A Conference About Spam

zonker writes "January 17th will be the first (annual?) meeting of the Spam Conference held in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The informal meeting will feature Paul Graham, John Graham-Cumming, John "Cap'n Crunch" Draper among others (possibly including ESR though he hasn't yet confirmed). The free conference will consist of a number of talks about new ways to combat the growing spam problem, after which everyone's going out and getting some Chinese food. Should be an informative and fun meeting and a chance to meet some interesting people."

Comments

spammers mining public keys

[hey]

I was just about to update my mail address in my PGP public key which is on my website but then I released that spammers might mine mail addresses from public keys. Do they?

MIT (who is hosting this conference) has a key server that presumably hold millions of mail addresses.

What does ESR know about anything?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the guy who brags on his website that he doesn't have a credit card. The same guy who helped "steer" VA Linux to the biggest dot com stock flameout in history. The same guy who runs a blog that is so right wing that his solution to plane hijackings is to arm all the passengers. The same guy who brags he has no formal training in software development. The same guy who was pretty much run off the Linux kernel developer mailing list.

Who exactly gives a shit what this guy has to say?

Just asking ...

funny

[Yusaku Godai]

I just received one of the fakest spams I've ever seen:

Hi Ya, I saw your post on the message boards... I hope you don't mind sharing some information with me ^_^ I'm transfering to your neck of the woods in the spring and would like a penpal. What do you think? ^_^ Care to share some info.. hehehhe..eh If you'd like more information about me you can checkout my homepage if you have time... www.geocities.com/cafecutie21 Hope to hear from ya soon! BYEE~~~ Sammi~

It's obviously spam, what with lines like "I hope you don't mind sharing some information with me" but this time they went beyond just fake emails. Out of curiosity and boredom I clicked on the link which had a whole fake website for this girl, which ultimately linked to some online dating service. Why would companies turn to deceptive advertising? Why would anyone want to trust a company using such dirty methods.

Re:funny

[aiken_d]

I work in both the adult internet industry and internet dating service industry.

Odds are, the website you clicked through to wasn't set up by whatever matchmaker service you ended up on. The matchmaker service probably has an affiliate program ("send us traffic and we'll give you 50% of all signups"), and some enterprising college kid (or adult) discovered that they could set up geocities websites that link to the matchmaker site, spam the entire world, and make a few bucks from the affiliate commissions.

There are probably a couple of things wrong here:

1) The matchmaker site is probably not enforcing its TOS, if they have one. There's a temptation to turn a blind eye to what affiliates do to generate traffic; if people get upset enough about a particular spammer, you can always say "Gosh! They were violating our TOS. We'll kick them off!"

2) Geocities is pretty notorious for being slow to respond to abuse complaints.

It's a nasty problem, and one inherent to affiliate programs. Ethical companies aggressively pursue thier TOS and make it really clear that they do before allowing affiliates to sign up ("DO NOT USE SPAM to promote our site; we will not pay you your commissions on referrals generated by spam, we will immediately terminate your account, and we will happily share your personal information with any anti-spammers who complain").

Cheers
-b

Re:It's called "advertising"

[buss_error]

still don't get why people get their panties all in a bunch about a few emails

Try this on for size: If your received just one e-mail from every business in the US, you would get 1,200 per day.

Say it with me. Just hit delete. 1,200 times. Oops! Just deleted the e-mail from your (mother/father/brother/sister/spouce/SO/boss/once in a life time confidential offer).

Re:speaking of...

[dr_dank]

Do they actually do anything with the stuff?

Of course they do. Judging by their large penises and all that money made from home, they've done quite well for themselves to boot.

Re:The Internet has given spam a bad name

[polymath69]

ill probably get mod'ed offtopic for this...

Only because there's not a -1, Wrong moderation type...

Ever since the internet came along spam has been a problem.

Not even remotely; you must be new to the 'Net. (Do you remember when it was called the Arpanet?)

As recently as back around 1990, commercial use of the net for any purpose was strictly prohibited and staunchly enforced. Anyone violating this principle was likely to be summarily removed from the network.

Vestiges of this old anti-commercialism can still be seen in poster's messages saying things like, I have no connection to this company, but am merely a satisfied customer.

Spam was really not a serious problem in the first 20+ years of the 'Net. Quite unlike now.

Re:speaking of...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can comment on that.... I'm in touch with some people at the FTC, including the Webmaster and their network administrator. ALL of the spam (40,000 per day) goes into a huge database. This database is made available to all law enforcement agencys, both Federal and State. So far, they are getting good prosecutions of the more prolific spammers.

The ones they give higher priority to are DOMESTIC spammers, so don't waste the bandwidth sending your chinese or korean spam to them. Although they process it, the ones that get the highest priority are the ones with broken opt out links or ones that bounce for opt out requests. Also quantity takes a higher priority. Plus they also look at the stuff they sell, and sometimes make legit purchases to verify they are not scamming. But ONLY to the more prolific ones.

Although they DO pay attention to Nigerian spam, it is best to send those to mailto:419.fcd@usss.treas.gov?subject=NO_LOSS

I send ALL my spam to ftc, spamcop and Nigerian ones to the above address.

in my recon missions, I have indeed confimed that spammers DO share information, and opt out really just gets you MORE spam.

When sending reports to FTC, it's helpful if you are specific in your subject line. Like: "there is no opt out", or "opt out link dead", things like that.

The FTC has a rather large staff to process it, although most is done automatically and none of it's read my a human until AFTER it's entered into the database. Once in the database, it's classified and processed to make it easy for law enforcement to get good evidence on them.

My recommendation to all /.ers is to put out as many spam honeypots as you can, or "poison" their mailing list with bogus ones, by using phony hotmail addresses and opting out using those.... the idea is to increase the odds of filling their mailing lists with BOGUS ones... So lets all band together and start "poisoning" their mailing lists... :-)

Make YOUR batch of hotmail accounts today.. :-)

By the way, in doing this, you can also identify the ones that ARE selling your address, and you can then legally go after them, especially if they have a disclaimer telling you they WONT sell your information...

CC

It's called theft, harrasment, and interference.

[silentbozo]

I run my own business. I rely on e-mail heavily to communicate with customers and clients (I get orders via e-mail, support questions, contract inquiries, etc.) I spend upwards of 5 non-billable hours each week having to take care of the crap that fills my order inboxes, customer support inboxes, and my main mailbox. This crap includes both spam and e-mail worms. I spend that 5 non-billable hours a week AFTER everything goes through filters (if I didn't have filters, then I'd be spending more like 20 hours a week) - and it's only getting worse.

So, to sum up - it's not just a few e-mails. And yes, e-mail is about communication, and spammers are destroying the value of e-mail as a communications medium. And, by extension, since my business relies on e-mail, spammers are destroying (or at least seriously disrupting) my business. I pay business taxes, my bottom line is being affected by these criminals, and I really wouldn't mind if we just outlawed spam altogether.

You want to know what's anti-american, anti-business, and anti-innovation? Scum who abuse public resources - namely, spammers.

What if you were a CEO? How would you feel about all this bad press?

I'd fire the asshole in the marketing department who decided mass-mail was an acceptable practice, and I'd lobby Congress to outlaw spam.

I know you're trolling, but..

[jcr]

For the last goddamned time:

This is not a free-speech issue, it's a property rights issue. Advertisers are no more entitled to use my computer to send me an ad at my expense, than they are to break into my house and paint a billboard on my living room wall.

No, advertising isn't illegal, but using other people's property without their consent is indeed illegal.

-jcr