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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."
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.
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.
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."
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?
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"
Well, to view it another way,
how dare he endanger his family by doing such
rotten things? Having a family is not a magic
get-out-of-trouble card.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
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.
"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