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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."
Oops. we do that already I think...
Realistically though, is this something the US would want to adopt as a deterent? it seems to me way too open for abuse.
But let's suppose we could do that officially. Who is qualified to offically identify a spammer? How easy is it to detect a specific spammer (in terms of the skills required to get to right) and how easy is it to get the skills you'd need to do that? Not that Congress is going to authorize the establishment of an anti-spam unit...are they?
"Love is like pi - natural, irrational, and very important." (Lisa Hoffman)
Another theory... the group/guy who wrote SoBig is one of the biggest spam organisations.. and given the current FBI man hunt, is afraid to use his massive proxy network to spew crap out selling stuff cause it could eventually be traced back to him.
I.O.U One Sig.
Hate to say it, but in this case, vigilante type action seems to have had the desired result.
Why do you hate to say this ? If governments fail to do anything about spammers, possibly because they don't know how, the only option is vigilantism.
If the only way to stop these guys is to put their names in the paper or mention them on television shows, so be it.
Personally I wouldn't mind seeing them being dragged down the street to be tarred and feathered.
Reality has a notoriously liberal bias -- Stephen Colbert
I have a feeling that the large-time spammers don't really sit around r00+ing boxes to spam with. These guys are transfering gigabytes per day of spam. They are doing so with the blessings and services of hosting companies. The only reason a hosting company has for shutting down a spammer is that they've been blackholed. This is the only thing that works. I have NO pity for folks who also have hosting from these scumbags who are collateral damage. Find a new hosting or colo company or feel the wrath.
The different governments ESPECIALLY the US federal government feels that spam isn't their problem. The only recourse are semi-vigalante operations such as blacklists. God bless 'em.
(P.S. Don't say 'well, how did we know?' You learn when your clients can't get their mail or whatever. You then switch hosting co's to a less scummy operation. Vote with dollars people.)
The original poster wrote that once the spammer who became known shut down his operation, saw a 98% reduction makes an interesing point: if we knew who was sending the spam and who was profiting, we the community could send him enough hate-mail and other forms of revenge for the richer ones to be more content with the money they've already made while the poorer ones might take up more noble pursuits.
It's a pity that there is, as yet, no elegant, widely-known mechanism for finding the people who are the source of spam. God, one of *them* unable to use email without having to learn to use complex filters to get his messages.
I would *pay* to see that.
To mail me, remove the 'mailno' from my email addy.
"Yeah. It smells, too..."
I remember years ago when I responded to the footer "Click here to unsubscribe". Little did I know that was a way spammers varified email addresses. It must have taken me off the $20 for 1 million email addresses, and placed me on the $250 premium list.
Kinda like the footer that spammers had which cliamed their email complied with some HR#1342 blah blah blah. That is when I became suspicious, because I knew something that passed in the house alone was not law.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Wrong assertion, businesses aren't alike whatever pro-capitalist people are going to pretend. Selling flowers to the public, for example, doesn't, usually , nurture hate, anger and whatever the spam fashion is brewing these days.
be realistic for a minute here
I'm as realistic as anyone else and personally can't see any facts in your post. Perhaps i should read between the lines or something... ( hmmm wonder what's your day job. )
Does anyone protest when the menu guys flood your doorstep? No...
Wrong again. See that sign on my door. It says NO FSCKIN FLYERS! Better not ask for any reading lessons, i have strong tendency to act violently towards illiterate dumb fscks.
What about when Target or some other megaconglomerate sends bs in the mail that you didn't ask for?
They don't do that anymore. Not in my country. In what country do you live in ? Texas ?
Spam is no different.
Sheesh, this is getting pathetic. Did you ever get 1000+ flyers on your doorstep or in your mail box? I doubt it. It couldn't simply fit or it would be a great risk of fire. Imagine a couple kids passing in front of your house.
Now, if i would be running a business everyone hates and i would be told not to run it anymore by a huge majority of society... I would quit. DUH! So what's your point ? Well, i ain't high tonight and i can say i didn't understand what's the point you are trying to make. Anyways.. It was sure fun to reply.
I've just started getting hit by the latest email worm/virus/trojan thing (some jerkoff with my real email address has just gotten themselves infected). And judging by the lack of response from my personal address' email server I'm not alone. This could be the resurgance predicted as people got back to work after the (long?) weekend. Either way, spam is probably down because email servers are overloaded more than peoples' inboxes are.
Perhaps too much of a bit of wishful thinking there?
I hope so. One brutal public execution of a spammer by a wild mob would stop spam overnight.
Another strategy might be to bait psychopaths with spam mails "look what this guy sent your momma" then direct them to the spammer's residence.
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You have obviously never been on the receiving end of a blacklist. I look at the mailing lists and all I see are a bunch of jerks acting as if the provider is always at fault, and that everybody has a choice who their provider is.
/24 block was the local Catholic School having an open proxy (NOT an open relay), but no reported spam.
In the past week, I've had some messages start bouncing. A lookup at http://openrbl.org/ shows 0 positives on my IP, yet for some reason I'm getting bounces claiming both SPEWS and Osirusoft are rejecting me. It would be nice to find out what's going on, but both of their websites are unaccessible. The only reference I could locate to others in my
So is my ISP being lax in their anti-spam policy? I could only find 1 report of a known spammer operating from my ISP's address block in the past year, and that one appeared to have been picked up from their purchase of another provider. Sounds to me like they are doing their job.
And don't give me any of this BS about 'well the ISP had their chance to shut down the troublemakers before they were blacklisted.' Where the hell was *MY* chance to do something before *I* got blacklisted?
I've been using ordb and spamhaus to filter incoming mail for the past severl months, but had never really read any of the mailing lists to see what was going on. Quite frankly I'm amazed at the attitudes. The scenario that comes to mind is this... On the block where I live, someone who I have never met gets a DUI while driving (someone spams). The court orders them to attend classes about drunk driving (send a message to ISP to get rid of the problem). The person never attends those classes, so the city takes away the driver's license of EVERYONE on the block (blacklisted). Of course, nobody on my block has any idea what was going on, and if we had, we may have been able to put some pressure on the individual to make changes, but no, the city doesn't care about that.
In my case (with the discovered open proxy), it's a little more incredible... A neighbor lends his car to someone else, and even though that person drove safetly and there were no reported incidents, our whole block has restricted anyway.
I'm going to keep using RBL's on my mail server, but I'm going to do a little more research into who I'm using. It's a great concept, but I've seen too many people on huge power trips now to explicitly trust what they are telling me should be restricted.
Because the authors of virii call them virii, and not some Klingon word. The word "viruses" refers to biological organisms, and the distinction is valid and desirable.
Do you insist on calling eight-bit quantities "bites" since there was no English word "byte" before computer programmers decided to make one?