China Blocks Spam Servers

clafarge writes "I just read in the AP's LiveWire that, as reported by Xinhua News Agency, China has blocked 127 mail servers which it identifies as major sources of spam. Oh, happy day. They also published a list of 225 spam servers around the world just last month." Guess they're following through on this.

Comments

Bah

[krray]

That's IT? Jeez, me, myself, and I (plus my wife :) @ home have gotten about a dozen emails today (legit).

Didn't _see_ any spam, but the logs surely show 685 rejects from known previously spammed us IP's.

169 IP's made it known through various methods (ie: we don't KNOW anybody outside the US...) that they would probably spam us.

55 messages/IP's (slow day, typically a couple of hundred) were harvested from trap addresses.

To date I've had to unblock one (1) such IP at home (work is up to maybe a dozen now) that got caught in the traps. As email flows in, and not blocks, those IP's are reverse-harvested as OK. A problem child will become evident quickly. Damn, still trying to build the perfect mouse trap as a people, eh?

IP's that have made themselves KNOWN to be a problem for us? Up to 117,469,666 as of midnight tonight. Yeah -- that's 117 million IP's blocked. Only about 3% of the total ~3.9-4 billion IP's assignable.

127 mail servers. Bah -- child's play...

Oh -- and the number of spam's that I personally saw today? I think one, which the Mac highlighted for me and dumped it. I know the wife got worried her pecker must be too small a couple of times today...

Are these *REALLY* spam IPs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it possible that these "spammers" are actually servers with legit users sending "illegal material" to China via e-mail? "Illegal Material" in this case would include anything that speaks out against the Chinese governent, or reveals news articles from unapproved sources.

Riiight.

[PsionicMan]

Uh huh. Blocking "spam" servers. Wonder how long it'll take before this becomes the convenient excuse for blocking servers espousing such dangerous ideas as freedom and political/ideological dissidence. Not that they don't do it already, mind you, but it would provide a nice, PR-friendly reason. After all, everyone wants to stop spam, right? Screw the constitution, get your shotgun, and let's go find the spammers?

Spam, child porn, and terrorists seem to be the current Horsemen of the Infocalypse. A couple of the old favorites, money launders and drug dealers, don't get so much press these days.

The list?

[gonaddespammed.com]

So where is this list. I'll block the same servers.

90 Taiwanese servers blocked..

[molo]

Ninety of the blocked servers were from Taiwan, eight were from the mainland and 29 were from elsewhere, Xinhua said, without providing other details.

Now we see the real agenda here. This is just another round of annoyances that China is imposing on Taiwan. Nothing to see here, no real spam blocking, just more propoganda.. or perhaps (tin foil hat on) they are blocking political messages/organizations from Taiwan and elsewhere?

I think that is actually more likely.

-molo

Try complaining to the right people.

[Dimensio]

I had complained countless times to the Chinese whois contacts without positive result.

I managed to get a Viagra shill site yanked. That happened after a mail filter misconfiguration caused over 4000 e-mails to be sent to to the host (china-netcom.com)

I've heard that people have had some results by CCing their complaints to every known Chinese ambassador contact address:

chinaemb_in@mfa.gov.cn, secretary@chinaembassy.nl,political@chinaembassy.n l, inf2@fmprc.gov.cn, chinaemb_in@mfa.gov.cn,china@opendf.com.br, webmaster@chinaembassy.bg,chinaemb@soficom.com.eg, info@chinaembassy.org.nz,consul@chinaembassy.org.n z, administration@chinaembassy.org.nz,culture@chinaem bassy.org.nz, science@chinaembassy.org.nz,defence@chinaembassy.o rg.nz, education@chinaembassy.org.nz,chinaeco@paradise.ne t.nz, webmaster@chinaembassy.nl,adm@chinaembassy.nl, culture@chinaembassy.nl,commercial@chinaembassy.nl , jiaoyu@xs4all.nl,military@chinaembassy.nl, scitech@chinaembassy.nl,culture@chinese-embassy.no , webmaster@chinaconsulate.org.nz,webmaster@chinaemb assy.org.tr, webmaster@chinaembassy.org.zw,webmaster@embajadach ina.org.pe, press@chinemb.fi,consulate@chinemb.fi, culture@chinemb.fi, edse@chinemb.fi,office@chinemb.fi, fin.shangwu@kolumbus.fi, chinaemb@simnet.is,chinacom@islandia.is, chinaemb@012.net.il, info@china-embassy.or.jp,consular@chinaembassy.org .np, culture@chinaembassy.org.np,embchina@adetel.net.mx , chnempng@daltron.com.pg,embaixador@embaixadachina. pt, conselheiro@embaixadachina.pt,politica@embaixadach ina.pt, cultura@embaixadachina.pt,militar@embaixadachina.p t, chancelaria@embaixadachina.pt,consular@embaixadach ina.pt, chinaemb_sa@mfa.gov.cn,political@chinaembassy.se, consular@chinaembassy.se,administration@chinaembas sy.se, military@chinaembassy.se,culture@chinaembassy.se, science@chinaembassy.se,moftec.swe@swipnet.se, info@cnedu.nu, protocol@chinaembassy.se,webmaster@chinaembassy.se , CHINA-EMBASSY@BLUEWIN.CH,chinaembassy_tr@fmprc.gov .cn, sinoem@zol.co.zw,chinamission_un@mfa.gov.cn, fmco_mo@mfa.gov.cn,minister@legalinfo.gov.cn

What "Blocking" really means

[billstewart]

If you read the articles, it doesn't say that they're stopping Chinese spammers from sending spam to foreign countries. It says that they're blocking mail to Chinese ISPs _from_ 127 alleged spam sites, mostly in Taiwan. Now, I wouldn't be surprised if most or all of them really _are_ spammers, because China has a market for Viagra and Cable Descramblers too, and there'll be spammers happy to fill it. But China's been heavily into censorship for a while, not that it's easily enforced even if you have quasi-monopoly Internet backbone providers.

Unfortunately, I'd guess that almost all of those sites are sending spam in Chinese. I get very little of that - almost all the spam I get from China is in English, though there does seem to be less of it than there used to be.

Spam from Florida.

[vitojph]

Come on, guys, everybody knows that the spam capital of the world is the beautiful Boca Raton, Florida: in spanish and in english.

China ha nothing to do with this.