IronPort Arms Both Sides In Spam War

securitas writes "We all know about IronPort's recent acquisition of SpamCop. What may not be common knowledge is that IronPort's Senderbase has 'the reputation as the fastest way to send millions of junk e-mail messages' and is popular with spam factories. Founded by two former Microsoft executives - Hotmail's Scott Weiss and ListBot founder Scott Banister - IronPort claims its customers are not spammers but legitimate marketers. Critics say that this is a clear conflict of interest. Playing spam from both sides might be likened to a pharmaceutical company enabling the spread of a disease in order to sell the cure. SpamCop founder Julian Haight - who had to sell the company in order to remain solvent - is quoted as saying of IronPort's anti-spam measures: "I am not sure all its standards are tough enough." The story was originally reported by the New York Times' Saul Hansell. Abbreviated mirror at IHT."

Comments

frosty

[Anonymous Coward]

i rule so much

i eat spam

FROST PISTTT

[Anonymous Coward]

EoA FIRZT PROZZZT!!!!

But after their extensive training ...

[burgburgburg]

in business ethics while employed at Microsoft, I am incapable of believing that the owners of Ironport would ever do anything to hurt the general public simply to make an obscene profit.

Re:But after their extensive training ...

[mandalayx]

IronPort, which is private and backed by venture capital, expects to turn its first profit next year on revenue of more than $10 million. It was founded by Mr. Weiss, who worked at Hotmail, the free e-mail provider, and Scott Banister, who founded ListBot, a service that lets companies manage e-mail lists. Both companies were acquired by Microsoft.

Actually the article leads me to believe that these guys are not MS-bred.

Re:But after their extensive training ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is an interesting interview with the CEO of Ironport. He touches on this issue and has an interesting justification for it. The dollard truly is mighty.

Re:But after their extensive training ...

[penguin king]

Working for hotmail eh? Well, in my experience with hotmail they'd be VERY experienced with spam wouldn't they.

In fact, if I remember correctly, the only spam that ever got through my filtering was from hotmail itself.

It makes you wonder, will this mentaility become part of the Spamcop/IronPorp relationship?

Re:But after their extensive training ...

[Uma Thurman]

I thought the same thing after the Scientoligists sued to shut down the Cult Awareness Network and re-opened it as branch of their church.

Re:But after their extensive training ...

[illumin8]

No, I think they're just taking a cue from the good 'ol U.S. Federal government...

Ba' dum' ching!

Re:But after their extensive training ...

[Anonymous Coward]

A powerful interview, I must say! Whoever modded this Troll obviosly didn't read it.

Re:But after their extensive training ...

[lord_nightrose]

What genius decided to name the company IronPort? "Yes, our internet filtering and e-mail defense is strong! Strong as iron! But the port part of our name refers to the gaping hole we leave in our defenses so that our customers can make money!"
Wow.

Gah!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just the thing I wanted to hear! (not)

What? Capitalism isn't solving this problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

But, but, all the longhaired libertarians over at GNU said that the market would fix this problem by itself! I don't understand! Cognitive dissonance! AIIIIIIII! Government can solve no problems, EVER, dammit! The market is self-correcting and unethical behavior will be dealt with by market forces in time. It's the only ethically right thing to think.

Re:What? Capitalism isn't solving this problem?

[i_r_sensitive]

You don't want to eat me, my brother, who is right behind me is much bigger and better-teasting.

Isn't that the correct phrase for Trolls?

Allow me to smash the fallacy of this argument one last time. All you self-correcting market folk, the market is not sentient, it doesn't think, display cognitive abilities, or even self-awareness. It is completely at the mercy of the thinking, scheming, self-aware and cognitively gifted operators who routinely abuse those who naively assign these qualitites to the market. The market has not been unfettered since the last crop of deceitful, thinking operators made a complete hash of the market. That problem was solved by the government regulating aspects of the market.

The utopian ideal of a self-correcting market is unattainable, because to attain it, you need to depend on another utopian ideal, rational consumers. Well we haven;t got rational consumers, and it is unlikely that we ever will have a homogenous group of rational consumers. This always opens the market to abuse by unethical vendors, consumers, and middlemen. Of these the biggest criminals are those who continue to ascribe traits to the market which itr patently cannot have, particularly in the face of overwhelming evidence that their assertions have never historically worked out, and (for good reason) have not been tried again.

Like any other ideal, or postulate, Adam Smith's ideas don;t work verbatim in the real world. Adam Smith's version of capitalism is no more viable than Marx's vision of communism. Adam Smith's idea has, as it's sole feature, the fact that the real world implementation of his ideals end up working out better than the real world implementations of Marx, Mussolini, Stalin and Hitler. But this is not prima facie evidence that Adam Smith's unabridged ideas are some type of gospel fact. Particularly in view of the fact that we have had far closer implementations of Adam Smith's ideas, and they have led directly to Railroad Barons and their abuses, and the Great Depression.

Even the political right, which often is the source of this mantra, does not naively leave the market to self-correct. When Ronald Reagan's administration was faced with a floundering economy, they didn't utter incantations over Adam Smith's grave, or invite Ayn Rand to minister in the National Cathedral. Nope, they helped the market along, they artificially created a demand for the market to fulfill. As the market returned to health, the need for that artifice was reduced. That this was necessary is manifest. Consider inflation, costs of oil, GNP, at the beginning and end of the Reagan years. Can anyone say that the governments actions in pushing the market did not have a beneficial effect? You can argue that you would rather have seen the money go elsewhere than holes in N. Dakota, but the need was real, and the effect of the governments 'meddling' in the market was equally real.

This is a real world we live in, ideals have their place, but they cannot usurp reality. Idealists have allways tried to make reality fit their nice little theories. At the small end of the scale, the idealist gets a rude awakeing. At the largest end of the scale, millions of kulaks in the Ukraine starve, or millions of innocents are shepherded into box cars and slaughtered like buffalo.

Re:What? Capitalism isn't solving this problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it is stupid to imagine markets are self correcting. There will always be a ratio of stupid people to bandits and if left unchecked a market will go into meltdown like a nuclear reactor.

Markets need an inhibitor in form of fair rules to stop this runaway effect. The best I have heard it put is:

Capitalism: A recursive algorithm to perpetuate movement of the saddlepoint in a zero sum game. Known bugs: Stack overflows about every 10 years.

Companies which play both sides of the equation are pretty smart , however they generate no useful net output and just add to this 'heating effect'.
So its in no ones interest to allow them.

btw LOL @ 0 - offtopic

Re:What? Capitalism isn't solving this problem?

[i_r_sensitive]

Should have been troll, the original was off-topic, but that's moderators for ya.

Well now

[Anonymous Coward]

SpamCop founder Julian Haight - who had to sell the company in order to remain solvent - is quoted as saying of IronPort's anti-spam measures: "I am not sure all its standards are tough enough."

And IronPort's response? "Obviously his business sense was not strong enough, or he wouldn't have solvency issues."

McAfee

[Anonymous Coward]

This is like when McAfee bought out the major underground virus-makers back in 1997 and pumped money in them to keep them going at a fast clip.

Oops. you weren't supposed to know about this one.

Re:McAfee

[Anonymous Coward]

Whatever. No link, no evidence, no credibility.

I don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

What the big deal is about spam... just delete it and quit yer cryin'. Jeez.

Re:I don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

See, all teh funky Europeans (who claim that their medieval society is inferior to America) have to pay for bandwith by byte transferred! Imagine that!

So, expect a bunch of Europhiles to start talking about dumb, insensitive americans, while they are paying $23/gallon (or whatever funky money and "cor, blimey" measurement system they use) for gas and paying per byte transferred of spam.

Ha! I will take my procmail and filter off the spam, pay $2.00/gallon of gas and drive my SUV around drinking Budweiser! Who is foolish now??

Re:I don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

Budweiser sucks. Just for the records. But it's not a real beer anyway. So it is allowed to suck.

Re:I don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if that was all you could nitpick on, I consider that post a success.

Re:I don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

parents wasn't worth more. i only mentioned the most important thing.

Re:I don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

Give me your address so I can come and urinate on your doorstep.

Just clean it up. Jeez.

Re:I don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not the same thing at all. I clean spam out of my inbox every day, takes a total of about 3 seconds, and there's no funny smell.

Re:I don't understand

[cfuse]

What the big deal is about spam... just delete it and quit yer cryin'. Jeez.

It's traditional to use people like you to fuel a fire with which to burn spammers at the stake with.

Conspiracy.

[grub]

Yes, I know a lot of what I write makes it sound like my tinfoil hat is loose but hear me out:

IronPort buys SpamCop

Worms hammer anti-spam sites

Because IronPort is now "spammer friendly", SpamCop doesn't suffer these DDoS attacks.

SpamCop's for-fee competition and free lists are ran off the net by IronPort supporters.

Not suprisingly, IronPort's products don't block mail from their customers.

IronPort and it's spammer customers profit.

Re:Conspiracy.

[rsmith-mac]

That would make sense... if Spamcop wasn't one of the targets. Check Symantec's advisory; SpamCop is on the list. The only reason SpamCop isn't being phased too badly is because they've been Akamai-ized, thanks to IronPort paying for it. Now, this isn't to say that IronPort did all of that to cover their tracks, but by no means is SpamCop being spared by the spammers.

The Analogy

[mgcsinc]

The analogy needs to be furthered a bit: this would be like a pharmaceutical company not only spreading that which they themselves sell the cure for, but above it all, that cure being phony, so that the market for the cure is maintained. Think, do you think IronPort's spam protection measures will stop their own supported spam? This reminds me of a bond-type plot where evil villains pay an evil company to let them continue ravaging the world. Even though this obviously would only last so long in the pharmaceutical industry, I'd call it a feasible, profitable, and despicable practice for the e-mail industry, with all the sources of spam floating around.

Re:The Analogy

[Chalybeous]

Despicable is right.
IMHO, spam is spam whether it's from a legitimate marketer or not - unless I have indicated that I wish to receive information (special offers, order status, terms of service updates) from the sender, whether they're selling books, parts, or e-transaction services.

I also concede that there is a minor loophole, inasmuch as companies with whom I hold an account (e.g. eBay UK, PayPal, Amazon.co.uk) should be free to send certain important mails relating to things like my membership status, or any important and major changes to their ToS.
However, since they're not the sort of companies I'd expect to go through spam houses, I'd understand that if they did contact me without my consent, they'd have a pretty darn good reason.

How long til some IronPort customer dies from popping bootleg Viagra, or is fleeced out of his savings by a bunch of Nigerians pulling a 419? Some of those people will be clueless, and will think that because it's come through the spam filter, it must be legitimate...

Jailarity ensu-- no, wait, that would be for a Fark story :-P

Re:The Analogy

[mandalayx]

The analogy needs to be furthered a bit: this would be like a pharmaceutical company not only spreading that which they themselves sell the cure for, but above it all, that cure being phony, so that the market for the cure is maintained. Think, do you think IronPort's spam protection measures will stop their own supported spam? This reminds me of a bond-type plot where evil villains pay an evil company to let them continue ravaging the world. Even though this obviously would only last so long in the pharmaceutical industry, I'd call it a feasible, profitable, and despicable practice for the e-mail industry, with all the sources of spam floating around.

What about the companies that are exclusively anti-spam? Maybe they don't even have to have a spamming component.

What if they DO perform the high and mighty task of eliminating spam in one fell swoop? Then what? Their market is gone as that product becomes assimilated. There goes the cashflow.

This is analagous to CURING a disease rather than selling many more pills to TREAT a disease.

The point is that whether or not a company does the "right" thing is the important thing, not whether it offers x product.

Re:The Analogy

[dasmegabyte]

You know, I don't think this a conflict of interest at all. Ironport's a software company that specializes in email software. They sell a program with a legitimate use (delivering email to multiple recepients). They can not assure that their software won't be used for a less legitimate use (delivering email to multiple UNWILLING recepients). Nor would most of us want them to -- how many of you have rallied against the sort of restrictive licensing that defines how you can and how you can't use a piece of software? So, Ironport buys a faltering company that has a product which reduces the damage caused by abuse of their product.

This is not like releasing a disease, and then releasing a cure. It's like creating a drug, seeing that it's commonly abused, and then using your abilities to help curb this abuse. Drug companies do this all the time. Sure, they make a little money off of it. But it's not the grand conspiracy you're trying to make it out to be.

Think of it, man. Ford Motor Company makes Mustangs that go fast. They make Crown Vics that go faster. That way, when people make the Mustangs go WAY too fast, the cops have a way to catch them. Does this mean that Ford has a conflict of interest that prevents them from selling slower cars to the police...that they're purposefully pushing these fast cars to push sales of their cop cars?

Or does it mean that they're a company that's specialized in cars, and that they therefore try to make cars that fulfill the needs of specific people, including people who like to go fast and the guys tasked to catch them?

Re:The Analogy

[letxa2000]

What about the companies that are exclusively anti-spam? Maybe they don't even have to have a spamming component... The point is that whether or not a company does the "right" thing is the important thing, not whether it offers x product.

Despite the fact that we now often see certain anti-spam products being promoted in, of all things, spam, I'd like to believe that most anti-spam offerings are honestly interested in reducing spam for their customers.

We offer an anti-spam service which has been very, very successful and received very positive feedback from our satisfied customers. It's rewarding to receive that feedback. But a few weeks ago we received an email that I knew someone would send someday: They said it was unethical and suspicious of us to be selling an anti-spam service. Don't we benefit from spam by offering the anti-spam service for a fee? Maybe we are guilty of generating spam to drive people to our service?

Well, ignoring the minimal gains we've earned from the service (far outweighed by bandwidth and development costs), I feel TRUE anti-spam services are no more unethical than doctors. Are doctors unethical because they pay their bills curing others? They are unethical if they make people sick so they can charge to cure them, but if they truly are just curing people then that seems like a valuable service and not at all unethical (as long as they aren't ripping people off).

Fact is, there's so much spam that no company needs to create more of it to justify anti-spam remedies. That said, I don't think it is appropriate for any company to provide anti-spam and mass-mailing services or products at the same time. That just sounds wrong and definitely looks like a conflict of interest even if it might not be.

The real question is: If a company truly had the ability to end spam but it would end their cashflow, would they do it? I can't speak for other companies, but I know we would. We developed the service because WE were sick of spam. If we could make spam disappear tomorrow, we would do so and just find something else to do business-wise. We were solvent before spam appeared and we will be solvent after spam goes away (and I'm convinced it will, someday. Whether it is attacked with new mail protocols, filters, legislation, or all of the above, I don't think we'll be dealing with spam 5-10 years from now).

Re:The Analogy

[iminplaya]

"...like a pharmaceutical company not only spreading that which they themselves sell the cure..."
Cure is the wrong word...The real game is treatment..as in we treat cancer or we treat AIDS. Treatment is ongoing. It never ends. How wonderful. Another anology could be arms dealers (the USG being the biggest). You think they want peace in the middle east or Northern Ireland? Another is drug prohibition. Where would the money for that business come from if everybody quit using drugs? The gov't doesn't want that anymore than the dealers.

Re:The Analogy

[fermion]

Sneeches on the Beaches

What we learn from this book is that is very profitable to sell a product that then creates a demand for other products. While such a business model is not always unethical, it only succeeds as long consumers are willing to buy the products. Unfortunately consumers, especially US consumers, have been whipped up into such a state of fear and desperation, they are willing to buy almost anything that given them the tiniest sliver of hope, even though the purchase of such products often just digs the hole deeper.

Re:The Analogy

[TrombaMarina]

I sincerely hope you are right, and based on the comments of the guy who sold SpamCop, I think you probably are - at least in the short term.

I have a theory that anonymity is what makes the web so hospitable for spammers and crackers. Verify the identity of everyone sending or recieving data and spammers/crackers will personally acquire the e-reputation they deserve. Verification could be accomplished by registering digital certificates with Verisign or other agency and digitally signing all email and web sites. Mail servers and web browsers could reject mail or web sites from users with "bad karma". Maybe the karma system would be modeled after /.? Creating and registering a new identity must be sufficiently difficult that it will effectively deter impersonation.

I know it's a big brother theory, but having a big brother isn't inherently a bad thing. I haven't thought this through to it's logical conclusion, but I think that's the way things will end up. I'm viewing this Ironport/SpamCop arrangement as a stopgap measure until then. And things may have to get worse before they get better.

Re:The Analogy

[dasmegabyte]

Email is just fine the way it is. What will decrease spam in the long run is the same thing that's decreasing the trading of illegal software, mp3s, and pornogrpahy online: making it illegal and very costly to continue. Decreasing spam to a trickle should be good enough; stopping it completely is a silly goal since the process will be no doubt logarithmic and those last few percentile points of decrease will take a LOT of effort.

Increasing the beaurocracy behind email -- which is what "securing" email will do -- is throwing a lot more money at the problem than legislature will require. Think about the cost of writing all new software for all platforms that send email, probably two or three open source servers and a handful of closed source ones, including some from MS. Think about having to write three generations of clients before the standard ceases to be extended. Think about upgrading every email server, every email client, every router and gateway with new software packages. Think about training users and admins and think about the agents who will have to sell new software and designers who will have to deal with new SPAM methods that DEFEAT all of these brilliant programs.

Then think about the resources to slap a pricetag on offending emails, censure countries that don't play nice (and blacklist them, reducing their effectiveness), and think about how most of THAT cost is PAID FOR by the big bills that the marketting companies are going to receive for turning a blind eye to the problem.

Easier and cheaper, though not easy and not cheap. Still, err on the side of simplicity eh?

Re:The Analogy

[TrombaMarina]

From Outlook to Evolution, every email client already supports encryption and digital signatures. You can generate either one already with free software and register it for free at the MIT keyserver or elsewhere. More and more people are going to start using these tools which are already available to them - money-managers will soon require you to use a digital signature when corresponding with them. Encrypted email will be an easy way to get your bank and mutual fund statements in the near future. Heck, I recently had to send an email with a digital signature just to remove a posting I had made to a google newsgroup! It was a posting about a hardware problem that no-one responded to and it was over a year old.

I think it will grow from there. It's only a short step for end-users to pay verisign or their credit-card company to consolidate their online ideities and verify that they are who they say they are. It's a baby step from there for spam filters to suspect any unsigned email for a while before they start blocking unsigned email altogether.

No planning, no legislation, just market forces, playing themselves out. The companies that need to will willingly invest because their customers will be willing to pay for security. So I guess I'm saying that end users will ultimately end up paying for reasonably spam-free email and that security and a verifiable online identity will be a part of that. Which is fairer than everyone in one or two countries paying (through taxes) for politicians and law enforcement to try to stop spammers (who will move to other countries) from doing their thing.

Imagine shopping securely online without a credit card. Secure web sites will just know you so that you don't have to remember dozens of IDs and passwords or keep them on a little sticky note under your keyboard. I believe people will pay for this level of ease of use and security. And those people will be able to live relatively spam-free.

Maybe things will be worse for those unwilling or unable to pay more for their connectivity. It's not fair, but that hasn't stopped "progress" before.

Basically, no matter what laws are written, I don't think that law enforcement will catch enough spammers and virus writers to make a difference before existing technologies are extended to fill the gap. And I think that gap is an opportunity where some companies will spend money while others make an enormous return on their investment.

In terms of writing three generations of software and extending standards - we're going to do that anyway. If not for spam, then for something else. That's what software companies and Open Source contributors do. Same thing with the retailers, and eveyone else. Doing it for spam is probably as good a reason as any other - and I think customers will pay for it. Some Spammers will rise to the challenge, but most will not.

P.S. I don't understand your last point:

... censure countries that don't play nice (and blacklist them, reducing their effectiveness), and think about how most of THAT cost is PAID FOR by the big bills that the marketting companies are going to receive for turning a blind eye to the problem.

I'm a Republican

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, I'm a Republican
I got a small schling
I like to bomb niggahs
and make a lot o' bling

I got a bunch o' friends
in high up places
They helps me get dem
government graces.

You think I'm smart
I just know who's who
I couldn't run a fruit stand
without the red white & blue

I fancy myself
A brilliant tactician
But neither me nor m'buddies
Could even pass basic trainin'

See, I'm above all that
A fightin' and shootin'
I just say "Sic em!"
Then run the other direction

Don't need no history
Don't need no schoolin'
I got my ideology
To keep me a shootin'

Liberals! Faggots!
Commies and queers!
Socialist hippies
Full o' pussy tears!

I'll drop some crap
about Jesus the Christ
You'll buy it all
and vote for me twice

'Fact, Jesus is comin'!
Real soon, now!
So we gotta prop up Israel
That ol' sacred cow

Propaganda's m'friend
But I calls it "fact"
Even though I don't read
'Cept for Chick tracts

Facts? No! Don't need em here!
We're conservatives! We work on FEAR!
Don't like what we say?
Well FUCK YOU, bud!
We'll shove it down yer throat
and tell ya it's good!

Isn't it also funny

[Anonymous Coward]

that the same companies who make the speed radars cops use to give out tickes also make radar detectors?

What's the big deal

[Anonymous Coward]

"What the big deal is about spam... just delete it and quit yer cryin'. Jeez."

What is the big deal when someone from down the hall always keeps sneaking into my office when I am away and taking a dump in my chair. I just wipe it up and go on. Jeez.

Re:What's the big deal

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, that's what I do too! Sometimes I wait for a couple of days to maximize my wiping.

Re:What's the big deal

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the big deal when informs me of a great new product that can enhance the size of my already great and powerful schlong. Jeez.

Obligitory "Dinosaurs" quote:

[JoeLinux]

"And just one of these 'rocks' could solve this war in an instant....if we weren't selling it to both sides"

It has to be said...

[i_r_sensitive]

Nothing like having your SPAM and eating it too!

A wolf in the flock

[Tuxedo Jack]

Since IronPort has access to SpamCop's filters now, they could hypothetically engineer a method around them or just kill the product entirely - or make it so that only they could bypass it, and any other spams sent from elsewhere would be blocked.

Arming the wolf with the shepherd's crook? More like giving him an M-249.

Re:A wolf in the flock

[Nucleon500]

Alternately, they could charge for the service of whitelisting a spammer or decreasing his Spaminess score. This would be great for them because it wouldn't be useful to simply copy their list, because you'll get more responses if you buy their service, too.

Re:A wolf in the flock

[Haight6716]

It certainly *could* happen. You let me know when/if it *does* and then we'll have something to talk about.

-=Julian=-

Re:A wolf in the flock

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really. I have used spamcop for a while. You can set up spamcop's filtering service to use three different methods to filter your mail simultaneously:
(i) You can have it check the source against a number of different open-relay databases. Only one of these is maintained by spamcop itself. The rest are maintained by other people. You can select which one(s) to use.
(ii) You can also chose to have your e-mail run through Spam Assassin.
(iii) You can also set up your own custom filters, and your own whitelist and blacklist.

If spamcop did anything to let spammers "get around" those measures, they would loose all of their clients overnight!

There is a second part of spamcop's service: You can also "report" spam you receive. Spamcop has an engine which analyzes the e-mail headers and attempts to determine the actual origin of the spam. You can send a report to the administrator of the network to let them know that they are running an open relay, or that one of their users is a spammer, etc. Go take a look at the website (www.spamcop.net) yourself for more details - there's a big FAQ.

I know the perfect solution!

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop using electronic mail altogether!

Re:I know the perfect solution!

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop using electronic mail altogether!

Well, that's not such a bad idea. It worked for television advertising (stopped watching television) and for telemarketers (stopped the phone service).

Prior Act ..

[AftanGustur]

Playing spam from both sides might be likened to a pharmaceutical company enabling the spread of a disease in order to sell the cure.

Or it could be compared to Chaplin's film The Kid :

The Tramp rescues a baby abandoned by its despairing mother, brings it up to become his partner in a window-repair business - although it is the Kid's business to break the windows first

Re:Prior Act ..

[gnu-generation-one]

"The Tramp rescues a baby abandoned by its despairing mother, brings it up to become his partner in a window-repair business - although it is the Kid's business to break the windows first"

Glad to see the Roman fire brigade still alive and well, and doing business...

Re:Prior Act ..

[cpeterso]

or it's like virus scanner companies that write viruses or drug companies that create drug treatments but not cures.

Question...

[tonyr60]

So IronPort make both Spam mailers and anti-spam products.

Will they use their spam mailer expertise to make better anti-spam products, or use their anti-spam expertise to make better spam emailer products?

Why do I think I know the answer aleady.....

Re:Question...

[HeroicAutobot]

Or they could their spam mailer to advertise their anti-spam products.

Re:Question...

[Anonymous Coward]

a simple possibility would be to add a preview feature to their spam software which would include a report of how spammy spamcop says it is without even bothering to actually send it out to millions of users.

--
Friends don't let friends RTFA

Real world examples?

[Anonymous Coward]

This practice (of selling "pro" and "anti" products) is accepted in other markets. Not saying it's right, just saying it happens:

1)The telephone companies sell Caller ID *and* CallerID-block.
2) Supermarkets sell SlimFast AND chocolate doughnuts. Mmmmmm. Doughnuts.

More examples, anyone?

Re:Real world examples?

[Anonymous Coward]

1)The telephone companies sell Caller ID *and* CallerID-block.
2) Supermarkets sell SlimFast AND chocolate doughnuts. Mmmmmm. Doughnuts.

3) Microsoft sells windows AND hard-disk formatting software.

Re:Real world examples?

[rsborg]

This practice (of selling "pro" and "anti" products) is accepted in other markets. Not saying it's right, just saying it happens: 1)The telephone companies sell Caller ID *and* CallerID-block. 2) Supermarkets sell SlimFast AND chocolate doughnuts. Mmmmmm. Doughnuts.

However, in both your examples, the store/seller can exist without both of these services, they are just "sugar" for their cashflow. In the case of IronPort, if their cashflow is *only* spam and anti-spam, when the market disappears, they're out of business...

Unless of course, their business plan prevents this from ever happening.

Re:Real world examples?

[Anonymous Coward]

Women's magazines. In particular, those targeting married women. Every issue has a cover photo of a sinful looking chocolate cake, and a blaring headline about a new diet.

while (married) {
Buy magazine.
Bake cake.
Eat cake.
Buy book recommended in diet story.
Spend a week on the new diet.
}

Question:

[Fecal Troll Matter]

Does Osama bin Laden even exist?

It could be good

[Tool Man]

Spamcop could improve what is already good filtering, by automatically blocking crap from IronPort's SenderBase clients.

"All your SenderBase are belong to us."

I'll say it again...

[Dave21212]

I said this before and I'll say it again...

There is a huge incentive for IronPort to stay on the legitimate side of things. Spamcop rocks (thanks Julian!) - but only because of the constant vigilance of the many users who report instances of spam. This is a human-based review system of millions of junk messages... without the users, there is no Spamcop, and Ironport bought nothing. They can't afford to risk being the bad guy here or they risk losing the reviewers !

Re:I'll say it again...

[SSpade]

SpamCop is not a revenue stream.

Porn spammers are. And, yes, porn spammers use IronPort.

Re:I'll say it again...

[mandalayx]

There is a huge incentive for IronPort to stay on the legitimate side of things. Spamcop rocks (thanks Julian!) - but only because of the constant vigilance of the many users who report instances of spam. This is a human-based review system of millions of junk messages... without the users, there is no Spamcop, and Ironport bought nothing. They can't afford to risk being the bad guy here or they risk losing the reviewers !

Not Flamebait.

We've seen an example of a national leader citing poorly substantiated "facts". Whether or not an implied conspiracy is going on behind the scenes seems to have less correlation with widespread approval than you or I previously thought.

Re:I'll say it again...

[Dave21212]

Good point... but Spamcop does pull in a few bucks (not enough to build an entire secure infrastructure I suppose). I hope Julian didn't sign a non-compete or anything, he could always re-create Spamcop from scratch again !!! (if IronPort goes to the Dark Side)

Re:I'll say it again...

[Dave21212]

All conspiracies aside, the people who use spamcop (look at my *unobfuscated* email addy) are typically rabid anti-spammers... check out the newsgroups under spamcop.net !

Any hint of impropriety and these helpers are gone...

Re:I'll say it again...

[Alizarin Erythrosin]

So maybe they don't code it so all their customer's spam gets through. Maybe only 10%. Or 1%. Or 0.01%. Whatever, it would still be a big number considering how much spam gets sent around each day.

Re:I'll say it again...

[anthony_dipierro]

This is a human-based review system of millions of junk messages... without the users, there is no Spamcop, and Ironport bought nothing.

They didn't buy nothing, they bought the death of Spamcop. If IronPort really is dependent upon spammers, then such a buyout makes a lot of sense from a business standpoint.

If this turns out to be the case, you can thank Julian again, for selling out the constant vigilance of many users to the highest bidder.

Re:I'll say it again...

[Dave21212]

I don't think that's the case, but if it is, then I sincerely hope that Julian didn't sign any NDA/compete clauses - he could just start the whole thing over from scratch !

Re:I'll say it again...

[zangdesign]

Man, you are just twelve kinds of optimistic, aren't you? Let's review - noted spam software supplier buys anti-spam service supplier. I'm sorry, I just don't see an up side here.

How is this different from Microsoft buying out some small business to acquire their technology?

Re:I'll say it again...

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this different from Microsoft buying out some small business to acquire their technology?

No software patents.

Re:I'll say it again...

[Dave21212]

I've been a Spamcop user for years (see above unobfuscated email) and participated in or have read the associated newsgroups (where the fun really is) for as long. The system just doesn't work unless the 'users' are reporting Spam regularly and in a timely manner (hours, not days). These people are rabid anti-spam and would scream bloody murder if there was a site under IronPort that was spamming and it wasn't being handled.

My optimisim comes from the absence of those screams since June when the deal went down. They aren't doing anything that bad (selling specialized server hardware?)

Re:I'll say it again...

[GSloop]

Spamcop doesn't rock.

It's configuration of spamassassin isn't very good IMHO.

Quite a bit of spam still gets through.

I've seen much better implimentations of spamassassin elsewhere. And no, they're not just one off site specific implimentations.

I'm sorry if I've dissed Julian - I'm not sure who's responsible for the technical setup.

Spamcop used to be incredible. The last couple of years hasn't been so hot.

Frankly, I'd recommend other filtering options. (Like getting your webhosting/email from totalchoicehosting.com and using their implimentation of spamassassin.)

If you're forced into filtering a single account, than using a local copy of spamassassin is probably better, but spamcop is easier.

I dunno, there's no great answer out there.

But trying to stop reading spam will always have loopholes. What would be more effective is the elimination of the spammers themselves.

Anti-Spam enforcement ought to go after the *beneficiaries* of spam. They (the beneficiariesof spam campaigns) have to bank somewhere, and it's likely at a bank we (the US) have access to. Go after the profits, and the demand for spam will drop. (This will easily target 99.9% of direct product spam, but will be harder to use against "mindshare" spam.)

Sure, there's some problems in determining who is really responsible, as someone could troll spam "for" your business just to get you in trouble - but I suspect it would be fairly trivial to know when it happened. (One could also require/allow discovery in court to determine if any funds were transferred between the spammer and the beneficiary - so I think that's doable.)

Anyway...

Cheers

Re:I'll say it again...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's only 6 months, though. eBay waited for years before killing half.com.

Re:I'll say it again...

[felicity]

Their product is basically a highly optimized MTA with built-in personalization capabilities. As far as I know, the box is just a "standard" server-class PC. Probably running BSD or Linux.

The personalization stuff is basically the ability to give, say, 1000 email addresses and a message, and also some macro values (first name, last name, etc,) for each address. If the MTA connects successfully, it rewrites the message on the fly for delivery. The big upshot here is that you don't need to submit each individual mail to your sending MTA, and therefore it doesn't need to handle thousands/millions of files in the spool directory.

I'm sure there are more features than just that, but when my employer was looking at them, that was the main feature I remember.

Re:I'll say it again...

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this a hint?

"The IronPort A60: The World's Leading Outbound Email Delivery Appliance

Maximum Performance and Features
The IronPort A60 is the flagship of the IronPort A-Series product line. The IronPort A60 has massive performance, capable of sustained delivery rates in excess of 1 million messages per hour. The IronPort A60 also has a mail merge API that allows the system to render and deliver messages, taking load off the database and increasing message delivery rates.

IronPort's Virtual Gateway technology allows a single IronPort to deliver separate campaigns on unique IP addresses. This technology ensures that if one campaign has a problem with less than perfect spam filters at receiving ISPs, it won't impact other campaigns on separate Virtual Gateways. Each IronPort A60 supports up to 256 unique outbound IP addresses."

better analogy

[isfuglen]

It's kind of like the diet industry. You try the newest hottest spam killer that will guarantee getting rid of all the spam, like trying the newest hottest diet that will guarantee getting rid of all the kilos. You lose the spam like you lose the kilos, and then, after a few months, it all comes back twofold. So you try the next newest hottest spam killer, the next newest hottest diet, blah blah, it comes back threefold. Then you try the next...(ad nauseum)

Registered Democrat

[Anonymous Coward]

"Voting for the person that beats Bush in 2004. Registered Libertarian"

Either you are actually a registered Democrat... since voting for the only person likely to beat Bush means voting for a left-wing Democrat.

Or, you are deluded into thinking that the Libertarian candidate will get 58% of the vote in November and win, when it will really be more like 2%.

Re:Registered Democrat

[Nodatadj]

Not wishing to be pedantic and trolled but...
You can beat Bush and not win the election.

Re:Registered Democrat

[mandalayx]

Either you are actually a registered Democrat... since voting for the only person likely to beat Bush means voting for a left-wing Democrat.

I'm desperate, what can I say. I plan on voting for Howard Dean.

Or, you are deluded into thinking that the Libertarian candidate will get 58% of the vote in November and win, when it will really be more like 2%.

I'm not sure that I even agree with a Libertarian candidate. I meant to highlight the fact that non-Democrats are unsatisfied with Bush as well.

Re:Registered Democrat

[Shoggoth of Maul]

Which is why I support the Green Party.

Re:Registered Democrat

[cpeterso]

Either you are actually a registered Democrat Or, you are deluded into thinking that the Libertarian candidate will get 58% of the vote

Why can't someone registered Libertarian vote for a Democrat? He can't vote in the Democratic Party primary election, but in the general election, you can vote for any party's candidate you like.

Re:Registered Democrat

[Cecil]

It is people like you that are the problem with the electoral system in the USA.

Kang & Kodos: "Ha ha ha. You have to vote for one of us."
Perot: "Vote for me!"
Kang & Kodos: "Go ahead, throw away your vote!"

If you would just pull your heads out of your ass and VOTE BECAUSE YOU AGREE WITH THE PARTY'S POLICIES regardless of their size or influence some things might work out a little better.

Strategic voting is the worst thing that ever happened to democracy. We're seeing it here in Canada too, and it sucks ass.

Re:Registered Democrat

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to beat some bush in 2004. I was planning on getting laid in 2003... there's a couple weeks left, so we'll see.

Re:Registered Democrat

[sketerpot]

A way that could eliminate this nasty kind of strategic voting is approval votes. Basically, you cast a vote for all the candidates you think would do well in office. That way you can vote for a third party candidate without "wasting your vote", because you can also vote for a major candidate. It win't happen (sigh), but I can dream, can't I?

Re:Registered Democrat

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. It's measured in electoral votes, you idiot, not in aggregate popular votes.

Julian Haight's comments not about SpamCop

[jc103]

But Haight, who will stay with company, says he is concerned that the Bonded Sender program is too lenient. "I am not sure all its standards are tough enough," he said.

His comment was about Bonded Sender, not SpamCop.

Re:Julian Haight's comments not about SpamCop

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF? Do you even get what this article is about. Bonded Sender is a product of IronPort that is buying SpamCop. Bonded Sender and SpamcCop will be products of the same company. This isn't rocket science, just read again before you try to correct people.

Re:Julian Haight's comments not about SpamCop

[jc103]

IronPort isn't "buying", they bought SpamCop back in June.

Bonded Sender is a product totally distinct from SpamCop.

The poster's comments (which could be you AC), doesn't make it clear that Mr. Haight's comments are specifically and only about the separate Bonded Sender concept/product. The comment was not about SpamCop.

That's why I posted. The comment isn't directed towards SpamCop. Julian Haight still runs it. The registry is still fed by regular users. I'm try to help clear up the FUD towards SpamCop being lumped in with Bonded Sender, like you're trying to do in your reply to my post.

Re:Julian Haight's comments not about SpamCop

[Anonymous Coward]

IronPort isn't "buying", they bought SpamCop back in June.

You got me there. I'm a spamcop member and the annoucement was just made last week. They didn't say on the website that it was bought in secret, so I figured it was only signed, but not final yet. Many deals are signed, with the date of the purchase in the future. I didn't know why you think this has any effect on our disagreement, but I guess you just want to show I can be wrong. Fine. I was wrong.

I still don't see how you found the quote so confusing you had to argue against it. I still think it was very clear that his comment refered to the company that bought spamcop.

I had no trouble understanding that two conflicting products were owned by the same company. A company and it's products are one entity. If you don't see a problem, I'm sorry, because I do.

You could be the story poster for all I know. :-) It's not like ACs are the only ones who hide. I'm just too lazy to use multiple accounts.

Re:Julian Haight's comments not about SpamCop

[jc103]

I'm a spamcop member

Cool - I am too.. :)

I still don't see how you found the quote so confusing you had to argue against it.

I wasn't arguing for or against the submitter's post or the quote, either way. I was just trying to bring a little clarity to the submitter's comments in that particular aspect so a whole bunch of FUD didn't spring up that 'Julian Haight has made negative remarks against SpamCop!!!!'

I still think it was very clear that his comment refered to the company that bought spamcop.

Well, a comment against the whole company would mean he made the comment against his own devices (SpamCop). Rather, I think the article plainly says it was attributed to the Bonded Sender product/concept. That's only what I was trying to point out, not nullify the whole post..

Regardless, in response to:

I had no trouble understanding that two conflicting products were owned by the same company. A company and it's products are one entity. If you don't see a problem, I'm sorry, because I do.

That I do find interesting, and am watching carefully. I think you are more concerned than I am at the moment - which is fine, nothing wrong with that, but I have some concern too. If Mr Haight wasn't there still keeping watch over SpamCop and making himself available for direct communication, I would be a lot more concerned and might consider canceling my subscription. My post was not to cancel out all concern, just to help clarify one tiny portion of the submitter's post.

You could be the story poster for all I know. :-) It's not like ACs are the only ones who hide. I'm just too lazy to use multiple accounts.

Yeah, it's possible. *g* Basically you came on pretty strong in your first post, so I was just pointing out if we want to get all Conspiracy Theory we could find them in a lot of places. ;) Which could of course mean I'm actually the AC as well, replying to my posts to make it appear I'm socially interacting on ./ so I can brag to friends and family..

I think in the big picture you and I are more on the same page.. I still have concern about the long-term aspects of IronPort/SpamCop, same as you. So I think we're on the same side of this discussion..

Glad this didn't turn into a flame war. Best regards!

P.S. My apologies if there are errors in this post, I'm having a heck of a time rendering a preview in Mozilla..

Re:Julian Haight's comments not about SpamCop

[Anonymous Coward]

I wasn't arguing for or against the submitter's post or the quote, either way. I was just trying to bring a little clarity to the submitter's comments in that particular aspect so a whole bunch of FUD didn't spring up that 'Julian Haight has made negative remarks against SpamCop!!!!'

I thought FUD you referred to was the worry that IronPort would corrupt Spamcop. I haven't see any sign that other people found the quote confusing, but clearly you did, so there must be others.

Basically you came on pretty strong in your first post.

I did and I have to stop doing that. Your first post was so short on details that it was easy for someone like me to read lots more into it than you intended.

Glad this didn't turn into a flame war. Best regards!

Glad I checked back. I wasn't going to at first, but decided I wanted to see how crazy you really are. Of course I was wrong again. Too me, this is a flamewar, but I've become a lightweight in my later years. If a person can't argue reasonably why even respond?

Re:Julian Haight's comments not about SpamCop

[jc103]

I thought FUD you referred to was the worry that IronPort would corrupt Spamcop. I haven't see any sign that other people found the quote confusing, but clearly you did, so there must be others.

This is slashdot, you should know this happens. A lot of people don't read articles. A lot of people don't read official newsgroup postings. A lot of people just read the blurb and think they get it. I would think the moderation on the posts might be one key sign that I'm not the only one who thinks there might be more clarifying details to add to the submitter's post. With all due respect, if you get it, great, move on. If it happens to add clarity for someone else, let it be.

I did and I have to stop doing that.

That would definitely be more civil and appreciated, but again, this is slashdot, so unfortunately expected.

Your first post was so short on details that it was easy for someone like me to read lots more into it than you intended.

My exact reasoning for my original post in this thread. Ironic you don't see that. But again, this is slashdot; Short posts are common, as is irony.

Too me, this is a flamewar..

That's too bad, I see no reason for it. If it is, then I'm done.

no sorry but

[ihatewinXP]

_i_ rule.

not you.

you make spam.

i eat spam.

i hope this cleared things up. Next time you should try again except faster, and not so inane.

Zen and the art of /. trolling: available this holiday season.

oh btw , you failed it.

spreading the disease to build demand for cure...

[wrinkledshirt]

But that's okay! Because there'll be a really hot girl involved and Tom Cruise will show up with all sorts of slow-mo walk-bys, acrobatic insanities, and lots of doves being scared up into the air from off camera by John Woo...

Right...?

acquisition before death?

[nv5]

mmmhh - could this become a trend? I wonder, if they'll just kill off SpamCop, just like Vivendi just killed off mp3.com; after all SpamCop was probably not making that much money, if financial troubles lead to the sale.

Helpdesk employees?

[msimm]

Hotmail helpdesk #1: Dude, spam is big business.
Hotmail helpdesk #2: Ya, I bet someone could make a killing off an anti-spam service.
Hotmail helpdesk #1: Sure, but spammers are legitimate marketers too.
Hotmail helpdesk #2: Dude I know, their just trying to get their message out.
.
..
.
2000 - IronPort founded
.

Supplying both sides? Very common out there.

[Anonymous Coward]

Take a look at Cobra - they make radars and radar detectors.

Definition of Spam

[shystershep]

This goes back to the recent law passed by congress (discussed here ) that failed to define spam as all unsolicited mass emails. Until we can get politicians to pass a law defining spam to be what we all know it to be, there isn't anything we can do about obvious conflicts of interest like this except gripe.

But if that happened, what would happen to /.?

Re:Definition of Spam

[isfuglen]

In Norway, it's illegal to send someone any commercial e-mail without the recipient's prior consent.

Re:Definition of Spam

[Shoggoth of Maul]

...and you can camp almost anywhere, I'm told. And they're close to Sweden, which means I am closer to the dispersal centers for Nightwish and decent chocolate. What a great country. If I weren't addicted to the American economy, I'd live there.

Re:Definition of Spam

[Clay Pigeon -TPF-VS-]

That won't stop spammers that don't live in Norway.

Re:Definition of Spam

[isfuglen]

No, it doesn't. But it makes life very very difficult for people in Norway who would otherwise benefit from mass e-mail sending. Like the HerbaFraud people. Someone a few months ago was stupid enough to send me a spam from a dot no address to one of my dot no addresses. She was even stupider with her cattiness towards me when I pointed out that she was breaking the law. Nooooo, it wasn't me who signed her up for the Atkins diet (as a 1.60 m / 150 kg woman) and a few other websites where placement of e-mail address equals spam, spam, spam! I don't do things like that! Hah! See how she likes it! Grrrrrr!

Re:Definition of Spam

[Anonymous Coward]

wow...how do your politicians make any money?

Re:Definition of Spam

[isfuglen]

Nightwish is Finnish, and you can always camp at the Norwegian/Finnish border. Just don't mind the horny reindeer. (I thought they would be more tempting than the American economy ;-) We also have strict laws regarding telemarketing.

Ah, capitalism

[violet16]

I guess a few bugs still need to be worked out.

Re:Ah, capitalism

[i_r_sensitive]

Yeah but the project owner is dead, and there is no maintainer to send patches to.

At least SCO can;t claim Adam Smith illegally copied their code into Capitalism. Okay, I wouldn;t put money behind that assertion...

Re:Ah, capitalism

[Alizarin Erythrosin]

It's not a bug, it's a feature!

MS-bred?!?

[burgburgburg]

I understand what you're trying to say here, but I find that image to be a bit much. MS-bred? Last I checked, Bill and Steve haven't as of yet instituted a breeding program to ensure a steady supply of new Microsofties (though that might be the plot to that new movie "Paycheck").

Everyone in the Microsoft thrall volunteered. Weiss and Banister signed their names in blood to Microsoft contracts. At some point, Dark Lord Ballmer will come with the Blue Screen of Death and collect from them. That is the way of things, at least until Frodo Torvald is able to throw the closed-source ring of power back into Mount Redmond where is was forged ...wait, it's time for my medicine again, isn't it?

YOU-CAN-SPAM too!

[bronaugh]

The CAN-SPAM bill, as many of you may know, is aptly named. It allows spamming, providing the spammers aren't breaking existing laws. Woohoo. What a victory.

If I were to guess at the intent of IronPort, I would say that they'd start a multi-pronged profit operation. Charge other 'legal' spam companies money to stay out of SpamCop permanently, sell spam, and sell spamcop.

Nice job, guys. But I think other spamming businesses are going to be looking at you in a pretty jaundiced light -- it's clear you're trying to monopolize the spam sending market, and use those resources to kill off other spam-blocking services, thus providing a neat monopoly. And of course as soon as SpamCop is the only 'commercial' spam blocking list, the rates to stay out get jacked up; and so on and so forth. Maybe they'll start selling exemptions on a per-complaint basis, and thus tax spammers based on how much mail they send out. This would be ideal for them.

I doubt it'll work. People are not idiots. Even people who send spam, though sometimes I wonder. Anyone on either side of the battle should be able to see the writing on the wall.

This reminds me of a certain episode ...

[rcastro0]

PINKY: Gee, Brain, what do you wanna do tonight?

BRAIN: The same thing we do every night,Pinky!
Try to take over the world!
{Pinky and the Brain theme}

BRAIN: Email messages, Pinky, is our new tool! We will take over computers with trojan horses, send spam from there, and then we will sell everyone Anti-Spam... for what it's worth !

PINKY: What if they don't buy your anti-Spam, Brain?

BRAIN: Even better ! We will scare the people off the internet, leaving their connected PCs behind! This in turn will give us more hosts from which to send Spam. We will then have taken over the world!

PINKY: Egad, Brain, Brilliant! Oh, oh, wait, no, no -- why would they be scared of us? We're so small, um, we're practically the size of mice, Brain!

BRAIN: We *are* mice, Pinky.

PINKY: Oh, right. Well, there you are then. Nya-ha-ha!

spamcop sucks!

[Anonymous Coward]

Good to hear Julian Hate is having hard times!

GNAASTEE is coming soon

[Anonymous Coward]

GNAASTEE is coming soon

Arms dealing

[toby]

The archetypal example of this kind of double-dealing are arms dealers who sell to both sides - a practice which is common among Western companies (particularly American and British). The Rothschild dynasty (and dozens of others) made its fortune this way and it does not surprise me in the least to find a Micro$oft connection here. "M$ put the security holes in, we make money exploiting them, then we make more money selling a so-called 'fix'."

Julian should have seen this coming

[Desert Raven]

ListBot founder Scott Banister

Listbot == spammers

They've been in my server block lists for longer than anyone else. Fomr the day they started business, they spammed me, all the time saying they had my permission to do so.

Spamcop had its flaws, but at least until now they were well-intentioned flaws.

change in spamcop reporting

[kurt555gs]

I use Squirrelmail, and one of the options is to use Spamcop (report as spam)

In he last few days, when you process your spamcop response, I have noticed that instead of sending the notices to the usual "abuse@comcast.net" it is simply /dev/null'ing everything.

I was wondering about this.

Has anyone else noticed funny things going on in SpamCop?

Re:change in spamcop reporting

[bobbozzo]

Has anyone else noticed funny things going on in SpamCop?

Yes, their RBL server, bl.spamcop.net, can't be found since Monday for me and many other people.

There have been some posts on the mailing lists about it, but no real responses.

Re:change in spamcop reporting

[sdpinpdx]

FWIW, One of my complaints was sent to abuse@comcast.net this morning. There were very few /dev/nulls

Re:change in spamcop reporting

[hungsolo]

One of the Senarios we were using for MailSweeper used SpamCop as an RBL. A few days ago, I had to disable it because everything was coming back with a DNS error or a timeout.

I don't know about everyone else, but I'm fashioning a tin foil hat right now...

Re:change in spamcop reporting

[MadAnthony02]

The fact that they are listing on the DDOS list for the MiMail.L Virus might have taken their servers offline.

I see

[Anonymous Coward]

\\\ I HAVE TO MASTURBATE COVERTLY IN PRIVATE
(oO)
/C \ I'D BEAT OFF IN PUBLIC (HIDING BEHIND
/__/\\ BUSHES AND SIGNS) BUT I'M A SCREAMER
\\__//
__> U<__
_\/_ Mparre

SPAMcop

[mugnyte]

I see this as a single-minded business. SPAMcop wants to remove spammers by hunting down the true origins of mail it is told are illegitimate, or through filters. OTOH, it is owned by a company that teaches and sells mass-marketing schemes. This mass-marketer has competition, and thats exactly what SPAMcop will be going after. Bingo! You have a great model to improve your scores by showing actual tallies of improved responses from people using your lists or methods.

However, there will be an easy way to detect this: If the companies that are sending the spam are ignored by SPAMcop and also part of their enterprise, we have the feared result. At the moment, I haven't seen any evidence of this posted anywhere. But I'm only one person.

mug

You only need 56% of the votes

[burgburgburg]

As 2000 showed us, you only need to convince 5 of the 9 members of the SC to select a President.

Though I am interested as to why you imagine that any candidate would need 58% of the vote to win.

Or like...

[Tokerat]

Critics say that this is a clear conflict of interest. Playing spam from both sides might be likened to a pharmaceutical company enabling the spread of a disease in order to sell the cure.

You mean like writing viruses and then selling antivirus software?

I think big business is starting to learn what step 2 is, and it's kind of frightening.

1. Create inconvinience/problems.
2. Sell products which eleminate the problem.
3. Profit!

What a shame the tech industry is becomming.

Re:Or like...

[Rick Zeman]

Critics say that this is a clear conflict of interest. Playing spam from both sides might be likened to a pharmaceutical company enabling the spread of a disease in order to sell the cure.

You mean like writing viruses and then selling antivirus software?

I think big business is starting to learn what step 2 is, and it's kind of frightening.

Create inconvinience/problems. Sell products which eleminate the problem. Profit!

This is news? This is the exact same model as the phone companies use: build and sell a better mousetrap for telemarketers to use, and then sell the remedy to the consumer. Then, create ways for the marketers to work around the solution, so they can sell yet another solution to the poor, dumb consumer.

My biggest concern with the spamcop purchase (I'm a big user) is if their customers aren't blocked, but other spammers are. There are already too many exceptions that go to "Internal Spamcop Handling" never to be heard of again...for all I know, that might already be happening.

Re:Or like...

[Pentagram]

> eleminate
> inconvinience
> becomming

Are you going to sell spell checkers as point #2 then?

Re:Or like...

[Haeleth]

Hold on, get this right. What he'd need to be selling, in order to eliminate your annoyance at his spelling mistakes, would be a program which scanned other peoples' posts and corrected them when you read them. Some sort of real-time autocorrecting filter.

Hmm... maybe I should patent the idea...

Re:Or like...

[Tokerat]

...purhaps /. well by won so wen Im typnig and previuwing quackly i wunt luk sew stupud...

Playing Both Sides?

[Roofus]

You mean kind of like Verizon selling my phone number to telemarketers, and then trying to sell me anti-telemarketing services for a premium price?

Re:Playing Both Sides?

[Alizarin Erythrosin]

Verizon (my local phone company) got my name wrong somehow when I signed up for my phone. So I was going to get it changed, until I got some junk mail (snail, not e) with that mispelled name on it. Hrm... interesting indeed. So now I know when Verizon sold my info to some telemarketers or whatever. Plus, when people call looking for Mr. Gandnee, I can say wrong number :-)

Re:Playing Both Sides?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

You laugh, but I think the regional Bells have done this very thing.

Legitimate blah blah

[Heem]

"IronPort claims its customers are not spammers but legitimate marketers."

To me, any marketing related mail is spam. Another user may want to be marketed things that he is interested in, but not me, and I suspect the same of most users of any type of anti-spam solution.

WARNING! GOATSE LINK!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't Don't Don't follow that link.

nothing really wrong here

[tx_kanuck]

Some of the companies that make radar detectors also make the radars cops use. There is no conflict of interest there.

Personally I don't see a huge problem. Oil companies are doing research on non-oil fuels. Companies all the time play both ends against the middle, and end up winning. Now, if they start playing too heavy on one side, then the balance goes and they start to lose money. I say give them time before we judge them.

Re:nothing really wrong here

[Comatose51]

The reason oil companies do research on non-oil fuel is to get a patent on those things and prevent anyone else from using them.

Re:nothing really wrong here

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonsense. The reason they do research is because they are actually "energy" companies. They're not particularly emotionally attached to black goo, and couldn't care less what they sell you to collect their dollars. They just want to be sure they're the one selling it to you.

If one of them came up with a way to supply that really was cheaper and more effective than hauling around black goo, they'd be more than happy to blow the "oil" companies right off the stock exchange by selling their new product.

File the parent with the "oil companies suppress the 200 mpg carbuetor" urban legends over at Snopes.

Re:nothing really wrong here

[Anonymous Coward]

"Companies all the time play both ends against the middle, and end up winning. Now, if they start playing too heavy on one side, then the balance goes and they start to lose money."

And there is nothing wrong with that? Well they say a sucker is born every minute.. but I for one am not buying it..

Re:nothing really wrong here

[Comatose51]

They might not be emotionally attached but they are financially attached. Oil rigs, supply channels, etc. all cost capital to buy and set-up. They want to first even out their investment first and then add profit on top of it.

If there was suddenly a new miracle fuel, what do you think would happen to the oil companies? They might not collapse but they will certainly not make as much money as they do now.

Furthermore, IIRC, research into the use of ethanol and other fuel alternatives had their government funding cut because of strong lobbying from the oil companies. (Not too keen on this. Someone please correct me if I am wrong)

Re:nothing really wrong here

[jumpingfred]

Ethanol research was cut because ethanol is a boondoggle promoted by fram state senators.

Truth stranger than analogy

[Sad Loser]

Actually, pharmaceutical companies do create'diseases' to sell more of their products.
Isn't corporate capitalism wonderful?

look at both sides now

[Anonymous Coward]

"Playing spam from both sides might be likened to a pharmaceutical company enabling the spread of a disease in order to sell the cure." - kinda like astrazeneca</a&g t; does with <a href="http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/199909/can<nobr>c<wbr></wbr></nobr> er.asp">breast cancer</a>.

JEW ALERT!!!!!!!! JEW JEW JEW JEW JEW

[Anonymous Coward]

Founded by two former Microsoft executives - Hotmail's Scott Weiss and ListBot founder Scott Banister

So now what?

[Kevitt]

I hope spamcop.net doesn't go down the tubes. They are only one of 5 that my mail servers use, but have been one of the more reliable RBLs around.

But what if they become unreliable disreputable? What are some other reliable blacklists to talk to? Especially now that SORBS has instituted a fine to be removed.

Ironport's haunted by its past

[Anonymous Coward]

It really seems to me that Ironport dealt with questionable companies in the past when their only product was the A-Series line. They were young and young companies need revenue to make it through. They now focus on enterprise email, yet they have to honor service contracts signed with known spammers like Digital Impact. I truly don't believe that they are still targeting spammers for new sources of revenue, as the enterprise email market is far more profitable than selling to spammers wearing italian suits, so it really makes no sense to me.

A vote for Green is a vote for Bush

[Anonymous Coward]

"Which is why I support the Green Party."

Voting for the Greens produces the undesired effect, though: a vote for the Green party is a vote for Bush (or a vote for whatever conservative is running in whatever race) because every time, it subtracts one vote from the left/liberal/Democrats.

Ralph Nader was nothing but a spoiler who made sure Gore would not win. He then covers it with the lie that "Bush and Gore were all the same" which everyone knows is hawgwash.

"United we stand, divided we fall" really works, especially when it comes to the left side of the spectrum opposed to Bush.

So, remember, when you check Green on that ballot, you are making Karl Rove smile. If you check Dean (or whomever) you are giving Rove heartburn.

Don't blame the technology

[JimDabell]

When it's something like file sharing, everybody's keen to jump on the "don't blame the technology" bandwagon. After all, file sharing can be used legitimately, right?

How is this any different? There are legitimate needs to send bulk mail aren't there? It's not only used by spammers is it?

The only difference I can see is that spam is something techies collectively hate, and copyright is something a lot of people are ambivelant about. Let's be fair and apply the same standards! Arguments don't stand or fall based upon whether we like the people involved.

Re:Don't blame the technology

[anthony_dipierro]

The difference is that P2P file sharing companies aren't in the business of stopping copyright infringment. There's nothing wrong with creating hardware which is useful for sending bulk mail. There's nothing wrong with creating software which is useful for stopping spam. Doing both, however, creates a conflict of interest. One of the two products will suffer from that conflict of interest. My guess is that it's going to be the spam blocking software, because selling hardware to spammers seems like it would be more profitable.

Krupp Arms

[DaRat]

Reminds me of the story about Krupp Arms around the beginning of the 20th century. They sold armor and cannon/shells to most major naval powers:

• They would first come out with a new improved armor that every navy power rushed to put on their ships since it was advertised as being impervious to existing shell technology.
• Then, they'd come out with improved shells/cannon to defeat the improved armor. All navies would buy the new shells/cannon.
• Then, they'd come out with Improved Armor Mk2 to defend against the improved shells/cannon. Navies would construct new ships with the Mk2 armor.
• Then, Improved Shells/Cannon Mk2 would come out...

Re:Krupp Arms

[jandrese]

Isn't that pretty much the history of all warfare? Usually it goes the other way first though, with armor perpetually losing against better cannons/shells.

Re:Krupp Arms

[AceCaseOR]

However, typically, the better weapons and armor aren't being supplied by the same company.

Re:Krupp Arms

[DaRat]

The difference is that Krupp Arms was supplying both the offensive and defensive components. It may have been improved shells/cannon first (it's been a long time), but the general gist holds.

Bush won the actual election

[Anonymous Coward]

...As 2000 showed us, you only need to convince 5 of the 9 members of the SC to select a President...

Those 5 of 9 said: let the actual vote totals in Florida go through. That is all. They did not select Bush: The voters of Florida did. Gore had already lost. He even lost the exact count demanded of the Supreme Court (which was done after the fact, after Gore lost the case, to see if it would have made a difference: it did not).

Phone companies play both sides also

[OneMusketeer]

Selling the phone lists of the customers to telemarketers and then selling call blocking services to prevent those annoying calls. Sounds like a nice way to create demand on both sides.

Ethics. Never heard of it ...

[crovira]

Specially at M$ where its not enough to M$ to win but YOU have to lose.

The only thing I'm happy about is that even Bill Gates will eventually die, just like the poorest Afghani. There is some comfort in that. Nobody lasts for ever.

But if there is an after-life, I hope he has to use his own products to run a support-site for his own products for the rest of eternity.

Re:Ethics. Never heard of it ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Gosh, you don't think Heaven runs on Windows, do you?!

I guess that would explain things like suffering, though. Even the messiah BSOD'd, and it took them three days to reboot him!

I blame Scott Adams...

[Comatose51]

He should have known that anyone worth their weight in the tech industry is going to read his strip. Unleashing an idea like that! What was he thinking?

http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilb ert-20031129.html

And good God, he's an AOL user!

Re:I blame Scott Adams...

[Comatose51]

Now the URL without the space in the middle...

Bad analogy

[anthony_dipierro]

Playing spam from both sides might be likened to a pharmaceutical company enabling the spread of a disease in order to sell the cure.

Ironbase makes a computer that can be used to send lots of spam. They certainly don't "enable the spread of" spam.

It would be more like if the creator of Kazaa sold software to catch copyright infringers, and claimed that Kazaa users are not copyright infringers but legitimate downloaders of legally distributable indie music.

sigh...

[Bansuki]

i submitted that story weeks ago... the text of the story was so similar i seriously thought it was mine. but i guess securitas had more links than i did.

anyhow, ironport is not doing anything illegal according to any federal or state laws i'm aware of. as for ethics? it's a corporation, come on. remember when bertelsmann was suing napster which it had just purchased? or when fox news tried to sue the simpsons? or the krupp family selling weapons to every power in europe before and during ww1?

better yet look at our own federal government - "checks and balances" seems to have gotten a little out of hand.

the larger an entity the more likely you'll have conflicts of interest and in our world business and government entities are only getting larger, not smaller.

Spam

[the_real_rs]

I get over two megs a day of spam. wich automaticly goes in the trash. I get stuff from microsoft all the time an i never endorced a microsoft product. with this going on i bet well get more spam about how to get rid of spam.

I know noone will read this, but anywho...

[Anonymous Coward]

? legitimate marketers ?

I thought I got a computer and a cable connection so I could suft the web, play games, etc. But in retrospect I guess I just got it to provide legitimate marketers with a custom built Bill Board for their advertising pleasure. You Are Weclome.

Sounds familiar

[Alizarin Erythrosin]

Sounds like when that one phone company (I think it was AT&T) was selling technology to block telemarketers to consumers, and selling technology to get around technology to block telemarketers to telemarketers.

And, as they say, hilarity ensues...

The SC said ...

[burgburgburg]

"We've selected W as the President and any attempts to follow the US Constitution (Amendment XX, Section 3) concerning disputes of this nature would cast aspersions our selection."

Respecting states rights by not overruling the decision of the Florida Supreme Court, ensuring that the voters of Florida weren't disenfranchised, those sort of things would have interfered with their selection.

Lawyers

[GQuon]

Playing spam from both sides might be likened to a pharmaceutical company enabling the spread of a disease in order to sell the cure

This reminds me of an oldish but interesting discussion I had about lawyers and representing yourself in court (pro se).
If some guy uses a lawyer on you, you may also need a lawyer, in a way having a lawyer take care of the problems another lawyer made. (Members of one "guild" making work for each other.) This only applies to borderline barratry and frivoulous suits against the financially less endowed. I guess most lawyers deal with real cases, where the cases make more sense than making the other party bo broke over legal fees.

Re:Don't blame the technology +1 Truthful.

[i_r_sensitive]

Damn, and I blew all my moderator points yesterday in an orgy of moderation.

+1 Truthful

Who do I use now?

[JumperCable]

I used to use Spamcop alot, but now with the change over I am not sure I can trust them & am not sure I want to give them any more money. Does anyone have any recommendations?

And..spamcop has my email....

[MindSlap]

Gee.. and they have my email address...
Would they? Could they?...give their collected mail addresses to their 'partners'/'customers'?

10 Send report of spam to spamcop
20 spam cop 'parters' spam you
30 goto 10

Re:And..spamcop has my email....

[Progman]

On the contrary, they could make sure they don't send spam to spamcop users. This way they can concentrate on spamming the millions uncaring masses and not be disturbed by antispam "activists".

Write to Them

[Euphonious Coward]

Do you know anybody who works at Ironport? Write and say, "I heard you're a filthy spammer now! If you don't get a cut from the 419 scams, you're selling out too low.".

I just found out that somebody I used to work with is there now, and that's what I'm going to do.

(Yes, I do still have friends.)

Re:Write to Them

[NerdSlayer]

Yes, because only spammers send high volume email in a short period of time.

not only spammers buy it

[austad]

There are some legit companies that use it. A place I used to work used it for sending user-configured news and stock alerts. Interestingly enough, the box is a rebranded dell running freebsd. I have my suspicions they are using qmail on it also just because of the way it behaves. Everything is hidden behind a nice little interface though, so you have to boot with a floppy to poke around, which I never got around to doing.

The boxes are $30k each last I checked. On a revenue of $10 million, that's likely under 300 machines if you include a support contract. Not selling many of them... :) It is a good product though, you would have serious trouble getting that kind of performance out of a standard mailserver using the same hardware.

Said? Where?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the exact quote. What is your source?

"ensuring that the voters of Florida weren't disenfranchised"

That is exactly what they did. They made sure that the actual vote totals went through.

"Respecting states rights by not overruling the decision of the Florida Supreme Court"

No state has a right to ignore the results of a Federal election since it did not go the way some officials wanted it to go.

That is interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

That is interesting. That is much better than "PR" which is basically pushed by racists who want favor skin-color-based voting decisions.

(PR = Proportional Representation)

IronPort's not just for SPAM

[Stultsinator]

The company I work for is looking at using one of these boxes to send our opted-in newsletters. IronPort may be popular with spammers, but I have to agree that there are perfectly ethical reasons to send out millions of emails per day (per hour in fact!) The IronPort systems are by far the fastest mail servers around.

Re:IronPort's not just for SPAM

[Progman]

I'm always amazed when I read that sending newsletters to customers means sending millions of emails. How many companies in the world have such customer bases?

Re:IronPort's not just for SPAM

[Stultsinator]

Actually, our business is sending (and creating) newsletters for other companies (trade journals and such.) However, one IronPort customer is a major news organization that sends stock updates. The ability to send all of them out quickly is vital (whereas we're happy to just get all of the newsletters out the same day.)

I noticed that you ...

[burgburgburg]

like the SC ignored the Constitution regarding this issue.

Here, let me help you:
Amendment XX, Section 3. If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President elect shall have died, the Vice President elect shall become President. If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President elect shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified.

Like you, the SC decided to ignore the fact that the Constitution had been specifically, explicitly amended to deal with issues of succession, with a mandated path of action that never involved the SC deciding who won an election and ending legitimate recounts.

Old News

[Anonymous Coward]

Gee, d'you think this sort of thing might have happened before, like perhaps among the vendors of security and anti-virus sectors? Nahhh, couldn't be.

One little known fact is..

[azav]

That Valentine research who makes radar detectors also made radar guns that the cops used.

Don't know if they still do it but this was established last century.

Alternatives

[leandrod]

So the question here is: are there alternatives to SpamCop if one wants to continue reporting spam and helping building spam reference corpii?

Re:Alternatives

[Anonymous Coward]

...please, please tell me that you put "corpii" there as a kind of ironic reference to the whole "virii" thing?

(For the benefit of anyone who doesn't already know, the Latin plural of corpus is corpora.)

You did not notice what happened.

[Anonymous Coward]

"never involved the SC deciding who won an election and ending legitimate recounts"

The Florida voters had already decided who won the election, and the legitimate recounts had already occured. The voters decided. The SC did not. The SC decided, however, to let the will of the voters stand, and reject the Florida court's illegal attempt to disenfranchise all of the voters by changing the rules after the fact in order to get the desired result.

Next....

Amendment XX, Section 3? It had not gone to Congress yet.

"Like you, the SC decided to ignore the fact that the Constitution had been specifically, explicitly amended to deal with issues of succession"

No, the SC was aware of the fact that the election had already occured, and the results were known.

Face it. Gore lost the election. You can't rewrite history.

So I should start looking for a new email address

[Kris_J]

In the previous discussion about Ironport I asked about its reputation and whether or not I needed to start looking for a new email address, given that I'm a user of Spamcop. I will start moving everything away from Spamcop today.

You do know the answer already

[IthnkImParanoid]

The answer is that which will make them the most money. Unfortunately, that will be spam.

Open proxies

[AchmedHabib]

I don't know, isn't it a "traditional" mail sender/relay? Most spam these days comes via open proxies etc. A spammer operating with his own mail server like SenderBase would be blocked by all anti-spam lists fast and would not be effective for long.

And lets not forget proper uses for the box. I sure would like an appliance box for handling the daily newsletters and etc. Sure it's fun to sit and tweak Postfix on a Linux box but if you were to setup a new system it might not be cheaper to build an entire system yourself, with the tuning, tweaking and scriptwriting, and the following maintainance like updates fixes etc.

The Florida Supreme Court had ...

[burgburgburg]

ordered recounts. Therefore there was no final, valid count of the Florida votes. The SC decided to ignore the rights of all Floridians by overruling the Florida Supreme Court and selecting a President.

Part of the SC "reasoning" was that if they didn't make their decision right away, if they actually allowed a valid recount, if they went to the trouble of ensuring Floridians weren't disenfranchised, the country would be left in the lurch. If they'd have ever read the Constitution, they'd have realized that that was a steaming load.

I don't understand why you ACs are so upset: your candidate is now the Selected President*.

US Supreme Court sided with voters.

[Anonymous Coward]

"ordered recounts. Therefore there was no final, valid count of the Florida votes"

There had been valid counts up to this point, each of them valid. The recount desired by that FSC was past the legal deadline for such counts: it was illegal. Those who made it that way probably wanted to prevent what happened: utterly frivolous lawsuits designed to drag out the process. So they set a deadline. The FSC decided to rewrite the law and ignore it.

Regardless, this count the FSC wanted? It was checked after the fact. Gore lost it.

"Part of the SC "reasoning" was that if they didn't make their decision right away, if they actually allowed a valid recount,"

That is a lie. The SC knew a valid recount had already occured.

"they went to the trouble of ensuring Floridians weren't disenfranchised"

That is exactly what the US SC did. They made sure that the Florida court's legislating-on-the-fly did not disenfranchise the voters.

" don't understand why you ACs are so upset: your candidate is now the Selected President*. "

the * means selected by the voters through the usual election process. Yes, he was elected, no matter what the whining sore losers say. Bush was selected the same way Clinton was.

"If they'd have ever read the Constitution,"

They did, hence their decision. However, about 3 of the US Supreme Court justices decided to ignore the Constitution, and the will of the Florida voters, and try to overturn the election. Thankfully, a majority sided with the voters, the Constitution, and the law.

As a result, the elected president was inaugurated. Get used to the idea that sometimes national elections don't turn out the way you want them to: not every voter agrees with you.

senderbase

[LarryRiedel]

What may not be common knowledge is that IronPort's Senderbase has 'the reputation as the fastest way to send millions of junk e-mail messages' and is popular with spam factories.

Senderbase.org is an invaluable site for fighting spam, not a way to send junk email; it is a scourge for spam factories.

Larry

Senderbase is not a spam tool...

[Kelson]

It's a database that identifies high-volume email sources. So you could say Senderbase is pretty much neutral.

These are also the people who came up with Bonded Sender - a whitelist with an economic incentive to keep senders honest. So they're hardly new to the anti-spam world.

The controversy seems to be over IronPort's hardware: they sell mail servers. Big friggin' whoop.

The State Supreme Court decided that the ...

[burgburgburg]

so-called deadline was in conflict with the Florida laws concerning recounts. Considering this, and wishing to ensure that Floridians were not being disenfranchised, they declared for the recounts.

The SC decided to overrule the Florida Supreme Court ignoring the fact that issues like this are States issues. They overrode the sovereignty of the state of Florida. The selected a President without knowing the actual count, thus invalidating all the votes in Florida.

The * means that W will have always have an asterisk next to his name in history books, because he is the only Selected President*, chosen by the SC. I would have thought that obvious by the context. Every other President got there through Constitutional proper methods.

The USSC decided in favor of Florida voters

[Anonymous Coward]

"so-called deadline was in conflict with the Florida laws concerning recounts"

No, it was not. The deadline came after the recounting had been done.

"and wishing to ensure that Floridians were not being disenfranchised, they declared for the recounts. "

" They overrode the sovereignty of the state of Florida."

No, they protected it.

"The selected a President without knowing the actual count"

Everyone knew the actual count. The voters of Florida selected him.

"thus invalidating all the votes in Florida"

That is what the Florida court wanted to do, but was balked.

Since there already was an accurate count, the voters were ended up enfranchised.

"Florida Supreme Court ignoring the fact that issues like this are States issues"

A national election is a national issue. The Florida court decided to ignore the law and try to overturn the actual election results. The Florida SC ended up being lawbreakers who were trying to destroy a lawful election.

"The * means that W will have always have an asterisk next to his name in history books, because he is the only Selected President*, chosen by the SC"

Only the far left fringe believes this, everyone else accepts what turned out to be the typical result of an election process.

So, the * means "we left wingers really hate him a lot, and will tell lies about how he was really not elected just because we don't like him and can't accept the fact that people will sometimes elected a a president who is not left wing.

It will be at the bottom of the page with the ** next to Clinton's name, put there by impeachment which resulted from the right wing doing something similar. :)

IronPort = Captain Amazing

[Dynamic Ranger]

..who lets Cassanova Frankenstein out of the Assylum in "Mystery Men" (1999) because he'd put away all the other supervillains and was starting to lose sponsorships.

"You must lash out with all you limbs like the octopus who plays the drums!"

Cincinnati Microwave

[Hollins]

I don't know if they still do, but for years, Cincinnati Microwave made both radar guns and radar detectors. They generated a technology war with better and better radar guns and more sensitive detectors. They seemed to have been very successful with this strategy.

I'm Sorry

[Ranger]

I'm sorry I never paid for SpamCop. Dunno if it would have helped, but of late (the last two months) the spamming has only gotten worse. I've had to implement the very hard to use AT&T Worldnet whitelist. It doesn't use your email address book. You have to enter each address one at a time. Nor does it bounce back to let you know your email is blocked (when testing the filter from another account). I guess it's time to check out SpamAssassin.

Spamcop doomed - need alternative

[Animats]

As a longtime SpamCop customer, I now want to find an alternative. Nobody here seems to have any suggestions.

SpamCop owned by IronPort can't be anything like SpamCop is now. All the real work on SpamCop is done by volunteers. Nobody is going to volunteer their time for IronPort.

He's elected ! No, he's selected!

[Anonymous Coward]

Bush was (elected/selected) !!

(Bush/Gore) REALLY won the election!

The (Democrats/Republicans) tried to steal votes!

The Constitution was (violated/upheld)!

Where will it ever end? I know: it will end when everyone realises that my pro-(Bush/Gore) side is absolute truth! Everyone who disagrees is a victim of (leftwing/rightwing) propaganda! Agree or shut up. NOW!!!

Not always...

[MadAnthony02]

Ironport's website mentions transaction confirmations as one of the uses, and that is certainly legit... when I order stuff online, I like to get an email confirming it, telling me it's been shipped, ect.

There are legitimate advertising emails. I buy alot of electronics, so I regularly get emails from companies I've bought stuff from in the past, and I'm glad I have - they have alerted me to some good sales.

To me, there is a huge difference from me getting an email from Compgeeks, TigerDirect, eCost, or another company that I've bought stuff from (and could opt out of if I want to) and getting emails to BUY DISCOUNT VIAGRA, or MEET CHRISTIAN SINGLES, or the like. If IronPort is doing the former, then that's fine by me. If the companies are using their stuff to do the latter, then there is a problem

Some Clarifications from Julian

[Haight6716]

Hi, this is Julian, the long-time owner of SpamCop.net. I must say I was a bit dissapointed in the NYT coverage of this.

First of all, I was not *forced* to sell SpamCop to remain solvent. I am proud of the fact that I have been profitable since 1999. If anything, this deal makes SpamCop a charity case within Ironport. I still get paid of course ;)

The NYT article quotes me as saying (referring back to my dead-tree version): "After a while, I found that this had become a job, and I had to find a way to make money from it". That quote was taken out of context - I was referring to my 1999 decision to take SpamCop commercial, not my 2003 decision to sell the *profitable* company to ironport.

It is true that the akamai bill is not cheap. But I think I would have survived the same way I have always done without selling the business. And that leads to my next point - I'm not cashing out. I will be with the company for the forseeable future, doing what I have always done - fighting spam! I sold it to ironport because I felt they would support my goals. They offered me a nice lump of cash, help with the non-spam-fighting part of the job (sysadmin, administrivia, lawyering, DDoS protection, etc.) and most important, a credible promise to let me keep it on-track.

The very fact that I am here talking about this, and expressing my doubts about bonded sender to the NYT should indicate that I'm not just rolling over here.

I don't control the bonded sender program and likewise the people who control it won't be calling the shots where SpamCop is concerned.

Oh, and BTW, I know ironport boxes are good for spamming. They're also good for sending (and also receiving) tons of legitimate mail. Noone with ironport has ever claimed that "our customers aren't spammers". Some might claim our *bonded sender members* aren't spammers, but that's a whole other kettle of fish.

Are we arming both sides? Sure! But as with all arms dealers, the real point is that we make the best weapons on the market! Don't like spam from ironport customers? Use the spamcop blacklist! If this were really some big conspiracy, would spamazon's IP be in both the spamcop blacklist and the ironport whitelist?

$ host 207.171.188.101
101.188.171.207.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer mm-outgoing-101.amazon.com.
$ host 101.188.171.207.query.bondedsender.org
101.188.17 1.207.query.bondedsender.org has address 127.0.0.10
$ host 101.188.171.207.bl.spamcop.net
101.188.171.207.bl .spamcop.net has address 127.0.0.2

(Note, the blacklist changes quickly over time, it was listed when I wrote this) .. and here I was coming to slashdot to read the news and relax. Little did I know I'd be spending the next half hour writing this rebuttal ..

-=Julian "10 hot comments" Haight=-

Re:Some Clarifications from Julian

[securitas]

Sorry to ruin your evening by submitting the post! :)

Seriously, have you spoken with the reporter about this? If it's any consolation I think I fairly summarized the article.

Re:Some Clarifications from Julian

[djh101010]

I'm very glad to see a statement from you, Julian, regarding this. I've been a customer since way back in the "how much fuel did I burn this month" days, and the headline caught my eye (and concern). As I have every reason, based on your reputation, to believe your word as truth, I am very glad to see your side of the story.

Thanks for a great service, and know that your user base (at least, this particular user within it) appreciates you doing whatever it takes to uphold your high standards.

Sure, the spammers have SpamAssassin too, so they can tweak their messages to get below 4, or 5, or whatever, but you're still blocking 97% or better of the crap that would otherwise show up in my inbox, and providing an easy way to report it (and to learn how to effectively read headers). I'm glad to know that you're upholding your well-deserved reputation for being on the right side of the fight.

davehinz@(youknowwhere).com

MTA authors better watch out

[jmason]

Ironport's appliances are good for sending lots of mail. That probably means they may be useful for sending lots of spam, but it also definitely means they're useful for sending legit bulk mail. It's a "dual-use" thing.

In fact, that applies to SMTP email in general. Consider all the mailing lists you read; they're "bulk email". That's one reason why spam filtering is harder in email than other protocols like IM; bulk one-to-many contact is a lot more common in the SMTP case. The IETF recognised this, and hence we have ESMTP.

Given this story, if I was Eric Allman or Wietse Venema, I'd be worried about people complaining that sendmail or postfix are spammer tools...

Amazon

[CaptainSuperBoy]

Amazon is a member of IronPort's Bonded Sender program. I think that speaks for itself - Amazon is certainly a spammer, which casts a shadow of doubt on the Bonded Sender program as well as all of IronPort.

As if...

[The1Genius]

And this is like assuming that anti-virus software developers aren't releasing viruses into the wild to boost the sales of their products...

Playing both sides against the middle

[Doc Ruby]

Also note the "Spam Farmers" post, where AT&T is promoting "viral marketing" as a benefit to developers of their new mMode service.

gay

[Anonymous Coward]

u r gay

Doubt

[KinkyClown]

Just like the example in the text: it like a anti virus software supplier that spreads virusses.

does this mean...

[Rambo, John J.]

does this mean black people are going to be allowed to use SpamCop now?

True Spam Filtering

[OC_Wanderer]

I used spamcop for quite some time. I no longer use it to filter spam from my server because spammers change tactics too often for spamcop to keep up. I now use content filtering exclusively. What do I filter? Only spamvertized websites, the domainname.tld part. I only have to keep up with the websites, not the email addresses.

Why /dev/null

[Sits]

Some organisations that receive spam reports either have wrong contact information or ignore the spam reports. If spamcop sends lots of reports and they bounce (bad email address) or are ignored (e.g. the ISP doesn't like receiving (munged) spamcop reports and has told spamcop not contact it or the ISP never does anything with them) then the report goes to /dev/null but a record is kept so that they can be statistically tracked.

I don't see a problem

[Ed Avis]

Why shouldn't the same company produce exploit code and the tools to combat it? It's common for security groups to do that.

This makes sense...

[SilentReproach]

Now Ironport knows who is reporting their activity to abuse admins around the world. Furthermore, they can now examine Spamcop's spam-fighting mechanisms. Also, they can easily leave one or two servers off of their blocklist now if they feel the need.

It's probably good for Spamcop users, and bad for the rest of the world. As a Spamcop user, I intend not to renew my subscription next time around.

The SC decided against all voters

[burgburgburg]

The SC selected a President, declaring that attempting to actually get an accurate count of the votes would cast doubts on their selection. Everyone in Florida could have stayed home because none of their votes mattered.

Rules concerning vote count disputes for elections, either state or federal, are states rights concerns. The SC had no standing to overrule the Florida Supreme Court. They had no right to disenfranchise the entire state like that.

The last time there was a disputed election like this was with Rutherford B Hayes. The votes of four states (including Florida) were in dispute. Tilden had 184 votes (one away from election), Hayes had 165 and there were 20 in dispute. The case took months to resolve, but the SC never stuck it's nose in where it wasn't needed. (In the end, Republicans bartered a deal with Democrats to pull out the Reconstruction troops, and a committee of 8 Republicans and 7 Democrats gave all 20 votes to Rutherfraud. So Republicans have stolen two elections involving disputed Florida votes.)

While he was always be remembered for his horrendous economic policies, his vile environmental policies, his astonishing ability to alientate practically every country on the planet, and the fact that he led the first net loss of jobs in 70 years, W will always first and foremost be known as the Selected President*, the only one handed the job by the SC.

There are lots of Presidents from the right I don't like. W is the only one who was selected.

Duplicity

[Anonymous Coward]

It's good to have a single word to throw at these kinds of things.

Into the paper shredder with me

[Berrik]

I for one welcome our new two-faced overlords.

Berrik