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Spamhaus Guru Steve Linford Profiled

Posted by simoniker on from the snickety-snick dept.

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."

10 of 191 comments (clear)

  1. good idea. by waitigetit · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    Also, most telemarketing is done from in-country because of LD charges. Not so with e-mail. It's pretty hard to enforce US laws on a Taiwan spamhaus.

    Ah well, every little voice against spam warms me a little at least.

    --
    I could care less, but not without a lobotomy
    1. Re:good idea. by waitigetit · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If the only reason they don't call you is fear for punishment, that does not make them ethical.

      I think a more important difference is that it costs them money to call you. So, basically, a Do Not Call list saves them money because they do not need to call people who hate telemarketing.

      --
      I could care less, but not without a lobotomy
    2. Re:good idea. by ThereIsNoSporkNeo · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Not that I'm advocating Capital Punishment, but let's look at this another way...

      Let us suppose that 500 million people have access to email.

      Let's say that they spend 20 seconds a day dealing with it.

      That's 10,000,000,000 seconds,
      166,666,666 hours
      6,944,444 days
      19,013 years
      271 lifetimes (Given 70 year life)

      That's per day.

      --
      With my dying breath, I curse Zoidberg!
    3. Re:good idea. by riffer · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Absolutely correct. Spammers don't use their own money and resources they criminally hijack server space, bandwidth and more in order to perform their "business".

      Plus the majority of spam is either totally fraudulent (i.e. 491 Nigerian crap, MLM schemes, etc) or 80% fraudulent (herbal viagra, weight-loss pills, etc... People who order that shit usually get something in the mail but it's not going to work as claimed).

      Since spammers are now willing to unleash whole new virus schemes just to generate the open relays/zombies needed to do their dirty work, I think we're approaching the point at which only physical action will have a lasting result. Be it confiscation of the spammers business, assets or straight-forward horse-whipping.

      And no, I don't think violence is always a solution, but it's a rpetty basic human trait. You piss enough people off long enough, eventually you get your ass kicked...

      --
      In the darkness of future past, The magician longs to see. One chants between two worlds, "Fire, walk with me!"
  2. We've got all the laws we need by jmv · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I really believe that we currently have all (well mostly) the laws we need to stop spammers, if only they were enforced. Even if SPAM is still not illegal in most places. What most spammers do is illegal. Instead of fining a spammer for sending Nigerian scams, jail him for fraud. Instead of fining a viagra spammer, jail him for cracking in other people's computers in order to send the spam. Much more effective I think. Why go for "minor" civil offense when the spammer is actually guity of a criminal offense. I know not all spammers commit crimes, many do.

    --
    Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
  3. Actually, you don't by simong · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You get email from someone pretending to be Spamhaus in order to discredit them.

  4. Re:first by Rasta+Prefect · · Score: 3, Insightful
    I get spam emails from this company, telling me to use their software to eradicate spam .. Pot calling the kettle black?

    Try looking up Joe Job.

    --
    Why?
  5. Re:epitome of laziness by Halo1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Our university had two install 2 new mailservers just to be able to run all incoming mail through spamassassin. Do you think the spammers paid for that "small annoyance"?

    --
    Donate free food here
  6. Re:Adding info to DNS servers by sorlov · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This discussion (at gmane.org) clearly shows that the main problem is not technical but social. All proposals are good enough to make spammers' life harder. But people can't work together. That is why the unification fails, the is why SMTP can't be replaced in the near future, and that is why a simple SMTP sender authentication will take year to be implemented worldwide.

  7. education of the people buying the stuff by martin · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The problem isn't so much the spammers, it's the people buying from them.

    If people didn't buy the spammers wouldn't have a market and would go away.

    The issue is to educate the general internet populus that are are merely encouring the spam by purchasing from the advertisers.