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NZ Spammer Shutdown Makes Big Difference
lump writes "A notorious spammer, based in New Zealand, who had his name and other personal info released first in a national newspaper, and then on the web, has shut down his operation, citing harassment. What interests me about this case is that, in the 5 or 6 days since he has supposedly stopped operating, I personally have had one (1) spam email, to an address which had previously averaged around fifty per day. Colleagues report a similar reduction in spam. All I can say is 'excellent.' Hate to say it, but in this case, vigilante type action seems to have had the desired result. This needs to be publicised, as anything which slows down spam can only be a good thing."
Yeah, true, but this doesn't stop the flux of spamhaus cohorts' virus-infected computers sending me their pestilence simply because I'm still on their "hit lists" or whatever. That's basically evidence that even if the root of the problem is taken care of, that the symptoms can still persist.
Unsolicited e-mail, spam or virus, all the same to me.
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And the Angel said unto me, "These are the cries of the carrots! The cries of the carrots!"
I used to get solid stuff in all of my accounts but I haven't gotten a single piece of anything in the last week. Hate to say it, but vigilanteeism is the only thing that works.
I have noticed a sharp drop in spam the past few day, too. I attributed that to the recent SoBig.F craze sweeping the nation (and beyond). Is there any definative evidence?
While I am skeptical, I am also hopeful. If he has indeed been the cause of so much of the spam I have seen recently, then this ought to serve as a wake up call to anyone looking to fill his shoes.
"Anything which slows down spam can only be a good thing."
Hardly. Without violating godwin's law, I can think of lots of ways to stop spam that would be a bad thing. Be careful, this is a slippery slope.
many people are getting flooded with the crap and where they may just get a few spams and be able to read them, now they are inundated and are trigger happy with the delete key.
Many peoples inboxes are filled and can't accept any e-mail
It also may be that your particular address just happened to be 0wn3d by that particular spammer but not any/many others. There are plenty of other people that are on many other spammers lists.
I.O.U One Sig.
Shane Atkinson - whose business is known as spamming - said the barrage of abuse made him worry about the safety of his children.
Given that Mr. Atkinson is a man who sent out a hundred million spam messages a day, for penis enlargement and similarly raunchy BS, I too am worried about the safety of his children... with an amoral sleazebag like him for a father, who knows how his unfortunate progeny might turn out?
I doubt if Mr. Atkinson ever lost sleep over the millions of children whose email inboxes were polluted with his X-rated crap on a daily basis. And yet he tries to pull the "good father" routine. What a joke.
A much as a two-bit spammer in the South Pacific would love to think that he has such an impact upon the industry, let's be realistic. What about the South Canadian power outage? The various worms and virii that have been circulating? I'd say that maybe some of the filth spewing nodes of our beloved internet have been infected. Also likely is that the recent profusion has probably made some people take a closer look at their PCs and network, eliminating some spam-zombies, or spombies and other sploitz
Of course, just after he quit Blaster and SoBig hit the net, so it's more likely that the drop in spam is linked to them, e.g.
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
I have a prediction for the future.
Given the last week of automated spam from the most popular viruses out there, I'd say we can expect computers to outspam the best spammers. Spammers will write many viruses that send ads to enlarge our penises, and stop popup ads, and then they don't even have to take responsibility.
The smart thing for them to do, since they will be outlaws anyway, is to have OTHER PEOPLE send spam for them.
Enough people are sending "empty" virus messages right now. Just think of the marketing potential if those virus messages contained a payload to send the spammer's material!
Scary.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Ok I'll bite... first off, the apartment that I live in, previous two and the dorm(s) I used to live in, had a "no solicitors" rule. Second, if someone was doing that to me, I would wait for them and I'm sure that a 2 min face-to-face chat would suffice for a 'cease-and-desist' order! If all else fails, the menu has a valid address and phone that can be used for legal recourse. Are any of these options available for spam?
During the last week, while SoBig was flying around, my spam level was exceptionally low. Now that SoBig is basically gone (for now) the spam level has increased almost back to its normal level. Remember the basic rule:
"correlation does not imply causation"
Just because spam levels went down when this guy said he was getting out of the game does not mean that his departure was the cause.
Michael Dinowitz House of Fusion http://www.houseoffusion.com
1) Menu's dont cost me bandwidth or server CPU time.
2) Menu's do not contain sexually explicit or illegal scam material.
3) Reading the menu doesn't cause me to be the permanent target of 100 other restaurants.
4) Menu's may even be usefull.
In concept, they are certainly similar, though junk mail is far less annoying. Here in Australia, you can even put a "No Junk Mail" sign on your letterbox - something you cant do for spam.
Does anyone protest when the menu guys flood your doorstep? No... What about when Target or some other megaconglomerate sends bs in the mail that you didn't ask for? doubtable. Spam is no different.
No, I don't protest when the menu guys flood my doorstep... but I might if I got 50 - 150 menus/day.
Or I might protest if the junk mail wasn't just menus and credit card solicitations, but porno, confidence scams and penis enlargers.
Or I might protest if sending junk mail was actually illegal, as spam is.
Or I might protest if I had a sign on the mailbox marked "ABSOLUTELY NO JUNK MAIL" and the mailman or flyer guy went ahead and ignored it.
And I'd be especially ticked off if I couldn't protest: if I couldn't trace problematic junk mail back to an actual business or legal entity that could be held somehow accountable.
The list just goes on and on. The differences between spam and junk mail are obvious and have already been discussed extensively in this forum.
anything which slows down spam can only be a good thing
s/spam/terrorism/
Still agree with this statement?
I have said this before, we have a problem of ethics. Nobody wants to be responsible for what they do. A spammer is more concerned about making money than the inconvenience he causes to millions of people.
My solution is we will have to remove aninimity from the web. Everyone will have to become accountable for what they do.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Comparing spam with menus left on your doorstep??
There are two *huge* differences when it comes to spam:
1) Your local pizza place actually has to spend money on each and every one of those menus they dump on your doorstep, which means that it is in their best interest not to dump 10 copies every day there, unlike some spammers do.
2) And something that is often overlooked in these kind of analogies: There are at best a few hundred businesses within driving distance to your house to which it could make sense to send you promotional snailmail. On the internet, *everyone* is local. That means potentially hundreds of thousands or even millions of 'companies' who could send you their 'special promotions', for virtually no charge to them.
Spam levels are horrible these days -- I am the administrator of several mailservers at an ISP, and they receive hundred thousand spam messages a DAY, combined. Currently about 70% of all incoming mail gets flagged as spam by our spam filters, up from ~50% little over a year ago.
The total number of spam sent still increases every month, according to the numbers by the major anti-spam companies like Postini and Brightmail. Just for a moment, imagine how bad it would be if there had been noone trying to put an end to it...
Come on? You think this is a good thing? How in gods name can someone say that having less spam is worth making some guy worry about the safty of his own children? I wouldn't have any problem with the saps phone ringing non stop...or having his I-net connections DOS attacked...or of course having his e-mail address spammed...and maybe even test the security out on any websites he hosts so to speak...but spam is no excuse to threaton someone's child.
Ok, I'm going to "express" myself by playing trumpet (no I don't know how the to play according to the official way, I make my own way which I still think sounds good). Oh, and did I mention I was going to express myself outside your bedroom window. Oh, and if you move, I'm moving too and am going to continue "expressing" my self. Still think anything is ok, regaurdless of the effect it has on other people's productivity and happyness, so long is it can be considered, however loosly, expressing one'self?
Little Brother, watching the watchers
This needs to be publicised, as anything which slows down spam can only be a good thing.
So you're saying it'd be OK to murder the spammer too?
Sure he shut down his operation, but he was probably making a TON of money through spamming. My guess is that he will lie low for a while, change his name/address/whatever, then fire up the spam servers once again... and if not him, someone else will step into the vacuum.
One guarantee... If there's a profit to be made, people will do anything for a buck..
Spam isn't expression. It costs the recipient money. I have no problem with this guy shouting about penis enlargement, showing large penis-enlargement signs, or doing anything.
Besides, your freedom of expression ends where my property starts. Come to my house and start trying to tell me about my penis, and i'll give you about 10 seconds to get the fudge off my property, and after that you'd better hope i'm a bad shot.
Sounds like somebody's a spammer.
Things which would slow down spam, but which most of us would not consider to be "good things.":
Come on, people. Aren't techies, of all people, smart enough to see that "the ends justify the means" is *not* a valid rationale?
Cheers
-b
I run a very conservative mail server for about 340 accounts. I'm running 2-3 RBLs with no content filtering. We have a virtually non-existent rate of blocking legit mail.
Mail stats in the last 24 hours:
Rejected mail: 5,629
Accepted mail: 2,082
Because of our conservative blacklisting, the RBLs are probably only about 80% effective at best, we still hovered around our usual 28% legitimate mail traffic, verses 72% spam. (This also doesn't include worm messages which wouldn't have been relay-blacklisted so it's likely even worst.) Nothing seems to have changed, or it's not enough to be noticeable.
Everything they say about spam clogging the Internet is true. Based on my own stats, for a server that is generally below the radar running very legitimate web and e-commerce operations and a few select POP3 mailboxes, a vast majority of the bandwidth we use is undesireable crap. Imagine the improved performance of the net if we could actually make a dent in stopping the spamming sleazebags from clogging our pipes!
Yeah, that HR#1342 nonsense was really annoying. They were like saying "see, we are law abiding citizens, we're doing you a favor" What BS
Scum of the earth.
I really believe that contrary to popular opinion, a tough federal spam law would make all the difference in the world.
When police catch drug runners, they seize the drug runners possesions (house and car). Why couldn't it be the same for spammy??
Think about it -- if they would lose their computers, they would have a difficult time spamming. Couple that with some pound-me-in-the-butt federal prison time, they might get the freakin' message the they are not liked
All you would need to do is catch a handful and make an example of them.
Sure, the remaining spammies might move to another country, but at least they would be on the run.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
I have a hotmail account that I use only for one specific purpose. I do not use the address in any registrations. I have opted out of all MS email. The address is not a common word or name. The address is not listed on the web.
I do not get any spam on this account. None.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
... ...
-Christopher Wu
http://www.christopherwu.net/
Because locking up drug dealers and seizing their posessions has worked so well. I mean, I can't even remember the last time I saw any non-government-approved drugs being offered for sale.
The biggest problem with the blacklist is it cost-shifts, exactly what anti-spammers hate about spam.
Think about it. You are shifting the burden of pressuring an ISP into killing a spammer onto that ISP's non-spamming customers, and you're doing it without advance warning.
Those who blithely talk about "switching hosts" have never had to do it. It just ain't that simple, and it sure as hell isn't free. It means being off the net completely for days--not just e-mail down, but all your services, unless you've got the money for a complete duplicate set of servers.
I have no problem with blacklisting spammers, but I have a major problem with blacklisters who think collateral damage is a good thing or at least nothing to worry about.
People are never as simple as their stereotypes. This applies equally to Christians, Muslims, and Emacs-lovers.
And who is the cost being shifted from????
Looks like it's being shifted from the spam recipients who don't pay the hosting ISP money and thus have no leverage on them. Why should "we" have to spend all that effort getting "your" ISP to clean up its act.
This tactic also reduces the effectiveness of moving the spammer from IP address to IP address as was commonly done when just the spammer was blocked as you advocate. Again, much less work for the spam recipient.
You, the ISP customer, also can benefit from this. When your ISP eventually catches a clue and removes its spammers, getting out of a few widely used public blocklists is a whole lot easier than getting out of thousands of local private blocklists. (Try sending email from any of AGIS's old IP blocks and see how far it gets.)
"When police catch drug runners, they seize the drug runners possesions (house and car). Why couldn't it be the same for spammy??"
That's a terrible law for drug runners, it would be even worse for people who are just sending email.
Honestly, even after they have acquitted someone, often times they still cannot get back their property. I don't want a police state, and I bet that you don't either.
Engineering and the Ultimate
You need to avoid the conflict of interest. Don't let the police department keep the good, or the money from the auction.
Having the tools of your crime confiscated seems to make sense. If I rob a store with a gun, should I get to keep the gun? If you use the computer primarily for an unlawful purpose, you should have it taken away.
But, I think spam is a *very* serious crime. Nothing speeds the decay of a society faster than abuse of the commons or being encouraged to sell out your neighbors for a quick buck. These spammers are doing something they *know* nobody else wants them to do, charging the victims for it, and then whining about free speech...
We really should bring back corporal punishment. This guy deserves a couple days in the stocks and a good harm whipping. We need to make it really clear that we won't tolerate people pulling this kind of anti-social bullshit.
And furthermore, I guarantee you that the people who named this particular type of malicious code a "virus" didn't consult the OED or Wheelock's Latin either.
Language evolves. It would be better to have a new word for the singlar form, and not just for the plural, but evolution is rarely biddable.
I don't believe it. I simply don't believe that clicking unsubscribe links adds you to other "premium" lists. It implies that the spammers care which accounts are active.
Last month, a spam shop used my email address as the spoofed source for a whole crapload of spam. I got bounces and vacation messages like crazy! So a) their list had a whole bunch of inactive addresses, and b) all feedback about the activity status of an account went to me!
It's simply not worth their time to track what's active and what's not. Just send anyways, because a computer is doing all the work. What's the difference between 10,000 valid addresses, and 20,000 partially valid addresses? Not much.
Tracking the people who *want* to unsubscribe though, that might be worthwhile. The whackos who click unsubscribe might be pissed enough to actually use the local laws to prosecute, form a vigilante mob, etc.
Best case: you get removed. Worst case: nothing happens.
If the world evey come to that, I pray to God you get misidentified as a spammer.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
is to force the companies that allow spam to pay for and honor a 'do not spam' list.
Sure spammer can move, but the companies that have the bandwidth to allow people to send out that kind of data are few.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Hate to break it to you, but there *is* a demand for spam. Why? Quite frankly, it works. Teh demand fo rspam comes from the person/entity *selling* or hawking something, not from us.
.4% = 20,000 responses from people waiting to buy. Assuming a net profit of but a single penny per response that comes out to 200 bucks. At a nickel it is a thousand dollars. Can you send spam for less than that? Absolutely.
Let us assume that one in 500,000 people will buy something from a spammer, or visit the referenced website (which probably gets counted as a hit or click somehwere earning the spammer money).
Spam is cheap. Let us say (assumption alert!) that one could send out 5 million spams for 10 bucks. One would only need to make 10 bucks or more on 10 sales, or an average of a bucks/sale. That isn't hard to do.
Any Windows virus contains the capability to send spams using your system (assuming you run Windows, of course). Wait till the public sees a 65 year old grandmother getting her stuff ripped away from here because of a virus that spammed using her machine, or becuase a spammer used her address as a reply to w/forged headers. Yeah, that'll make people feel good about themselves, eh?
You write as if the Internet repealed the laws of supply and demand. In truth, the prevalence of spam is an excellent example of them in action. The cost of electronic spam is next to nothing, and there is a demand for it, thus the supply busts wide open.
Think of this:
If postal spam was as cheap as email spam, how much postal spam would you be getting? I'd wager a helluva lot more. Why? Cheaper advertising costs, and at even low rates of return, it becomes cost effective.
Consider that direct mail has a 3-5% action rate. Cut that by an order of magnitude for spam, just for sake of dicussion, and do the math. Five million spams *
As long as people, such as yourself, ignore the reality of supply and demand in the world of spam, you will fail to understand how to make progress in combating it. And you will result to threats of violence to get your way. There has always been spam, it is just a new medium. Failure to recognize that will lead to failure to successfully combat it.
And as far as someone supplying spam, the spammer *is* the supply. Even modestly uncreative types could probably grab a scripting book and in a matter of a couple hours make spam lists of millions upon millions of potential addresses.
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.