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Spam, Milord
Your daily dose of spam... rjwoodhead writes "Hansard, the official journal of the UK parliament, reports on a recent discussion of spam in the House of Lords which not only mentions Monty Python, but reads like one of their skits." A New York spammer has been arrested. One account isn't scientifically representative, but it's a grim picture when you're showing a spam-doubling every 42 days. And an article in New Scientist suggests solving a puzzle, which is essentially the same idea as hash cash.
Instead of doing some random puzzle, why not kill two birds with one stone and have machines that want to send email or have access to other services do a small work unit for folding@home or something.
pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory7
The people pictured are from the Atlanta team, there's also a Pasadena team that is putting a picture together. From left to right they are: Tom Tatom, Kate Trower, Bobby Arnold, Beth, Milliken, Larry Fine, and Louis Rush. People in Atlanta not pictured include our team lead Erich Hablutzel, Brian Greer, and the departmental manager, Mary Youngblood. The Pasadena crew includes Laura Truchon, Kenn Wilson, Brad Patton, Brian Majeska, Jesse Kolbert, Kevin Phillips.
Today is a good day for all anti-spam activists!
He either comes off as a real interesting guy with encyclopedic knowledge,or a pathological liar with an ax to grind
Actually, I heard this debate on the radio late at night and I was impressed with the Lords taking an interest in something which as far as I know the House of Commons hasn't yet bothered to devote any time to. It seems to me a wonderful illustration of the Lords coming kicking and screaming into the 21st Century. Long may it continue!
recent discussion of spam in the House of Lords which not only mentions Monty Python, but reads like one of their skits.
Well sheesh, where do you think Monty Python drew their inspiration from? Your nostril?
The HoL discussions are pretty odd from an American standpoint (Hey! It's rude to interrupt! So quit it with your booing and hissing and here-hereing!), but at least most of the house is present during the debates. In the States, it's not uncommon to see a Congressman debating in front of a mostly empty congressional hall.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
I am writing a SMTP server which has a plugin called "reverse" which goes and checks the "mail from:" address to see if it is valid.h oneymail it is not finished yet, but hopefully it will keep only people with real email addresses able to send email.
http://lucifer.intercosmos.net/index.php?display=
And yes, it does store known "good" emails in shared memory so that all child processes can have access and know which emails are already allowed to send email.
The project is called honeymail as you can set it to "honeymode" so that when a spammer finds it and thinks it is an open-relay they start sending and everything just gets forwarded to spamcop, Occams razor etc..
Would love any ideas anyone has on honeymail.
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
Lord Sainsbury of Turville: My Lords, I am afraid that I have not been able to find out why the term "spam" is used, but that is the meaning it now has. It is a matter that should be taken very seriously because it not only clutters up computers but involves a great deal of very unpleasant advertising to do with easy credit, pornography and miracle diets. That is offensive to people, and we should try to reduce it.
Lord Faulkner of Worcester: My Lords, I can help the Minister with the origin of the word. It comes from aficionados of Monty Python, and the famous song, "Spam, spam, spam, spam". It has been picked up by the Internet community and is used as a description of rubbish on the Internet.
So, at least some in the House of Lords:
wish to be protected from having an email
equate easy credit with pronography with miracle diets
have heard of Monty Python.
I'd say that they compare quite favorably with the US Senate, so far.
[big snip]
Lady Saltoun of Abernethy: My Lords, do the Government have any plans to restrict unsolicited faxes? My fax paper is always being wasted by people who send me faxes I do not want. I do not know whether they could be called "corned beef" or something, but I have had enough of them
Clueless humor, I suppose, but humor.
[big snip]
Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, can the Minister think of a name for the enormous amount of unsolicited ordinary mail we receive?
I wonder whether this was sarcasm or more clueless humor?
Lord Sainsbury of Turville: My Lords, when I have a moment I shall bend my mind to that question.
Definitely sarcasm.
See what I've been reading.
If you generously figured 1$ per gig (in reality prices are a fraction of that), they're saying each e-mail was 1.21megs. If you go by more realistic prices, (25c/gig), you come up with 4.8 megs per message.
If you want to work the numbers the other way, earthlink is saying it costs them 1.21 cents in *bandwidth alone* to send an e-mail.
I'm calling bullshit on earthlinks "cost" of spamming. In reality I'll bet he didnt "steal" enough bandwidth for grand theft. (At my web host, 500$ would buy me 1.3TB of transfer).
Wether or not spamming is legal -- THEIR network allowed him to do it. They didnt notice a million dollars worth of bandwidth being pissed away ? Earthlink Buffalo didn't notice they were a million dollars less profitable this month/year and go WTF? Of course they didn't, they're lying through their teeth.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
Furthermore, the justification of a War on Spam is of a totally different nature than that of the failure that is Prohibition II. Almost all the problems usually attributed to drugs stemp only from their illegality. But Spam has until recently been quite legal and is now, as the Lords put it, 'choking the Internet'. Spam requires that the spammer be deceitful and intrusive to _everyone_ and actively waste their time, effort, and money. Plus the only people who get any enjoyment out of it are the ones directly making money off it, or think they are by hiring spammers. Drugs at least have the potential to be win-win for everyone involved.
My only real worry about arresting spammers is, like any other law, that it's going to be used entirely on the innocent or small fry and the schmucks actually clogging my inbox get off scot free. Or that even if we clear it up at home, we'll just get swamped by spammers from Asia (moreso than already, anyway) or whatver.
Dyolf Knip
Related to the discussion of crypto puzzles as payment to fight spam, it's interesting to look at the web page of the PennyBlack project at Microsoft Research, especially their Crypto 2003 paper by Dwork, Goldberg and Naor. Instead of using CPU-bound puzzles, they use memory-bound puzzles. The idea is that CPU speeds vary greatly between the fastest and slowest machines available today, which makes it difficult to compromise widespread acceptance of the slow but good machines AND control of the fast but spamming machines. On the other hand, memory bandwidths have a much narrower variance, which makes paying by "wasting one's memory bandwidth" more equitable among the slow and the fast. That's the approach taken in this project. It's a fascinating read (although, it has a bit of crypto, which could be heavy).