The Measured Effectiveness of Blocking Asian Spam

fadden writes: "I recently started blocking IP addresses in China and Korea that were sending me spam. Instead of a blanket ban, I only blocked the subnets from which spam was being sent. After my first week of scanning and banning, I wrote up a report on the effectiveness of the blocks." In related news, SSKennel adds that: "The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has discovered (prepare to be amazed!) that revealing your email address in chat rooms can get you spammed. It claims to have taken action against spammers who harvest email addresses and use them to send fraudulent spam." Shocker!

Comments

Epiphany

[Masami Eiri]

You mean, I shouldn't spam up those Yahoo chat rooms with my email address? Wow... who would have guessed... /sarcasm

A resounding DUH arrises from the competent computer users of the world.

Government will announce next..

[Metallic Matty]

that Canada is indeed just above us on a map.

Re:Government will announce next..

[Cyno01]

Really? When i was younger i had a puzzle map of the United States, it was a blue frame and you put the 50 state pieces into it. But it was just a blue frame, so i assumed it was water and the US was its own big island (alaska just sat there in the corner not connected to anything). Untill i got a globe when i was 8, i didn't know where canada or mexico was.

Re:Government will announce next..

[rodgerd]

You're way ahead of many of your countrymen having worked it out at 8.

Re:Government will announce next..

[Flakeloaf]

That is, if they can spend 5 million dollars on the task they will confirm that it is indeed true that Canada is directly north of the USA. Next, Canada will spend 100 million on exactly the same task, only in reverse.

Um, more like 200 million. Don't forget the study has to be done in both official languages.

Re:Government will announce next..

[kmahan]

Better do it quick before the poles reverse

I'd say something

[Apreche]

about you know how shocking it is that revealing your e-mail address in a chat room will get you spammed. But I think the poster already kinda did that. /me ponders getting a job at the FTC telling them all sorts of things they don't know. Like how signing guest books with your real e-mail address will get you spammed, using AOL will get you spammed, using hotmail....

Re:I'd say something

[Yo Grark]

Wrongly Created hotmail address....free

Auto-checked by Trillian to keep it alive...free

Never Given it out.....free

# of Spam Received to date: 654

Finding out over 1/4 was from MSN...priceless.

Yo Grark

- Canadian Bred with American Buttering.

Asian Spam???????

[ksplatter]

I prefer Group Spam and Teen Spam with the occasional Anal Spam. To Be honest, I am kinda sick of the Asian Spam.

And AS for effectiveness! That stuff works all the TIME.

Do they have a response email address?

[djkitsch]

I'd just like to know if it's still safe to post your email address on Usenet?

Re:Dont you just love it when spammers get your na

[esobofh]

Worse - How in the hell did they find out about my childhood family orgies?!?

obSimpsons

[sharkey]

Oh Marge, anyone can miss Canada on a map, all tucked away down there.
--Homer

Re:Speaking of exposed email...

[Jucius Maximus]

"What prompted me to do this was the 'armor plate your email address' feature in my user settings here on Slashdot. It made me curious if having my e-mail address viewable in the comments I make would mean I'd recieve lots of Spam. My curiosity is satisfied: You can get a good deal of SPAM if you don't use the 'armor plating'."

Agreed. This e-mail address attached to this article is my 'spam account' so I clean it out once a week, but I do actually read legitimate messages.

"When I first started this experiment, I responded to the messages I got. I accused one guy of harvesting my address without really reading what the message said."

Hehe, I make a point of responding to those Nigerian scammers. I tell them my name is James Kirk, phone number is 202-406-5850 and fax number is 202-406-5031. (Yes, the name was inspired by the haxial.org thing.) The zinger here is that those phone and fax numbers correspond to the US Secret Service Electronic Crimes branch!

I actually got a few of those scammers to phone the number. One guy was furious and demanded an apology. Another e-mailed me back and told me that the woman said there was no "James Kirk" there. I got at least 2 of them to fax their financial documents over there. Heh.

Asia regrets omission and will make best effort

[trentfoley]

You get only 3% of your product promotion emails from Asia? We are very sorry. Aparently, you are not listed in our database. We are proud of the many great products that we offer to the world. It is an unfortunate mistake that your email address is not listed in our systems. Please send email to add2list@spam.com and we will correct this error.

Regards,
joe

P.S. Add your friends to the list also! You don't want them missing out too, do you?

Re:we use a simple shotgun...

[binary tr011]

t's our servers, we can block *.* if we want to.
I do this and I have found it to be extremely sucessful.
Since I did this I haven't got a single spam email.
It also stops annoying people who have my email address from contacting me.

I'ts working!

[Tablizer]

I did some math on my spam before and after. Now the average promised penis enlargement is 326% instead of the usual 509%