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Spamhaus Guru Steve Linford Profiled
BenLev writes "The New York Times has an article profiling Spamhaus Project director Steve Linford. The feature goes behind the scenes at Spamhaus, 'one of the leading groups that is trying to make the world safe from junk e-mail', showing that it operates from Linford's houseboat on the Thames near London, spammers don't like him, and his volunteer corps likens itself to the X-Men."
Non-NYT site
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
1) That's 3 clicks per email * the rate at which you gets spams. It adds up after a while
2) There's always the chance of a type 2 error - you could lose (either through accidental blocking or unintetional deleteing) an important email.
3) You pay for the bandwidth that they waste, in the long run. They are simply shifting the price of getting in touch with you from themselves to you. In effect, they are calling you on your dime.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
I like the idea of the do not spam registry that they mention in the article. But it seems like a real pipe dream considering how much trouble there has been getting the do-not-call registry up and running.
Compared to spammers, the sleaziest telemarketers are shining pillars of ethical perfection. Telemarketers will not abuse the Do Not Call list - if nothing else, than because they REALLY fear the FCC (and FTC or whoever winds up administering it). They run legitimate, legal businesses, and can't afford to run the risk of breaking the law.
Spammers, on the other hand, care not for such things. If there ever were a Do Not Spam list created, and it was done in such a way that the list itself would not be published, you can bet somebody would write a script to randomly generate billions of e-mail addresses, check every one of them against the Do Not Spam list, compile a list of every e-mail address that matches, and sell it as a list of confirmed opt-in e-mail addresses on CD-ROM for $500.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
I don't know about everyone else but lately I've been trying to find work and I have come across atleast 4 opportunities to make 1.5 times my normal rate if I do some development related to spam. Each time I've interviewed I've told the employer that spam was a bad way to go and that it'd be illegal soon etc... but it seems like they've all had past experiences where spam has been highly profitable.
-- D3X
My latest endeavour... truly free porn www.NeoX3.com 5 mins movies supported by only a 15 sec commercial. No-popups or membership or catches.
SPF. Several proposals have been rolled up in this, under ASRG, including SPF, RMX, DMP, and related proprosals.
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
Break the Internet? Something tells me that you don't know very well what you're talking about. Spamhaus (or ORDB or any other black list service) cannot block anything if you (or your ISP) don't want anything blocked.
It's the email server's administrator choice to use such a blacklist or not. In other words: if you're running an email server, you can choose whether you want to block these IPs or not.
You could argue that you're a customer of an ISP that's using Spamhaus or ORDB to block spam and you cannot do anything about that. And I would agree with you on that: you should have the choice to use the blacklists on your email account(s) or not. But that, from the system administrator's point of view, is not a simple task, as of now.
My site
There are quite a number of such proposals. For instance...
...among others. The Internet Research Task Force Anti-Spam Research Group (IRTF ASRG) currently has a sub-group specifically dedicated to the unification of these proposals. This is a relatively recent initiative (only about a month old). You can find archives of the discussion at gmane.org.
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
Are you absolutely 100% sure you were blocked by Spamhaus and not by SPEWS? Spamhaus generally tries quite hard to avoid "collateral damage".