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."

Truly spoken by someone who has never seen a sexchart.

When I first read the story title...

[dmarien]

I got this sick feeling of joy, and the hairs on the back of my stood up... Maps to the companies which send out spam?

I'm driving to each and every one of em, and hurling bricks through their windows...

errr wait...

Re:When I first read the story title...

[Unknown Poltroon]

Step 1) Put on gloves.
Step 2) Hurl bricks.
Step 3) ......
Step 4) Big profits.

Re:When I first read the story title...

[Phrogman]

Place a note on each brick stating "This is not an unsolicited brick, according to US Statue..."

:D

Re:Spam will be gone, in 100 years.

[Amazing Quantum Man]

. I wonder if we can use this map to somehow take out spam.

Sorry dude, but nuking spammers doesn't work.

Spam problem

[PhysicsGenius]

There is no way to "fix the spam problem". Claude Shannon proved decades ago that noise is inevitable in communications. Spam is noise on a data channel. Measurements suggest that the amount of spam we are seeing is slightly higher than the nlog(n) amount that Shannon predicted. This is probably due to people responding to their spam emails because, whether in jest or not, this relabels them as data instead of noise. The same goes for people who forward their spam to services like SpamCop--you are only clogging the network even more, please stop.

Re:Spam problem

[zaren]

yeah, let's stop filing complaints about spam, let's just let them do whatever they want to abuse the network... you might as well have said "Just Hit Delete" like all the spammers want you to do.

-----
Apple hardware still too expensive for you? How about a raffle ticket?

Re:Spam problem

[PD]

If we can't get rid of the noise, then we should at least change the nature of it. I'd rather not have SPAM noise which requires my active use of the delete function. Much better is line noise which can be automatically corrected by analysis of redundant information.

So, don't be so fatalistic about spam. You should be actively working to convert the noise that is hard to deal with into noise that can be automatically dealt with.

Re:Spam problem

[Zeinfeld]

Claude Shannon proved decades ago that noise is inevitable in communications.

He did no such thing. Shannon's law demonstrates that the information bearing capacity of a communication line is limited by the signal to noise ratio.

It is quite amusing to see how such basic observations are transmorgaphied by the game of Internet chinese whispers.

Spam will be addressed as a problem as soon as the pain barrier becomes high enough. With PKI it is possible to identify an email sender by means of a digital signature. The current problem being that there is no good way to locate public keys bound to email addresses. There is a lot of good work going on in this area, in particular the W3C XKMS group recently discussed a working draft that describes a mechanism for accessing public keys via DNS SRC records.

So under this system what would happen is that 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. This would probably include the individuals you know (Cmdr. Taco etc.) and also whole domains (ai.mit.edu) you might trust. if the mail is not in the list it goes into the 'low priority' pile.

There are email clients that do this at the moment but the spammers are using counter measures, such as scanning email list archives and sending out SPAM with fake sender addresses taken from the archive. With PKI and a means of determining whether the person actually has a public key or not this type of filtering becomes much more robust. Incidentally the mechanism does not require S/MIME to work, it can also be used with PGP.

To deploy the solution all we need to do is to persuade email client writers to support XKMS register and locate functions and ISPs to provide XKMS services along with their existing SMTP server. Oh yes and finish the XKMS spec I guess.

Re:Spam problem

[kwerle]

That's a terrible analogy.
Why is spam 'noise'? Just because you don't want to see it? If that's the case, how is forwarding spam to spamcop any different than trying to apply a filter to a signal to try to cut out the noise?

As for fixing the problem of spam via email, I use ASK, which has fixed the problem for me (to the tune of 99.9%).

Re:Spam problem

[Zathrus]

There is no way to "fix the spam problem".

There certainly isn't if you're fatalistic and don't look for solutions.

Claude Shannon proved decades ago that noise is inevitable in communications

Ignoring the abundant misunderstanding of Shannon's research (hey, go read here and you'll already know more thant he poster), to call spam noise on the data network is an amazing stretch. Spam is not noise. Spam is data. If you took the spam off the network some other crap that nobody wanted wouldn't magically fill the spot.

I also deeply question your off-the-cuff nlogn value for spam. Let's just take my Hotmail account as an example. It receives roughly 200 spam emails a day. They average 8k each. So that's 1.6MB of spam per day per user. Now, there's 118 million Hotmail accounts. Assume that a mere 1% of them get this much spam. That's 1,888,000 MB of spam. Daily. To Hotmail alone. That's nearly 2 terabytes of capacity. Daily .

Now lets start throwing in Yahoo! mail, AltaVista mail, juno, excite, etc. etc. etc. and start counting numbers. It's scary. Very, very scary.

If anyone can actually provide real numbers for how much bandwidth is consumed by spam, please do. I did a Google search a couple weeks ago and came up empty. Lots of sites referring to it consuming "great amounts of bandwidth", but no hard numbers.

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:Spam problem

[letxa2000]

The most important thing is to reject messages while in the SMTP conversation! Do not accept them and then forward to /dev/null.

I did that just last month. I modified my Sendmail server to analyze the content of incoming messages. It actually looks at the content of messages. It's amazing how predictable most spam is and how easily it can be tossed based on simple filtering.

The main difference is that when Sendmail is in the "DATA" phase and detects filterable content it hangs up right then and there.

My spam on my 8-year-old email account has dropped from like 40-50 per day down to about 5. Works great and looking at the Sendmail log to see how many times I hung up on spammers gives me a nice warm fuzzy feeling.

Re:Spam problem

[Sloppy]

Claude Shannon proved decades ago that noise is inevitable in communications.

Heh, I love stuff like this. Someone needs to start a collection... Heisenberg proved you can't know anything, Einstein proved that everything is relative, Godel proved you can't prove or disprove blah blah blah. Just keep twisting and perverting it all until it gets unrecognizable. And just when it becomes so utterly meaningless -- it is then a perfect tool for any argument, a perpetual motion machine made out of spinning coffins.

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.

Re:Spam problem

[Zeinfeld]

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.

That is a problem, however my first priority is to try to do what I can to take what we can definitively identify as signal.

If you get a signed email from an unknown source it could be spam or it could be signal. In my corporate email client I would configure it to automatically presume that email with source addresses in the domains sun.com, microsoft.com, cisco.com, ibm.com etc. that is signed to not be spam.

If an email came that was signed and was not from the whitelist it would be put into an 'unidentified' queue. Initially none of the spam would be signed and a signature alone would be sufficient authentication. However that is not going to last forever as a sorting mechanism.

One thing that you could do is to reply to the sender with a note saying 'your email is in the pending queue, please return this confirmation message if you are not a spammer, i don't like scum who send spam'. Although a spammer could sign their messages and respond to the return messages doing so would be much more expensive and technically problematic, especially if we make it hard to automate the replies. It is also something that we could introduce a law to prohibit false replies.

The other part of the puzzle is that commercial communications would be separately identified. So if IBM wants to send me an invoice for the web server service they provided me with their invoice is signed and marked as an invoice. If IBM want to then send me some information on some additional service they might want to offer me it would be signed and marked as SPAM but would also have a tag to indicate what sort of spam it was. So offers for HGH, penis enlargement, Breast enhancement, nigerian letters etc. can head straight for the bit bucket while I might actually read a PR newsletter that I signed up for from Microsoft or Red Hat. But those message would go into my 'low priority folder'.

There are a bunch of other hacks that can be used. For example we might use PGP style community key signing to establish the authenticity of key holders. Or we might use commercial PKI CAs to authenticate key holders. While anyone can lie to a CA and get a certificate under false pretenses, it is also possible for CAs to revoke certificates.

In the long run I think we will see people signing their email routinely to bypass spam filters. The cost of obtaining a certificate will be low enough not to notice because they will be issued in bulk through channels such as the ISPs, but people who want to use PGP will still have that option.

Re:Spam problem

[fmaxwell]

Heisenberg proved you can't know anything

Are you certain?

Re:Spam problem

[dubl-u]

The same goes for people who forward their spam to services like SpamCop--you are only clogging the network even more, please stop.

I think you're just trolling, but in case you aren't, here's the difference:

I go to a fair bit of trouble and expense to maintain my networks. I get to decide what happens with it. Spam is a parasitical use of that network, something I don't want. The reporting of spam is one of the things I do want. If I feel that it's clogging my network, I can stop anytime; I can't do that with spam.

Spam is noise on a data channel.

Uh, no. It's not like spam is some weird radio interference problem or some quantum effect. Real humans write and send every spam. They do it because they think they can make money at it.

This is not an inevitable consequence of the existence of a communication channel. Spam was negligible for many years; it wasn't until around the time of September That Never Ended or maybe the green card spam that I recall getting any. Since then it has grown explosively, so that for many people it outweighs regular mail. Ignoring it in hopes that it will go away or level out is about as smart as ignoring a suppurating wound.

Re:Spam problem

[Zeinfeld]

Take a look at TMDA [sourceforge.net]

The problem there is that people^h^h^h^h^h^hSPAMers are bypassing the address book hack by forging emails with sender lines taken from mailing lists.

What we need to do is to organize a SPAM summit and develop a comprehensive strategy for addressing the issue. Paul Vixie recently made some good proposals. However if SPAM is to be defeated we really need to have more than a single fix.

Where's the Asian spammers?

[tshoppa]

It's a fascinating site, a really cool map.

But where are all the Asian spammers? I'd guesstimate that I get 30 or 40 foreign-language spams apparently from Taiwan, Malaysia, and India every day. It's more than half of all the spam I get now.

Re:Where's the Asian spammers?

[Hollinger]

I get a bunch of these too.
What's sad about this is that I've figured out the korean characters for "advertisement," by trial and error, and automatically filtered all that junk out of my mail.

Re:Where's the Asian spammers?

[Anne Thwacks]

After spending £400,000 on research, I can now reveal that "They are in Asia",

WIth a big enough research grant, I might be able to uncover more details.

Re:Where's the Asian spammers?

[ceejayoz]

Or, if you can't read oriental languages, you could do it the easy way and just block any e-mail with oriental characters in them...

Re:Where's the Asian spammers?

[cybercuzco]

Not only that, but the ones that do list a "opt out" address actually subscribe you to their mailing list when you click on it. First of all, I dont buy from spammers, second of all, even if i did I dont know what they are trying to sell me

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:Where's the Asian spammers?

[dmiller]

Was the map automatically generated or hand drawn? If it was auto-generated, what software did you use?

attention script kiddies, hackers, crackers, etc

[paradesign]

alright men (or otherwise) heres the battleplan,
you have the map,
weve located the enemy,
now take them out!

do it for the good of the net, and may the Force be with you.

Damn, that's some map!

[FreeLinux]

Not only is it huge. Not only is it /.ed. But, it also made X11 run my CPU utilization up to a steady 97%.

Re:Damn, that's some map!

[Ben Hutchings]

CPU usage should go up to 100% for as long as it needs to. Do you think your CPU needs breaks? Is it not cooled properly?

Mirrior

[Huogo]

http://www.5light.com/spamdemicmap.gif

Re:Too complicated

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple version:

Greedy Idiots --> Internet --> You

Hard to follow

[pgpckt]

Wow, I do have to give props for the people that put this together. It is really well detailed. I don't quite understand exactly what they are trying to say about the relationships though. Are they just trying to say that these are the routes and sites that make spam possible? If so, it seems a little moot to me. Real world example: Hiways may make it possible for , but it isn't the highway's fault. We should target the people responsible. Perhaps we should also target the middlemen, but I prefer to go for the source.

I personally use spamassasin to filter my mail. It works great for me, so my problem is solved. I suppose the ultimate way to treat spam is by getting the end consumer to ignore it. Oh well, just a thought.

On a personal note, I have a new journal entry today. Take a look, it is about duplicity in a certain American law.

mirror, mirror, on the wall

[tedtimmons]

This site was pretty slow to respond- probably because the gif on that page is about 1MB.

So I've mirrored it.

-ted

It's a palindrome

[squarefish]

spam maps

This map is incomplete

[dbc001]

The map is incomplete - I don't see Bernard Shifman on there anywhere

Thanks!

[AtariDatacenter]

I forwarded it to all my coworkers, plus a few people that I don't know, but I have their email address. ;)

Re:Thanks!

[Anonymous Coward]

You send them that file to have their advice!

Oy.

[jpellino]

What a tangled web (sorry - had to). Not as pretty as Bill Cheswick's map, but certainly just as enlightening.

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:Brilliant! Hacktivism!

[pboulang]

Done and Done.

I mapped SPAM once...

[huckda]

Turned out to look like 2 pieces of white bread with Miracle Whip spread on them, along with 2 pink colored, slightly rectangular shapes about 1cm think...unfortunately there is no screenshot or url to link to because the mapping was consumed shortly after constructed.

--Huck

Connectivty and hackers

[Joel Ironstone]

If I was into distrupting the peace and all I would take a good hard look at this map and determine which connections are the most fundamental.

Generally in these types of partially connected maps, a few nodes exist without which the whole systems shuts down.

Sort of makes one feel like the rebels when they got a map of the deathstar

Map your own spam :D

[ZaneMcAuley]

VisualWare eMailTrackerPro

http://www.visualware.com/emailtrackerpro/index. ht ml

I want this poster on my wall!

[neitzsche]

Where can I buy a copy of this? Thinkgeek does not seem to have it yet...

They need to add...

[Robber Baron]

...gigantic black hole in the middle to illustrate the Slashdot effect!

how to avoid getting on The Map

[happyclam]

OK, /., here's a question for you:

I'm not a real network geek (just a regular joe programmer), but recently my email address has been co-opted by a spammer. That is, I've received spam from my own email address. (I of course did NOT send it.)

The question is, how can a regular joe like me prevent this from happening in the future so my domain does not appear on some future version of The Map? I know about the guy who hacked into the spammer's laptop and got all their personal information, but I don't have the skills or access for that.

Re:how to avoid getting on The Map

[BoVLB]

[M]y email address has been co-opted by a spammer. That is, I've received spam from my own email address.

Many spammers now seem to put the recipient as the From address. Presumably this helps the mail to avoid certain filters. So in all probability, you're the only one being spammed from your address.

Re:how to avoid getting on The Map

[Schrodinger's Mouse]

Most e-mail clients allow you to view IP addresses, hostnames, etc. to find out where the message actually originated. Give the spam itself a good, thorough reading. Then look up any domains on WHOIS, document and research any phone numbers or snail-mail addresses, etc. Basically, figure out how to get in touch with someone.

And then call your cousin in the mafia. The spam will stop real quick.

Re:how to avoid getting on The Map

[lightcycler]

If a spammer's just using your email in the "From" field of an email, there's not much you can do to technically stop them. There are great laws against it (forgery, fraud, misrepresentation, etc.) if you can find out who they are (try to get an IP address, then ask the police for help finding whose it is) but more often than not, you'll get nowhere.

See the linux.org's site for a description of their similar problem (people using *@linux.org as a From address, and people complaining to linux)

If people really do think emails are from you, get into a habit of PGP-signing emails. Let people know that if it's not signed, it's not from you.

Perhaps you might also find a way to autoreply to the people who vent off at you about how evil spammers are. If you get an email with "Re: (your standard spam regexp filter here)", delete it and reply with an explanation. Kmail is good at this, and The Bat on windows (30-day trial) is even better.

So, sign emails. Pity there's not more that you can do.

Re:how to avoid getting on The Map

[deblau]

how can a regular joe like me prevent [my email address being co-opted by a spammer] from happening in the future

Never send anyone, anywhere, an email. Other than that, it's hopeless. Read RFC 822. Welcome to the Internet.

Re:how to avoid getting on The Map

[Bronster]

Many spammers now seem to put the recipient as the From address. Presumably this helps the mail to avoid certain filters. So in all probability, you're the only one being spammed from your address.

The slimeball spammers will probably read this and steal my idea, oh well...

I have implemented a filter check that will automatically pass things from my domain, but only if the Message-ID header contains my domain as well. I also automatically get anything with an In-Reply-To header which contains my domain.

I guess I'll be updating this filter soon enough, as the spammers bypass it. I'm currently running a very restrictive 'whitelist' of people I want to hear of while I go on holiday, but the In-Reply-To header rule seems sane enough, and I hate 'Vacation' messages.

Maybe they should get together with the orbz crew.

[AltGrendel]

A new public blackhole list. There's a thought.

Orbz seems to be over here now.

Re:attention script kiddies, hackers, crackers, et

[dattaway]

The map looks like an electrical circuit.

I know how to hook up wires. Big wires, lots of amperage. With high voltage.

Just to be festive, let's charge the circuit on July 4th!

PMG

[thesolo]

I noticed that several portions of the map are dedicated to PMG and their spamming users. Also, as a subscriber to SpamCop, if I report email that came from PMG, the report goes to a /dev/null'ed email address called "pmg_doesnt_care".

Given just this information, I think one can logically come the conclusion that PMG is nothing more than a Spamhaus, and doesn't care about stopping spam at all.

My question is, if we know for a fact that they allow spam, and probably even encourage it so long as they get paid nicely, isn't there anything we can do about it?! Can we not bring a class-action against them, or something? Surely there must be some recourse against a company/it's users that cost ISPs and end-users money.

Re:PMG

[Erik Fish]

PostmasterGeneral/Mindshare supposedly has two prominent ex-MAPS people working in their "abuse department" to "clean up" their spam problem. The only problem is that these people of previously sterling reputation in the anti-spam community have been there since last summer or fall (at least) and PMG is still spamming. Last I read the only thing these ex-MAPS people have authority to do is listwash -- they couldn't even manage to remove addresses that were bouncing with 5xx errors!

Try doing a news.admin.net-abuse.email search on PostmasterGeneral, PMG and/or Mindshare "Subject:" headers. There you'll find all the sordid facts and all the high drama (including people breathlessly proclaiming undying loyalty to these obvious anti-spam turncoats).

If you run a mail server you can blackhole PMG with this list of their IP blocks and domains:

pm0.net
mg00.net
ms00.net
mb00.net
64.225.154
128.121.122
128.121.212
128.121.214
128.121.21 5
130.94.149
161.58.135
161.58.160
161.58.202
161.58.239
192.41.14
192.41.38
198.104.179
19 9.236.1
199.236.2
199.236.3
199.236.4
199.236. 5
199.236.6
199.236.7
199.236.8
199.236.9
199 .236.10
199.236.11
199.236.12
199.236.13
199.2 36.14
199.236.15
207.33.16
209.133.65
209.133. 67

Kevin Bacon

[Static242]

Did anyone see Kevin Bacon's name on that map? I bet you could draw a link through association to him. Once that is done the map will be complete. Then we will know that Kevin controls that too.

did you know...

[|||]

.. that 'maps' is 'spam' backwards?

Re:The ubiquitous google cache

[ceejayoz]

that'd be because Google doesn't cache images, only the HTML code. It's slow because the image is being loaded off the actual site, so the Google cache is useless.

Graph Layout?

[Grendel Drago]

Did anyone figure out what kind of software was used for the graph layout? Was it all done manually?

I'm trying to create a project to automagically do some basic graph layout (and ideally export to PS/PDF or PNG) from a PHP script.

I'm sure that was hand-tweaked, but has anyone found any graph layout tools for Linux? Free ones, or at least free-for-educational use, that is.

--grendel drago

This is interesting:

[talks_to_birds]

See: Blacklist

Under "Upstreams", for Freeze.com (listed as a backturner, listpooler, stonewaller):

Rackspace.com > swbell.net

"Rackspace auto-replies to abuse reports, then forwards the complaints to the mailer without taking action. Freeze is a long-time network marketing mailer. Tried to educate them, but they failed to get a clue, even after many emails exchanged, even with top management. So, they go straight to the Bit Bucket. Partner in spam: optinglobal.com (see their listing on this site).."

Rackspace.. Rackspace..

Where have I heard that name before?

OH! I know!

They advertise right here on /.

Gee. I thought they were really cool-geek kinda people.

Now it turns out they're whoring for spammers.

Kinda makes ya wonder, don't it...

t_t_b

Re:This is interesting:

[Erik Fish]

From what I've read Rackspace has been cleaning up their act recently. I don't know that they've fully graduated from black to greyhat, but something is better than nothing...

Re:Who needs a map?

[josepha48]

Yours and mine.

chip designs?

[edrugtrader]

isn't that the layout for the new intel chip?

What spam?

[Moderation abuser]

I don't see no steeenking spam.

http://pyzor.sourceforge.net/

wide

[Kallahar]

Wow, a useful page that is actually larger than my 3 monitor wide desktop! Impressive!

Travis

PNG beats GIF (again)

[Rock]

As a certified PNG geek, I was obligated to convert their original image, "spamdemicmap.gif". Downloading it, I found the size to be 885,452 bytes. The image is 4442x2900 by 48 colors. As a PNG image, the file was losslessy converted to 585,548 bytes. What do you want to bet they would have loved to have this 33.8% bandwidth savings while being slashdotted?

Re:PNG beats GIF (again)

[t]

If you were really a PNG geek you would have known about pngcrush which gets the file down to 540266 bytes.
method 119 for my possibly old version.

my favorites

[squarefish]

I don't know about your, but most of my spam comes from the following places:

Family
Friends
Pets

Joe-job

[KjetilK]

Don't worry, anti-spammers are used to this happening, it happens all the time, and people are getting good at knowing when it has happened. In fact, if somebody does it really bad against you, you should be honored, because it means that you really annoyed a spammer. It's a called a joe-job. It's happened to me too. Somebody sent a pr0n-spam in my name.

Quit Moderating My Posts!!! Please!

[toupsie]

For the record, moderators, I am not Insightful, Informative or Interesting. If I appear to be, it is a complete accident. Just ask any of the college professors that passed me in college to get me out of their programs. I might have posed nekkid in Wired Magazine back in 1995 but that doesn't transfer those labels automatically to my postings.

Moderating the parent post of mine was just a plain waste of moderation points that could have been used on truely Insightful, Informative and Interesting posts. It wasn't funny or insightful. It was three seconds of brain power.

Hopefully, Meta-Moderators will correct this waste of moderation points.

Re:Quit Moderating My Posts!!! Please!

[Subcarrier]

I am not Insightful, Informative or Interesting. If I appear to be, it is a complete accident.

For some reason, I hear the voice of Rachel Dratch screaming: "You're Funny! *chuckle* Funny, Funny, Funny!"

I just got moderated overrated, underrated and funny in one go. In my book, that qualifies as spam.

Re:Quit Moderating My Posts!!! Please!

[toupsie]

I just got moderated overrated, underrated and funny in one go. In my book, that qualifies as spam.

You think that is bad. I just "Trolled" myself according to a moderator on the parent post.

Re:Are you trolling me?

[Zeinfeld]

First of all, crytopgraphy and spam are orthogonal concepts. Second, the "M" in XKMS stands for "Messaging" and by that they mean wireless communications--it has nothing to do with email.

No it does not.

It stands for XML Key Management Specification. And although there have been discussions on it in many fora, the latest draft uses examples from email. Unfortunately the one on the site is a little older.

Sounds to me like you are trying to whore some points--somebody mod this guy down

Sounds to me like you either don't have a clue and could not be bothered to do the simplest of research or you don't like one of my other posts for some reason but don't have any mod points.

Someone will get em'

[larklarker]

It's late. You are in the comfort of your home reading a book or watching TV e.t.c. You feel good, you are confident. Outside the comfort of your home, ah! ahem! things are a wee bit different. Dark clouds have gathered. The wind is howling like a crazed mongrel's ghost.
Bam! The crack of lightning and the following thunderclap is sudden and fierce. A chill goes through your spine. Oh! Shit, You forgot to check you mail from your "anonymous" Yahoo web account. Damn. The last time you checked your Email was last night. In the past 24 hours enough spam would have passed through those filters you spent tedious hours creating.
Those rules. Yeah The rules that you created were cool and you felt the power of God. You felt good. Until you found that some spam still crept though. Then more and then more.
But now it's worse.
24 hours have passed. Your web account has a Email limit of 6 MB. And your know that when your Email store is full - your Yahoo admin dude will just delete incoming emails. Just deletes them without a by-your-leave. And then - yes you know it, The one Email that you wanted is going to come in and get butchered, get shredded and you won't even read it, won't even see it, won't even know. Oh! The heart aches and the brain wants to sleep. Oh! The pain
Shit. With trepidation you take baby steps to your computer. Your computer - that cool computer you bought 18 months ago. You were on the top of your game baby then. Whoa! A 933 Mhz/512 MB/40 GB HDD monster - a bad ass machine with 32 MB NVidia GeForce GTS and a kick ass Turtle Beach Sound Card. DVD and CD-RW and all. For a then justifiable 2 Large.
Now 18 months hence with the latest update on Windows and Outlook, your bad ass monster might as well be a ugly P100 of the last ice age. You Email starts to pour in from the Yahoo account to Outlook. From Yahoo to Outlook. A minute goes by, another goes by. The bile rises within you...

SHIT
You see the last message downloaded. It is from the Yahoo admin. You don't even have to read it. The subject header says it all. Life sucks. Your computer sucks. You suck. The admin has warned you that all further messages will be deleted unless you free some of your precious mailbox space.

Sweat beads form on your forehead. You healthy handsome complexion turn pink. PINK! Yeah pink. They say a man comes of age in adversity. When the tough get going, the going gets tough - or some such shit.
You have a mission in life. Bring these miserable spammers to the public view.
You shall not sleep. You shall get em. With your resolve steady and your mind whatever - you know. You make the switch.
You get linux in - you get it in, takes 30 minutes. Hurrah! You connect to the web. Mutt shall save you. You surf.
Slashdot shows up a site.
A MAP OF SPAM.
You knew what need to be done. Oh! Yes you did. Right about the time when those sweaty beads somehow got on your forehead and you became a pink chimp. Now you know how to do it. You are going to get all those miserable spam bast@#ds.
The cat meows. Oh sorry. No cats. The dog barks - more like woofs. Yawn. It 1:30. Need sleep. Got a gawd awful meeting with that sales VP guy. Same old proposal.
Some techie I am. Dirty old man, dirty old sales VP keeps getting personal with all and any chick, and hey even with the cute DBA gal. She sometimes looks at you - boss man. No wonder the company is going down the drain. Clients run away from this sales guy. Revenue is down. Your best buddies are thinking of leaving. DBA gal sometimes looks at you. Only sometimes. Life sucks.

Need sleep. Got a gawd awful meeting with that sales VP guy.
I will let some one else deal with that spam thing. Yeah. Someone else.
Need sleep now. Meeting with bad sales guy. Someone will get those spam guys. Me sleep. Bad VP guy tomorrow.

zoom through this letter

[Ellen Ripley]

That thing looks like the map Vaughn showed Sidney of SD-6!

privacy policies

[Aanallein]

Looking at some of the blocks on that map with most arrows poiting to them, I visited those websites and looked at their privacy policies.
I wonder why they even bother having them, but it's a nice way to inform us of everything being done.

For example: eScriptions.net:

eScriptions.net reserves the right to post collected data on eScriptions.net's Web site, or share, rent, sell, or otherwise disclose data it collects to third parties. Any third party to which eScriptions.net shares, rents, sells, or otherwise discloses personal data will be carefully prescreened by eScriptions.net, determined by eScriptions.net to be reputable, and will use the personal data for marketing products and services which eScriptions.net determines, in its sole judgment, that visitors might find of interest.

virtumundo.com:

The Company may receive information about individuals from third parties or from other sources of information outside of the Company including information located in public databases

THE COMPANY MAY USE INDIVIDUAL INFORMATION FOR ANY LEGALLY PERMISSIBLE PURPOSE IN COMPANY'S SOLE DISCRETION. <snip> the Company may change or broaden its use at any time.

THE COMPANY MAY SELL OR TRANSFER INDIVIDUAL INFORMATION TO THIRD PARTIES FOR ANY PURPOSE IN COMPANY'S SOLE DISCRETION.

I particularly like the way they go through excruciating trouble to explain "webbugs" though:

(b) Webbugs. A webbug is programming code that can be used to display an image on a web page (by using an programming function -- see www.www.org for more information), but can also be used to transfer an individual's unique user identification (often in the form of a cookie) to a database and associate the individual with previously acquired information about an individual in a database. This allows Company to track certain web sites an individual visits online. Webbugs are used to determine products or services an individual may be interested in, and to track online behavioral habits for marketing purposes. For example, Company might place, with the consent of a third party website, a webbug on the third party's website where fishing products are sold. When Joe, an individual listed in Company's database, visits the fishing website, Company receives notice by means of the webbug that Joe visited the fishing site, and Company would then update Joe's profile with the information that Joe is interested in fishing. Company may thereafter present offers of fishing related products and services to Joe. In addition to using webbugs on web pages, Company also uses webbugs in email messages sent to individuals listed in Company's database.

*pats his Mozilla that displays html mails as plain text and will not load remote images in mail and news (two seperate functions)*

My question is...

[Guppy06]

Does this map have GPS coordinates of the primary spammers for a cruise missile strike?

What this map is missing

[commodoresloat]

It's a cool map and all, but it really needs a big red arrow that says "You Are Here."

More detailed info on spammers

[Erik Fish]

If you're serious about learning everything there is to know about the worst spamgangs be sure to check out Spamhaus's excellent Register of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO).

Although the site comes complete with mug-shots for one spammer, nothing I've seen there compares (humor-wise anyway) to the hilarious Tommy Brock--Spammer, thug, exhibitionist page.

Re:When can I buy the Thinkgeek Poster?

[swagr]

The way I see it, the italics tags aren't really a waste. Everyone loves italics, we can never have enough.

Use italics freely and enjoy them.