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.

Comments

Bloody Vikings!

[da3dAlus]

"Baked beans are off, all we have is SPAM!"

Gotta love british humor

[(54)T-Dub]

Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, can the Minister think of a name for the enormous amount of unsolicited ordinary mail we receive?

Lord Sainsbury of Turville: My Lords, when I have a moment I shall bend my mind to that question.

Re:Gotta love british humor

[Anonymous Coward]

It's worth noting that Lord Sainsbury of Turville is the Parlimantary Undersecretary for Technology and Innovation (something like that). Lord of the Geeks?

These spam laws are a waste of time

[w.p.richardson]

So one spammer gets arrested. So what? It's just red meat for the rabid anti-spammers, but nothing will come of it. You know, it's not legal to spam faxes either, but guess what... my office fax is loaded with crap every day!

Why waste time with legislation? A more permanent solution would focus on the technical - e.g., changing the protocol to forbid spam, etc.

Not to be a wet blanket, but...

[kiwimate]

New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer heralded the case as the first criminal prosecution of a spammer under New York's six-month-old identity-theft statute. "Spammers who forge documents and steal the identity of others to create their e-mail traffic will be prosecuted," Spitzer said at a press conference.

Seriously...the Buffalo spammer was almost trying to get caught, at this rate. The reason they got him is not because he's a scumbag spammer; it's because he brazenly engaged in identity theft. That just happened to be a tool that he then used to aid his spamming operation.

The article contains one or two references to the amount of bandwidth consumed by his activities, but so what? If it hadn't been for the identity theft, he'd be vilified on /. -- and free to continue spamming. Sorry, but I don't see this as all that encouraging.

Earthlink Abuse Department Rejoices

[datavortex]

here is a photo of some of the people in the Earthlink Abuse Department responsible for the yearlong investigation that landed the Buffalo spammer in jail. Today is a great day for all of us!

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!

Re:Earthlink Abuse Department Rejoices

[immanis]

A great looking bunch of people. Homocidal maniac looking people on the right (That dude on the far right would be the right one to send knocking on someone's door), technical looking people on the left (the guy on the far left looks like every FBI wirehead in every movie I've ever seen), and smack in the middle, Beth, who I now want to have my baby. (She should block her email for the next couple hours as geeks across /. try to dig up her address.)

What is it aboutt these departments that they all have an OB PIB (Person In Black) in them? Is there a new Affirmative Action law for goths and freaks (I say this, as the OB PIB in my department.)

Congrads to all of you.

We have to be serious about humour

[91degrees]

It's good to see that they can throw in Pythin references to a debate. It's what makes us British goddammit! If you can't say "Spam Spam Spam Spam" with a straight face, in a serious debate, you have no business calling yourself a citizen, and especially not a member of the house of Lords!

Open letter to spammers

[Anonymous Coward]

One account isn't scientifically representative, but it's a grim picture when you're showing a spam-doubling every 42 days

Dear Spammers,

Please slow down your spamming to doubling only every 18 months. This will give Moore's Law a chance to keep pace.

Thank you.

reverse checking on senders address

[joeldg]

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.
http://lucifer.intercosmos.net/index.php?display=h oneymail it is not finished yet, but hopefully it will keep only people with real email addresses able to send email.
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.

$1 million in bandwidth

[Monkelectric]

Anyone notice the buffalo spammer article said the spammer used a cool million in bandwidth sending 825 million emails? Theres no way thats possible.

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.

Re:The best parts

[meringuoid]

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.

No, actually quite sharp humour. If you go back to the menu of what the Lords were discussing that day, they'd just had an interesting discussion about corned beef, in particular when tinned, and how it can injure people. Link.

Lady Saltoun of Abernethy: My Lords, is the Minister aware that if, having taken off one end of the corned beef can with the twisty thing provided-assuming that you have not lost it-you then take a common, ordinary, household tin-opener and take off the other end, it is very easy to push the corned beef out of the tin without any danger to yourself?

Lord Sainsbury of Turville: Yes, my Lords, I was aware of that, and I am very glad that that essential piece of information is passed round for the benefit of this House.