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...

Re:Bah

[Anonymous Coward]

127 mail servers. Bah -- child's play

Come on now. It's a start. If this helps other countries and ISPs to admit that unsolicited commercial email is a real problem, then this is good news. 127 mail servers today, several thousand tomorrow?

And to pre-emptively strike at those who claim that spam is "free speech" and only godless communist countries would block it:

No, unsolicited commercial email (aka "spam") is NOT free speech. The burden of storing received email falls squarely on the recipient, thus sending email is a privilege not a right. In the exact same way you don't have the right to call someone up as many times as you without it being harrassment.

Re:Bah

[Anonymous Coward]

Such a intelligent replay and posted anonymously :(

You are right. Sending me email is a privilege, NOT a right. My bandwidth, heck my mail server, my network, my workstation, my time.

Just as it is not my right to view any web site I wish. Some are paid subscriptions, some require user info, some may just not want me view their info for whatever reason (browser type, thinks I'm an ass, or feels violated because I block their email -- whatever).

Bing - first spam of the day. Nothing there. Oops, bayesian eaten. It _was_ to the HOSTMASTER no less -- those absolute dumb idiots. What, that's not going to piss off the wrong people? rotflmao

Literally. Really. That's my "spam out" programming's name: rotflmao

NOW, recently, spam doesn't really bother or phase me. It's been more fun to watch their methods. Useeless attempts really. Fun to watch none the less. Yet -- I still get/send my email as "freely" as before.

Simple and effective rule: one strike and your OUT

Re:Bah

[whereiswaldo]

I suppose spamming isn't free speech

Why isn't spam free speech? What is free speech, anyway? Check this out:

http://www.spectacle.org/899/free.html

It is important not to make the common error of assuming that speech is "unfree" because disfavored. ...
"Free speech" in fact is a phrase like "free gift". There is only speech, and government opposition to it. Speech lies on a spectrum, and government is only good at binary determinations--the law is so often a sledgehammer where a scalpel is required. The more useful lens is our second category: lets not speak of "free speech" but of "freedom of speech"-- the desirability or not of various proposed rulebooks for determining government responses to speech. The nature of government and law as a sledgehammer influences the outcome of this discussion: it implies we must either smash speech or tolerate it, and that there are few nuances or choices in between.

By definition:

Free speech: the right to express one's opinions publicly.

Re:Bah

[Anonymous Coward]

The contents of the spam is speech and protected, and nobody minds if spammers read aloud their messages to inform people that they can enlarge their penis or provide generic Viagra. In fact, I thank them. (I'm up to three rock-hard inches as of last week!) But their message delivery method uses other people's money and resources without permission. That's why it's evil.

Re:Bah

[nagora]

Why isn't spam free speech?

Because there is no freedom to not listen to it. Free speech is something you can walk away from. Once the "speaker" follows you it's harassment.

TWW

China Blocks Spam Servers

[RinzeWind]

So now China can only get mail from the rest of the world, but not from inside. That's the deal, isn't it?

eh?

[pergamon]

YAY CHINA!

Wait, that doesn't sound right...

Nooooo!

[GarbanzoBean]

All my asian college friends can no longer send me a suggestions on how to increase my breast/penis/bank acount. I guess there are always Carribian islands.

Hard to decide, is it?

[Enoch Root]

So is China evil because they censor the Internet? Or are they good because the block spam?

Hard to see the world in slashdotter green-and-white, is it? :)

Being in China myself, I can't wait to see if this measure will block the 200+ spam emails I get every day. That would rock, evil-communist-empire-decree or not.

Re:Hard to decide, is it?

[abelsson]

How 'bout China's evil because they censor the Internet *and* they're good because the block spam?

People and countries can do both good and bad things.

Re:Hard to decide, is it?

[Enoch Root]

Dunno... Doesn't sound like a very American point of view of the world to me...

Suit yourselves, China...

[Derlum]

...but you're missing out. I just refinanced my mortgage for the third time this month, helped get a chunk of change out of Nigeria, and finally broke nine inches!

Re:Double Whammy

[bobdown2001]

Actually it was a guy from New Zealand who did this...... Let's make the distiction that Australia and New Zealand are two totally seperate countries, how would you like it if I called you a Canadian ;-)

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.

Spam? Ri-iiiii-ight...

[suky]

After all, China has never done anything that even remotely hints at censoring communication from the outside world that the government deems "subversive" and a threat to the Communist party...

If this is the list of servers they admit to blocking, just imagine what the list they aren't showing the world looks like.

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.

Article Text

[BenFranske]

For the predictable /. of the story:

China Moves to Block Spam Servers
The Associated Press
Tuesday, September 9, 2003; 11:47 AM
--
In its latest battle against junk e-mail, China has blocked 127 mail servers it identified as responsible for spam, the official Xinhua News Agency said Tuesday.

"This has been the first large-scale spammer blockade launched by the Chinese Internet industry," Ren Jinqiang, an official with the Internet Society of China, was quoted by Xinhua as saying.

The crackdown came as Chinese Internet users complained they were being bombarded daily with hundreds of junk e-mails, Xinhua said.

Ren said e-mail messages from 127 servers will automatically be refused. Xinhua said the sanctions would be lifted after the servers stop sending junk mail for three months.

Ninety of the blocked servers were from Taiwan, eight were from the mainland and 29 were from elsewhere, Xinhua said, without providing other details. It did not say if other countries were being inundated by spam from the same servers.

Internet service providers in the United States and elsewhere sometimes resort to blocking specific servers in their war on spam. Those efforts succeed in curbing the number of junk messages reaching subscribers, though they can kill legitimate e-mail as well.

Ren said the blacklist resulted from a month of monitoring by the state-run Internet Society of China, a group of 140 members drawn from private companies, schools and research institutes. The Beijing-based group aims to promote the development of the Internet throughout the country.

Last month, the group published a list of 225 spam servers around the world.

With 68 million users, China has the world's second-biggest online population after the United States, according to government statistics.

Internet use for business and education is encouraged, although the communist government censors chat rooms and tries to block access to foreign sites run by dissidents, human rights groups and news organizations.

The list?

[gonaddespammed.com]

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

Fortune Cookies

[future assassin]

Maybe the spamers will pay off restaurant owners to spam through fortune cookies. Vigra will make you lucky in the future.

Future Assassin

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

Only 127?

[Jailbrekr]

I guess when they upgraded from an 8 bit OS, they can block more. :)

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

Only 127?

[tntguy]

Damn, they should've used an unsigned char. They could've closed 255 instead of only 127. Or they could've used an int and closed 2,147,483,647.

I don't think an unsigned int, nor a long long would've been necessary.

Re:Double Whammy

[NanoGator]

"Let's make the distiction that Australia and New Zealand are two totally seperate countries, how would you like it if I called you a Canadian ;-) "

I'd probably use that as an IQ test for ya. You see, as an average Slashdotter, there are a few simple ways to guage somebody's entire intelligence quotient.

- Did he distinguish beteen Canada and the United States?

- Did he refrain from using smilies or internet shorthand?

- Did he use apostrophe's correctly?

- Does he praise Linux and Mozilla?

- Did he correctly spell all the words in his post, especially the long ones that people rarely use?

- Does he hate George Bush?

If any of these questions are answered no, then your IQ is zilch! ;)

Don't take it personally, I'm just going with the flow!

Naive

[fm6]

China has blocked 127 mail servers which it identifies as major sources of spam. Oh, happy day.

Come on people, don't any of you see how inconsistent this attitude is? We criticize the Chinese government for blocking its citizen's access to information -- unless it's information that we think should be blocked.

No, I'm not arguing that spam is "free speech". I hate it as much as anybody, and I'd kill for a simple solution to it. But if you believe in free speech, you do not want any kind of central authority controlling who is allowed to send email.

Spam is a problem because individual recipients have no control over who can send them email. The only solution is some kind of digital certificate system, so a spammer can't establish a new identity simply by opening creating -- or forging -- a new email address. Any anti-spam measure that isn't based on recipient control, not server control, is going to be both ineffective and dangerous to civil liberties.

That won't block any SPAM from my inbox

[e_AltF4]

>Ninety of the blocked servers were from Taiwan,
blocking .tw servers should be no problem for .cn, but it's not blocking any spam not going to .cn addresses ?

>eight were from the mainland
wow! 8 servers from .cn - great!
leaves how many still open ? 2^24 ? more ? less ?

>and 29 were from elsewhere,
that surely will save us from lots of spam NOT

nice of them to tell all the world that thy block 127 servers from sending mail to THEM, but i am afraid that won't save the whales or the rain forrest in the very near future :-)

Re:Close but still missing the mark...

[2Bits]

Nevermind that ~70%+ of the spam sites I have been reporting are HOSTED in China. I had complained countless times to the Chinese whois contacts without positive result.


Here's maybe something you want to know.

We have been asked recently to help figure out network and server problems by two companies (one travel agencies, one of the fastest growning in China, one textile company), and two government agencies.

All were complaining that their network is slow, even during the evening when nobody's using, and they don't know why. These people are not in the business of managing networks and servers. Their system has been built up by patching here and there as the needs come up. Their email servers are very old software developed american companies (ah well).

They brought us in to do diagnostic. We took a look, and the network usage is at 90% during non-working hours. We took closer look, and found that the email server and a few machines were sending out tons of messages. We traced again, and found that 5 to 6 (in each company and in each agency) machines have been owned, and are sending out spam (!) using the local email server. Well duh....

Then we stayed up about two evenings trying to see if someone will log in. Sure enough, the spammer logged in, and uploading new spam message. We traced their IP, and here's what we found: one from Indianna (US), one from Texas (US again), one from Florida (US again), the last one from Mexico.

So, what do you think?

You can blame the Chinese for relaying spam or for not securing their network/server, but these are the people who are trying to cope with the growth of their business, and have no expertise to handle this security issue. I bet a lot of SMEs in America have the same problem too.

And if you want to fix the spam problem, shouldn't you fix the root problem first?

Here's The Blacklist

[Pakup]

You'll find the list of banned mainland addresses HERE, the list of banned Taiwan addresses HERE, and the list of the other banned addresses HERE. There's a long report in Chinese about the blacklisting HERE; it notes the special effort China's made to close open relays nationwide.

Here's the list of 29 banned addresses outside the Mainland and Taiwan:

1. 200.84.154.28 dC8549A1C.dslam-01-1-2-01-01-01.acr.dsl.cantv.net 2. 24.29.146.158 (RoadRunner) 3. 64.15.239.131 mail.bigfoot.com 4. 65.54.247.110 bay2-f110.bay2.hotmail.com 5. 66.218.66.101 n33.grp.scd.yahoo.com

6. 66.218.66.103 n35.grp.scd.yahoo.com 7. 66.218.66.106n38.grp.scd.yahoo.com 8. 66.218.66.66 n11.grp.scd.yahoo.com 9. 66.218.66.72 n17.grp.scd.yahoo.com 10. 66.218.66.73 n18.grp.scd.yahoo.com

11. 66.218.66.77 n21.grp.scd.yahoo.com 12. 66.218.66.80 n24.grp.scd.yahoo.com 13. 66.218.66.84 n28.grp.scd.yahoo.com 14. 66.218.66.92 n8.grp.scd.yahoo.com 15. 66.218.78.131 web40514.mail.yahoo.com

16. 207.199.160.40 (Crosslink, US) 17. 216.33.121.8 www01.rfaweb.org 18. 195.147.87.107 ip03.afrocari.adsl.gxn.net 19. 80.49.187.11 pd11.ostroleka.sdi.tpnet.pl 20. 61.41.62.138 (Mobile Leader, Korea) 21. 203.251.44.102 (Taejon, Korea)

22. 210.121.220.77 (Woosung, Korea) 23. 211.186.145.100 (Thrunet, Korea) 24. 211.198.226.96 (Korea Telecom) 25. 211.206.199.2 (Sunchunac, Korea)

26. 202.144.67.19 (Satyam Infoway, India) 27. 193.162.153.2 (Tele Danmark) 28. 24.81.222.210 h24-81-222-210.vc.shawcable.net 29. 202.163.130.7 (Online Training, Australia)

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.

Why it isn't free speech.

[fmaxwell]

Why isn't spam free speech?

Because it costs the recipient money. Why isn't it free speech if I spray-paint the number of my autobody shop on your car while you sleep? Why isn't it free speech if I take your credit card number and use it to pay the postage when I send you an ad in the mail.

Spammers have a right to express themselves -- just not at the expense of others.