Spammers Busted

Scud_the_disposable_ writes "CNN has posted an article about the "shutting down" of several spammers who sell fake international driver's licenses. These licenses are supposed to win back suspended driving priviledges, and make holders immune to speeding tickets and other traffic violations." What makes me even more sad is that people fell for it. So far today is a slow spam day for me. Only 81 spam, but its only 9:30.

Comments

Burn the spammers!

[Anonymous Coward]

As an avid user of SpamCop, I've become accustomed to seeing certain repeat spammers who enjoy plugging up my E-mail account. Then I saw this E-mail -- spam, of course -- offering to sell me E-mail address list. The E-mail address to contact for information... from btamail.net.cn: the worst offender of all!

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We have just released 2 Million freshly extracted Canadian email addresses.

Just for this week, you can download these for only US$29!

Now you can send emails to only people who reside in Canada.

To order yours, please fill in the form below and email it back to ***********@btamail.net.cn
Make sure you put "ORDER" in the SUBJECT line.
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(addressed blanked out, I don't want to send them more business!)

I know I've sent tonnes of complaints to the ISPs involved with btamail (though SpamCop), but I wonder if there's a more direct or effective approach... especially since I'm certain they're pimping out *MY* E-mail address in their "freshly extracted" batch.

Yeah. I'm bitter.

Re:This is good, but..

[timmyf2371]

I don't think we necessarily need a governing body who controls spam, or any aspect of the Internet for that matter.

IMO, what might work would be a redesigning of the STMP and possibly the POP3 protocols or an entirely new protocol. What I would suggest would be:

1. Client-server authentication for all outgoing mail transactions. This would help a great deal with the problem of open relays.

2. A specification to stop the masking of all headers, especially origination IP address and the senders e-mail address. This way, if spammers do continue their tricks, the recipients would have all their details to report to ISPs or local authorities.

3. E-mail applications which allow users to specify whether they want to receive mail using solely the new protocol, or whether the also wish to allow "old" POP3/smtp mail.

Any thoughts?

Tim