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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 really have noticed a dramatic decrease in the amount of spam I've received in the past 4-5 days. I figured it was just due to my dilligence with unsubscribing myself to mailing lists but everything just suddenly dropped off.
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.
Sounds like we're about to enter the times of the Wild Wild Web, where vigilantism and marshal law run wild....sounds like fun to me!
... I haven't seen much spam in my inbox lately. But yet spam from my hotmail account is just the same, damn Microsoft for using their hotmail users as a spam whore for money. :P
This space is not for rent.
Catburglary is down. In other news, vicious sack beatings up 300%
there's spam, egg, sausage and spam. That's not got much spam in it.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
"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.
I was so naive.
As I have this in /etc/postfix/body_checks /^Penis/ REJECT /^penis/ REJECT /^Pindick/ REJECT
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
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.
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)
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
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
DEAR SIR/MADAM,
MY NAME IS MOHAMMED YASSIN NGABE CURRENTLY PROVIDING INTERNET SERVICE TO SEVERAL WELL KNOWN SPAMMERS. I KNOW THIS LETTER MIGHT SURPRISE YOU BECAUSE WE HAVE HAD NO PREVIOUS COMMUNICATIONS OR BUSINESS DEALINGS BEFORE NOW.
DUE TO A RECENT UNFORTUNATE INCIDENT INVOLVING A GARDEN WEASEL AND MY LARGE BOWEL, I CAN NO LONGER PROVIDE ACCESS TO THESE UPSTANDING ENTREPENEURS. AS A RESULT I MUST REGRETFULLY DISPOSE MYSELF OF THE SPAMHOSTING BUSINESS AND GIVE THE ADDRESSES AND NAMES OF SEVENTY-TWO (72) SERIAL SPAMMERS TO A WORTHY REPLACEMENT HOST.
DUE TO THE SENSITIVE NATURE OF THESE ADDRESSES, AND THE SENSITIVE NATURE OF THE GROSSLY ENLARGED PENISES OF THE SPAMMERS THEMSELVES, I MUST EXCERCISE THE UTMOST DISCRETION IN GIVING AWAY THESE ADDRESSES.
TO ESTABLISH YOUR GOOD FAITH IN THIS TRANSACTION, YOU MUST FIRST SEND ME YOUR NAME, EMAIL ADDRESS(ES), SHAMPOO BRAND PREFERENCE, AND PENIS SIZE.
KINDLY TREAT THIS REQUEST AS VERY IMPORTANT AND STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL. I HONESTLY ASSURE YOU THAT THIS TRANSACTION IS 100% LEGAL AND RISK-FREE.
MOHAMMED YASSIN NGABE, ESQ.
LAGOS, NIGERIA
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.
Last week: 179 spams
Previous week: 210 spams
Previous week: 277 spams
My spam dropped by 35%. Though I can't discount the possibility that it's just the increased virus traffic slowing the rate at which spammers can send their emails.
Stories posted in the YRO section should have an option to moderate comments as "Paranoid".
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
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."
I live in NZ and read the original article. + the followups.
The original article was in the national paper The Herald, around two weeks ago. The original article was only a moderatly sized peice at the back of the paper (IT section). The author had simply had enough of the spam and was also worried for his daughters exposure to things such as viagra. So he went about tracking the spammer down. He eventually found him, rang him and organised an interview. Thus the spammers name appeared within the paper and thus harassemnt began.
So then the spammer become worried for his family .
some peoples moderation does not include weed
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 read the original article and all the followups. The important part here is the spammer in question agreed to being interviewed...
some peoples moderation does not include weed
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.
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.
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
We've outed and shut down one minor spammer.
The Register of Known Spam Operations lists nearly two hundred more hard-core spammers, along with everything the anti-spam people have been able to find out about them. Check the list, see if any are in your area, and take whatever action you feel is 'appropriate'.
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
Perhaps too much of a bit of wishful thinking there?
I've been using Mailwasher to bounce all his spam, figuring eventually his email would show up in the spam lists as being dead
Please stop. Bouncing spam after the delivery phase is not only naive and stupid, but it makes the life of innocent third parties harder. The From: line is nearly 100% guaranteed to have absolutely nothing to do with the persons responsible for the spam. In most cases it's a random third party, this is called a "joe job." When it happens to you, you receive thousands and thousands of these idiotic bounces (in addition to thousands of angry replies and "please remove" messages) from clueless mail software and cluless users. All you are doing is adding to the problem by "bouncing" spam. You are not bouncing it, you are just forwarding it to someone else's inbox. The only legitimate bounce that you can do with spam is during the mail delivery phase, before the connection has closed. As soon as the message has been delivered, that's it: either delete it or possibly submit it to a spam corpus, but for heaven's sake don't try sending it back to either the envelope-sender or the From: line, as both of these are spoofed and invalid.
"Bouncing" just adds to the spam problem. Stop.
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!
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?
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.
for what it's worth, the stats at spamgourmet.com confirm a drop off in spam the last couple of days. (if you look at the graphs, note that there was a server move near the beginning of July that accounts for the big drop and spike at that time).
Are we saying, beyond the featured shutdown, that SoBig, etc. have actually taken the *spammers* out of commission for awhile -- not only by clogging mail servers, but by infecting and disabling their boxes?
who's moderating the meta-moderators?
Here are my spam stats, generated with Rob Park's excellent mboxstats:
Jul 01, 2003 102
Jul 02, 2003 84
Jul 03, 2003 83
Jul 04, 2003 87
Jul 05, 2003 64
Jul 06, 2003 62
Jul 07, 2003 81
Jul 08, 2003 95
Jul 09, 2003 73
Jul 10, 2003 90
Jul 11, 2003 88
Jul 12, 2003 84
Jul 13, 2003 77
Jul 14, 2003 110
Jul 15, 2003 122
Jul 16, 2003 112
Jul 17, 2003 84
Jul 18, 2003 112
Jul 19, 2003 103
Jul 20, 2003 83
Jul 21, 2003 92
Jul 22, 2003 89
Jul 23, 2003 103
Jul 24, 2003 86
Jul 25, 2003 91
Jul 26, 2003 90
Jul 27, 2003 66
Jul 28, 2003 98
Jul 29, 2003 92
Jul 30, 2003 95
Jul 31, 2003 98
Aug 01, 2003 97
Aug 02, 2003 93
Aug 03, 2003 66
Aug 04, 2003 83
Aug 05, 2003 80
Aug 06, 2003 76
Aug 07, 2003 107
Aug 08, 2003 85
Aug 09, 2003 59
Aug 10, 2003 63
Aug 11, 2003 75
Aug 12, 2003 63
Aug 13, 2003 68
Aug 14, 2003 71
Aug 15, 2003 58
Aug 16, 2003 75
Aug 17, 2003 63
Aug 18, 2003 51
Aug 19, 2003 34
Aug 20, 2003 62
Aug 21, 2003 60
Aug 22, 2003 66
Aug 23, 2003 67
Aug 24, 2003 64
Aug 25, 2003 65
There's no getting around it -- the quantity of spam that has decreased in the past couple of weeks.
Note that the corpus is my UCE folder for my primary e-mail address. I do not use any RBLs to block, but I do use SpamAssassin to filter, and then I hand-review my UCE folder daily, weeding out viruses and the occasional legitimate message.
-Waldo Jaquith
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