Spammers Not Complying With CAN-SPAM

Obvious flaw by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 00:35 · Score: 3, Funny

It should have been called "CAN SPAMMERS", not "CAN SPAM" act.

Re:Obvious flaw by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 00:39 · Score: 1, Funny

Hey, but SPAMMERS CAN'T! (They need Viagra)
Re:Obvious flaw by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 00:58 · Score: 0

you mean spammers canned?
Re:Obvious flaw by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 01:02 · Score: 5, Insightful

No, it's an accurate description of the law. It means you CAN SPAM.

Re:Being second sucks. by DigiShaman · 2004-01-11 00:35 · Score: 1

What the hell is that? Some sort of buffer overflow exploit?

--
Life is not for the lazy.

What a fscking shock... by geminidomino · 2004-01-11 00:36 · Score: 5, Insightful

A law that says it's OK to spam, has exactly 0 enforcement behind it, and overrides stronger state laws didn't have an effect on the spammers? Who'da thunk it. Welcome to the U.S. of A. We have the best Government money can buy (off).

Re:What a fscking shock... by haxor.dk · 2004-01-11 01:49 · Score: 5, Insightful

Don't attribute to conspiracy what can adequately be explained by stupidity.

The US gov't doesn't hold its hand over the spammers - not intentionally anyways. They're just utterly ignorant about the extent of the SPAM problem. Hence the weak legislation that has been passed.
Re:What a fscking shock... by Tehrasha · 2004-01-11 02:44 · Score: 5, Insightful

What conspiracy? A conspiracy would imply that something was done behind closed doors, covertly away from the public eye. The DMA (Direct Marketing Association), remember those guys, the ones who opposed the junk-fax ban and Do-Not-Call list? They supported the senators who wrote the freaking bill!! There was no conspiracy. Fox/Henhouse.
Re:What a fscking shock... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 02:55 · Score: 0

What a fscking shock wrote:
> Don't attribute to conspiracy what can adequately be explained by stupidity.

Heh. No, in this case it was conspiracy. The Direct Marketing Association had its fist shoved up Bush's socket all the way to the elbow making his lips move on this one: they're deeply concerned that spam legislation will derail their more legitimatate members marketing plans, and will discourage their members from doing even legitimate opt-out spam.

Unfortunately, we really need to go to "opt-in", and we need to allow individuals to sue for spam. The ISP's will negotiate and continue to settle out of court in ways that allow the spam to continue, very slightly amended. This happened repeatedly with Cyberpromo a few years ago: what finally took them down was their upstream providers getting blocked from services by other major providers who were tired of it, and having their routers shut down by various cracker attacks.
Re:What a fscking shock... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 02:57 · Score: 0

What would a class action aginst the DMA do? They started this and millions of people can blame them.
Re:What a fscking shock... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 06:20 · Score: 0

"The biggest conspiracy is that there are no conpiracies."
Re:What a fscking shock... by anthony_dipierro · 2004-01-11 16:57 · Score: 1

If the law says it's OK to spam, then how are 997/1000 spams in violation of it?
Re:What a fscking shock... by geminidomino · 2004-01-11 18:54 · Score: 1

You just answered your own question. If the law said it was NOT ok to spam, then 1000/1000 spams would be in violation of it. The law says that OPT-OUT is acceptable. Opt-Out means the SPAMMER decides who goes on his list, NOT the reciever. Thus it is unsolicited (the receiver did not sign up), it is bulk (if the spammer sends out more than one), ergo it is spam.
Re:What a fscking shock... by geminidomino · 2004-01-11 18:56 · Score: 1

You have too much faith in our congresscritters. I attribute it not to stupidity, but the deep deep pockets of the DMA (pro-spam, pro-junkmail,etc.. lobby group).
Re:What a fscking shock... by anthony_dipierro · 2004-01-12 06:25 · Score: 1

Ah, I see what you're saying. OK. However, I think it's quite obvious that any law is going to have an equal effect on spam, absolutely none. It's too bad a better law wasn't written, though. Maybe then we'd finally have a stop to the people whinging about needing a law.
Re:What a fscking shock... by geminidomino · 2004-01-12 07:24 · Score: 1

A bunch of the antispammers I "hang out" with on the net knew this was coming a mile away. People have been whinging about needing a law for a looong time.

Even if it was a GOOD law, though, nothing would happen. They'd have to spend the money to enforce it. As it is now, the DMA's bribes^Wlobbying got them a law that legitimizes spamming.

I'm not going to worry until the DMA reaches into its pockets again and buys itself a law that says blocking "legal" spam is illegal. THEN the excrement is going to strike the rotary airflow modification unit...
Re:What a fscking shock... by anthony_dipierro · 2004-01-12 07:45 · Score: 1

Even if it was a GOOD law, though, nothing would happen. They'd have to spend the money to enforce it.

To enforce a good law against spam you'd have to spend more money than the United States government has.
Re:What a fscking shock... by geminidomino · 2004-01-12 15:35 · Score: 1

This law wisely bans practices that are clearly wrong and can be proven in court. While you might wish for a ban on unsolicited bulk email, it would be harder to prove a violation of such a ban, since the defendant would naturally claim that the email was solicited. Likewise, people could easily be falsely accused under that ban.

There are mechanisms in place for that. It's called a "Best practice" and is widely known as "confirmed opt-in." There is no false accusation, because with a confirmed opt-in system, the sender has PROOF that the user opted in. This has long been considered the "right way" to do things by people with Clue. Its proof of solicitation and it takes care of the whole "false accusation" problem, AND it does so without making spam legal, so your argument doesn't hold any water.

Congress is supposed to regulate interstate commerce. This is a national, if not international problem, and must be addressed on a national level. While it's commendable that some states took the lead in developing anti-spam legislation, it is not in the US's best interests to have a patchwork of different state laws governing interstate commerce. Congress was right to override the state laws.

Is THAT why gambling is legal in Nevada, but IIRC, any "gaming violation" is a felony in NV. In most cases, federal laws DON'T override state laws unless the state law is LESS restrictive. This bill was specifically crafted to override MORE restrictive laws and protect spammers.

Again, I ask you to support this assertion.

Again? I haven't seen you ask before, but anyway... Have a look for yourself. Have you heard about any spammers being arrested? I know I haven't. Google Spam Archive

And Snotty Scotty Richter doesn't count, Microsoft is footing the bill for that one, and it's a civil suit, unrelated to CAN-SPAM.
Re:What a fscking shock... by geminidomino · 2004-01-12 15:55 · Score: 1

To enforce a good law against spam you'd have to spend more money than the United States government has.
Actually, that was what was good about the Washington law, for example. They allowed for private action against the spammers. In other words, you could sue a spammer into non-existance (like Microsoft is setting up for against Snotty Scotty) and the U.S. wouldn't have to pay a dime. Anyone who says this law isn't written to protect spammers is either an idiot, a DMA shill, or a spammer (or any combination of the above.) I will not mention any names but they're in this thread.
Re:What a fscking shock... by anthony_dipierro · 2004-01-12 18:55 · Score: 1

No one's going to file a John Doe lawsuit and track down a spammer through subpoenas just on the off chance that he might live in the United States and not file for bankruptcy. This law may be written to protect spammers, but no law is going to be effective against spam.
Re:What a fscking shock... by geminidomino · 2004-01-12 19:49 · Score: 1

It's easier than you think to track down spammers, and most of them DO live in the US, and it's quite easy to tell. If the spam has an address/phone number, or a domain name, you can find out where the spammer is from there. This is not a difficult concept. Just because YOU wouldnt do it doesn't mean NO ONE would do it. Filtering doesnt work, spammers just get past them, and they waste bandwidth. Blocklisting doesnt work because people whinge about thier email to aunt Betty getting blocked, Laws dont work because our congressmen are for sale to the highest bidder. All of these things are true, and all of these things are given as reasons to use one of the OTHER two. So by that logic, we should just do nothing and let spam flow free until email is dead. Or we can take the bad with thegood, combine the techniques, and do what we can.
Re:What a fscking shock... by anthony_dipierro · 2004-01-13 04:35 · Score: 1

It's easier than you think to track down spammers

Some, perhaps, but the vast majority of spam I get is from an ISP which won't give up the information without a subpoena. That costs money, and to spend that money without even knowing if the identity is going to be someone you can actually collect a judgement from is stupid.

If the spam has an address/phone number, or a domain name, you can find out where the spammer is from there.

The vast majority of spam I get does not have an address/phone number, and that spam with a domain name is almost universally not registered to the spammer himself. When it is, it is commonly registered to a foreign address, which usually isn't even a real address in the first place.

Just because YOU wouldnt do it doesn't mean NO ONE would do it.

Some might waste their time and money a few times, but they'd quickly learn this is a losing situation.

So by that logic, we should just do nothing and let spam flow free until email is dead.

No, the solution to spam is to hold the ISPs responsible, most easily through contractual agreements.
Re:What a fscking shock... by anthony_dipierro · 2004-01-13 04:50 · Score: 1

All of these things are true, and all of these things are given as reasons to use one of the OTHER two. So by that logic, we should just do nothing and let spam flow free until email is dead.

Oh yeah, and the alternate solution is to redesign SMTP.
Re:What a fscking shock... by crucini · 2004-01-13 10:25 · Score: 1

...because with a confirmed opt-in system, the sender has PROOF that the user opted in.

Except that it's not really proof. It's a computer file containing an email message, which any spammer could write in three minutes. And by the same token, if the file is genuine, the sender can claim it's fake. Congress was right to focus on violations that are easier to prove or disprove.

This has long been considered the "right way" to do things by people with Clue.

It is a good practice for legitimate list operators, but it is not a good basis for criminal prosecution.

Have you heard about any spammers being arrested?

No. Nor did I expect arrests within mere days of the bill taking effect. I would expect such investigations to take several months, ranging up to a year. I looked for an example on the DOJ websites, and didn't find too many. But here's one example of the lead time between a crime and indictment - more than four months. I would expect spam investigations to take longer, because the investigators will want to collect evidence of many violations rather than charging a spammer with a single count.
Re:What a fscking shock... by geminidomino · 2004-01-13 15:55 · Score: 1

Oh yeah, and the alternate solution is to redesign SMTP.

That's not a solution, alternate or otherwise. That's what we call a "lose condition" Even splitting the internet to a "clean side" and a "spammy side" is a better option
Re:What a fscking shock... by geminidomino · 2004-01-13 16:01 · Score: 1

Have you heard about any spammers being arrested?
No. Nor did I expect arrests within mere days of the bill taking effect. I would expect such investigations to take several months, ranging up to a year
But did you expect spam to INCREASE when the law came into effect? It did. And when they fail to prosecute any spammers, it will increase MORE as mainsleaze gets into the game. THAT in itself makes it a bad law.
Re:What a fscking shock... by anthony_dipierro · 2004-01-13 16:43 · Score: 1

Seems like a solution to me, and I'd say it's the best one. What's wrong with the solution?
Re:What a fscking shock... by geminidomino · 2004-01-14 00:33 · Score: 1

In a word:

Implementation

Or: How to convince $BIGNUM ISPs to reconfingure all thier mailservers to an entirely new standard.

Maybe a middle-of-the-road "SMTP+" style is in order, 100% backward compatible with SMTP with functions of abuse-prevention for use with other SMTP+ servers.

Re:Being second sucks. by Fallen_Knight · 2004-01-11 00:36 · Score: 1

i'm to lazy, what is it?

Anyone surprised? by Kjella · 2004-01-11 00:36 · Score: 5, Insightful

I mean, really. They've shown so much respect for other laws (deceptive marketing, viruses, DDoS, fraud, hacking relays, illegal use of resources like open relays) so why should this be any different?

Kjella

--
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings

Re:Anyone surprised? by TheLittleJetson · 2004-01-11 10:58 · Score: 1

yeah -- i've said it before and i'll say it again... trying to stop spammers (those that actually send the emails) is not going to work. it's too hard to tell who to punish, too easy for spammers to find new ways of covering their tracks. the only way to stop spam is with a HEFTY FINE to the company whose goods were advertised. this would make spamming "too risky" and companies would have to search for better advertising alternatives.

Re:just trying a fp. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 00:37 · Score: 0

Schraegstrich-Punkter

Sure you CAN! by CrankyFool · 2004-01-11 00:37 · Score: 4, Interesting

And we're already starting to see spam proudly proclaiming that it's "CAN-SPAM-compliant!" I suspect that we'll soon be able to put in filters to block any message that claims it complies with CAN SPAM because that will be a guarantee that it is, in fact, spam.

And, on the opposite side of the fence, I'm seeing some people claim that relay-testing is now prohibited under CAN SPAM (because CAN SPAM makes unauthorized relaying a crime).

Bah.

Re:Sure you CAN! by AndroidCat · 2004-01-11 02:19 · Score: 1

s/Murky S.1618 disclaimer/CAN-SPAM disclaimer/
Not that they pay any attention to the rules of either. It was always a hoot to get a S.1618 Murky in Spanish on a spam from Argentina to a Canadian email box.

--
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Re:Sure you CAN! by mgh02114 · 2004-01-11 03:29 · Score: 2, Funny

Thank god for Slashdot! For some reason, I had thought that the law's name was "U-CAN-SPAM"

Re:Being second sucks. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 00:40 · Score: 0

Probably a goatse pic. Nothing of interest, move on.

Re:Being second sucks. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 00:41 · Score: 0

No, just data:-encoded picture :) And no, not goatse or tubgirl.

Crime pays by DigiShaman · 2004-01-11 00:42 · Score: 5, Interesting

It doesn't matter if the crime is though hacking, smuggeling, murder....whatever. The fact of the matter is this. If the crime you commit far exceeds the net total loss from being busted, then why would the suspect want to stop? It's not that hard to figure out.

Sometimes, you have to fight fire with fire. So ladies and gents, let the SPAM hacking begin. Anyone feel like being evangelist for Joe Sixpack with an AOL account?

--
Life is not for the lazy.

Re:Crime pays by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 01:53 · Score: 0

Uh... generally assetts resulting from the criminal acts are seized
Re:Crime pays by fermion · 2004-01-11 03:21 · Score: 1

It is not so much that crime pays. For many people it does not. The issue is that most people never do the profit calculation, and those that do tend to outsource the risk so they can claim innocence. This is why organizations like Walmart and Tyson's can engage in routine conspiracies to commit crimes and never get significant fines. OTOH, the contractors are in jail with assets seized.
So, there are a few firms and ISPs that make a great deal of money off the spamming business. The firms pay spammers to advertise, and the ISPs allow the spammer a conduit. When the spammers get caught, both deny any knowledge of wrongdoing, allow the spammer to fall, then just find someone else willing to continue the spam.

--
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Re:Crime pays by CaptBubba · 2004-01-11 03:26 · Score: 4, Interesting

I think this case the problem is nobody with a high profile has gotten busted. So it is the same idea, but instead of the punishment being too low to stop them, they think the odds are very much in their favor. It is like Jaywalking to the spammers right now. They know there is a law aganst it, but they don't know of anybody actually getting in trouble for doing it and they don't think it is hurting anybody.
If in a month the FBI (under directions from the FTC) raided the homes of and arrested 100 out of the 200 people on the ROSKO list, I would put good money down that the ratio of email complying with the CAN-SPAM act would go up dramaticly. I really think the key would be taking their computers in a raid, because they are likely loaded with IP addresses of hacked computers, open relays, and perhaps even tools/viruses to hack computers.
Re:Crime pays by Kent+Recal · 2004-01-11 05:16 · Score: 1

If you want to engage the scriptkiddy-community for your noble goal you'll have to point them to the playground.

I imagine a central website providing (primarily) a list of ip addresses and good reasoning (at least 2000 lines) + verification for every single of them.

Every ip should be backed up by a copy of at least 100 distinct complaints from different sources.

But ofcourse this conflicts with both law and common sense so don't even think about it.
I did and trust me, it's a bad idea.
Re:Crime pays by Felinoid · 2004-01-11 06:01 · Score: 1

Spam proffits illistrate this quite well.
Spammers have always clammed big proffits from spam but I know enough to realise this just isn't true.

The spam facilitating companys make money but spammers lose there shirts and dissapear.
Who gets the printer toner spam anymore?

Not to long ago someone did a study and found out most spammers are just e-mail harvesters and don't actually have any product to sell.

--
I don't actually exist.
Re:Crime pays by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 08:13 · Score: 0

Even if you manage to get rid of all current spammers, as long as you don't raise the barrier to entry to a point where an investment in spamming resources won't pay off, ever, you're going to get a fresh generation of spammers as soon as you reduce your spamfighting activities.

The only credible way to stop spam is to re-engineer email so it costs the sender.

Duh! by NemoX · 2004-01-11 00:42 · Score: 4, Insightful

Most spammers are from overseas in non-cooperative countries (with the US). This is a US law. What do they care? This law has no effect on illegal spamming. Besides, a vast majority of it comes from compromised home Windows boxes...they should just sue microsoft for making shatty insecure O/S' which help increase your daily spam. All it's going to to is get a lot of innocent and naive computer users in trouble for not securing their boxes and allowing overseas spam to bounce through their home PC's.

Re:Duh! by GammaTau · 2004-01-11 00:49 · Score: 5, Informative

Most spammers are from overseas in non-cooperative countries (with the US).

There is evidence to the contrary.
Re:Duh! by abelsson · 2004-01-11 01:06 · Score: 3, Informative

No, most spammers operate from the US.
Re:Duh! by djtrialprice · 2004-01-11 01:21 · Score: 1

I thought most spammers were from Nigeria...?
Re:Duh! by d99-sbr · 2004-01-11 01:32 · Score: 1

No, you're thinking about scammers, with a c.
Re:Duh! by kraut · 2004-01-11 20:35 · Score: 1

But surely if they are selling stuff (be it penis extenders, "viagra", or mortgages), they must have some part of their business in the US, so they can be hit.

--
no taxation without representation!

Re:Being second sucks. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 00:43 · Score: 0

Boing! Wrong. No banana. Next!

Why even bother? by tuxette · 2004-01-11 00:45 · Score: 5, Insightful

What's the point of having this anti-spam law in the US anyways? The real point I mean. Is it an attempt to make American citizens or the people of the world think that the US is tough on spam or something? I mean all that stuff about real address and markers for porn are nice and all, but without the rule of opt-in, you may as well not bother having an anti-spam law at all.

An anti-spam law ought to ensure that people do not receive spam. Period. It doesn't matter if the addresses are real or not. It does not matter if they are marked for pornographic content or not. They should not be receiving that kind of e-mail in the first place, and it should not be a burden upon the people to ensure non-receipt of spam. And if for some reason someone or other wants this kind of e-mail, they should explicitly consent to itsreceipt.

--
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...

Re:Why even bother? by inode_buddha · 2004-01-11 00:50 · Score: 2, Funny

Somebody actually *paid* to find out what I could've told them for free... go figure.

--
C|N>K
Re:Why even bother? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 01:56 · Score: 0

Why exactly should it be illegal to send unsolicited e-mail with the ability to opt-out? Do you cry because television stations have commercials without asking for your consent?
Re:Why even bother? by pjrc · 2004-01-11 02:23 · Score: 5, Insightful

An anti-spam law ought to ensure that people do not receive spam. Period.
No. Not period. Saddly, life just isn't that simple. In fact, there isn't even a precise, widely accepted definition of exactly what is and is not "spam".
The precise definition problem is not with obvious ads for viagra, get rich quick scams, debt consolidation and mortgages, porn, and so on. It's with the fringe cases. Defining "spam" precisely enough that a ban could be meaningful is a giant problem. It's a problem most of the anti-spam community has recognized for quite some time.
It's easy to be an armchair politician and declare "all spam should be illegal, period".... but what exactly is you definition of spam that will be banned? Something more precise that "I know it when I see it"?
Anyone who administers mail lists, for example, will be able to tell you that even benign non-commercial lists regularily get complaints about being "spam". Many would call those end users "clueless", in that they signed up for announcement or to participate in the list (often with a double-confirm process), but later forget they had ever expressed an interest and accuse the mail list operator of spamming them.
It does not matter if they are marked for pornographic content or not.
Yes, it does. At least that's what the research has said. Perhaps you missed the article months ago, where researches surveyed how spam impacts real people, and found that the overwhelmingly strongest frustration with spam is the inability to filter porn spam.
It doesn't matter if the addresses are real or not.
Yes, it does matter.
It's also a lot easier to define and verify whether message header and envelope information (used by SMTP) are a legitimate, good-faith representation of who transmitted the message, than it is to define whether the content of the message is "spam".
.
However, your message does make the very good point than an opt-in standard is the only real, long term solution. Saddly, it looks like there is not enough political support for a true opt-in standard in US law (like we currently have for faxes).
Maybe the failure of this CAN-SPAM law will prompt opt-in? But I would expect first a modification that adds some real enforcement and penalties for forged headers/envelope and mis-labeled porn.... which are both easy to prove and will provide at least some relief.

--
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
Re:Why even bother? by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · 2004-01-11 02:53 · Score: 2, Interesting

I agree with much of your post, but do you think maybe you're being a bit too negative?

The precise definition problem is not with obvious ads for viagra, get rich quick scams, debt consolidation and mortgages, porn, and so on. It's with the fringe cases.

That's true, of course, but simply ruling out the sexual and financial stuff would be a good start.

Anyone who administers mail lists, for example, will be able to tell you that even benign non-commercial lists regularily get complaints about being "spam". Many would call those end users "clueless", in that they [...] later forget they had ever expressed an interest and accuse the mail list operator of spamming them.

That's unfortunate when it happens, sure. OTOH, I've received plenty of e-mails in my time telling me that I've "opted in" to something that I most certainly haven't (because I never opt in to any commercial mailing list unless I'm having direct dealings with the company involved, and usually not even then). Thankfully, I've seen few of these in recent months, but it used to happen all the time.

Finally, I agree that it's best to have concrete tests, and as such making it illegal to forge identifying information in an e-mail could be useful. OTOH, a law that says, "You must include a valid, working unsubscribe address" doesn't really help much, does it? Surely anyone who's ever administered an e-mail system would advise against ever replying to any spam mail, so the law has just "legitimised" one of the spammers' favourite tactics for no benefit at all.

--
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Re:Why even bother? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 03:01 · Score: 1, Informative

You wrote:

> Finally, I agree that it's best to have concrete tests, and as such making it illegal to forge identifying information in an e-mail could be useful. OTOH, a law that says, "You must include a valid, working unsubscribe address" doesn't really help much, does it? Surely anyone who's ever administered an e-mail system would advise against ever replying to any spam mail, so the law has just "legitimised" one of the spammers' favourite tactics for no benefit at all.

Not forging false email addresses is trivial. They're called "drop boxes", and their only reason for existence is for the spammers to ignore or to gather legitimate email addresses for their next spam. Really. Opt-out just doesn't work.

This [I]CAN-SPAM law is also going to face very, very big challenges on free speechh grounds due to its content filtering.

Now, there's a compelling legal history for requiring opt-in called the junk fax law, It's USCC 18, paragraph 2701, and does not get into deciding the content of an illegitimate message. Add maybe 10 words to that law to include email as well as faxes, and we'd be set.
Re:Why even bother? by schon · 2004-01-11 05:39 · Score: 1

In fact, there isn't even a precise, widely accepted definition of exactly what is and is not "spam".

Bullshit.

The definition of spam is "unsolicited bulk email." This is both precise, and widely-accepted.
Re:Why even bother? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 05:42 · Score: 0
but what exactly is you definition of spam

A good example is what has happened to me:
- I cancelled my Amazon account (I had enough of their increasing removing of privacy etc). They continued to send me various emails. The only way to stop them is to login and unsubscribe. Except I couldn't login as I had no account. Oh, and I could only contact customer support by sending email from my non-existent account.
- I had some pictures developed at Costco (by Kodak). They include being able to download them online as well. Costco started sending me special offers to the same email address that I asked for the URL of the pictures to be sent to (kodak@mydomain.com). Costco already send me special offers the address I have with them, so I was getting both. I couldn't unsubscribe from the kodak address since you can only unsubscribe by sending an email with the matching from address. But although I receive all emails sent to my domain, I only send from one address.
- I downloaded GTA from Rockstar games. They started emailing to the address they sent the URL to with no instructions at all to stop the emails.
Those are all examples of spam, and in the end I solved it by configuring the mail server to reject all incoming email to those addresses. Fortunately I can easily track what is happening since I give out a unique address to each entity that asks for one.
Re:Why even bother? by sqlrob · 2004-01-11 07:04 · Score: 1

It's precise?

Define bulk. 10? 100? 1,000,000?

What if all the e-mails are sent individually? Is it bulk then?
Re:Why even bother? by Tassach · 2004-01-12 06:46 · Score: 1
Defining "spam" precisely enough that a ban could be meaningful is a giant problem
Only if you make it that way. Personally, I think spam can be defined *exactly* by a two question test:
1. Is it unsolicited?
2. Is it commercial? (Where "commercial" means "attempting to seperate me from my money")
If the answer to both questions is yes, then it's spam. I can't think of any non-spam message that is both unsolicited and commercial. Unsolicited non-commercial messages fall through this definition, but that's an acceptable compromise. I don't mind spam that's not after my money as long as I get rid of 100% of the spam that IS after my money.
--
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Re:Why even bother? by dodobh · 2004-01-15 06:38 · Score: 1

Spam is Unsolicited Bulk Email.

Spam is about CONSENT, not about CONTENT.
This means that the only "correct" method of stopping spam is to reject it before the smtp data phase.

--
I can throw myself at the ground, and miss.

Re:Being second sucks. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 00:45 · Score: 0

I'm not going to install Fuckzilla or some Base64 decoder to verify it, you Lunix geek.

Re:Finally by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 00:47 · Score: 0

Whack. It is most definatly whack.

Wrong legal consequences. by Samuel+Duncan · 2004-01-11 00:47 · Score: 4, Interesting

The main idea of the law is to stop non-compliant messages by imposing financial punishment on the spammers. And this won't work. It very easy to avoid such fines, e.g. declare that you don't have any money and then use the absense of local citizen registers to "vanish" from the radar of law enforcement.
I think the real solution would be physical punishment. Just when the feds get their hands on the spammers then they can't avoid punishment. No more bad excuses. Of course, you won't do something imhumane like they do in Saudi-Arabia - cutting of fingers etc. You would just give them a decent spanking. And they would remember that. Furthermore this would be much cheaper than traditional punishment.

--
Over 90 years and counting !

Re:Wrong legal consequences. by Pembers · 2004-01-11 01:50 · Score: 3, Funny

Of course, you won't do something imhumane like they do in Saudi-Arabia - cutting of fingers etc.

Why not? If you want to punish someone who makes a living from computers, I think that would be very fitting. Of course, there's always voice recognition... maybe we'd better cut their larynxes out as well... But then they could strap a stick to their forehead and tap the keys with that... Oh, fuck it, let's just chop the bastards' heads off and be done with it.

--
Just another wannabe fantasy novelist...
Re:Wrong legal consequences. by haxor.dk · 2004-01-11 02:19 · Score: 1, Funny

I can imagine this setting:

Man sits behind computer monitor, furiously working on the kayboard, pale face illuminated by his CRT monitor.

(knock on door)

Man: Who is it ?

Voice: Pizza delivery.

Man: Hm, I was wondering when the liver-anchovy pizza would arriv..... (door kicked in, in comes a heavily armed cop in black leather).

Man: Whoa... !

Police Officer: This is a SPAM search!! We have a report that large amounts of Viagra scam mail has been sent from this house! We have a warrant to search the premesis! Get down on teh ground, NOW!!!

(2 minutes later, the cop is in front of the computer, browsing the software and local documents. The spammer hangs on chains in the background, mouth duct-taped shut).

Police officer: Looks like we have some serious shit here. You have operated a spam outfit for more than 6 months. Lets see.... aha. Viagra ? Super viagra ? Breast enhancement pills ? And.... wtf, you sick shit. Osama Bin laden Bestiality porn ? Boy, I guess I'm gonna have to call up some pipe-hittin' niggers, and in 10 minutes they're gonna be here, getting medival on your ass with a blowtorch and a pair of pliers....

(Man, now known to be a spammer, squirms and moans loudly in the background. Music from Pulp Fiction rape scene fades in. Shot of house from outside, as music goes full blast).

THE END!
Re:Wrong legal consequences. by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · 2004-01-11 02:56 · Score: 1

Police Officer: This is a SPAM search!! We have a report that large amounts of Viagra scam mail has been sent from this house! We have a warrant to search the premesis! Get down on teh ground, NOW!!!

Erm... Those weren't cops, dude. Shoulda read the writing on the back of the jacket, and checked what the letters meant.

--
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Re:Wrong legal consequences. by lastberserker · 2004-01-11 03:02 · Score: 1

Of course, you won't do something imhumane like they do in Saudi-Arabia - cutting of fingers etc. You would just give them a decent spanking.
Behold the power of masochist spammers! =8-Z

--
My other Beowulf cluster is... er...
Re:Wrong legal consequences. by gbjbaanb · 2004-01-11 03:27 · Score: 2, Funny

You would just give them a decent spanking. And they would remember that. Furthermore this would be much cheaper than traditional punishment.

Really? As I understand it, a decent spanking costs upwards of $200 per hour. How is that more cost-effective than a fine, and furthermore, that punishment would surely only *increase* the amount of a certain type of porn spam. :)
Re:Wrong legal consequences. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 05:41 · Score: 0

And the extra features on the DVD? Director's commentary that reveals that the "actor" in the scene was actually Alan Ralsky. Then, behind-the-scenes footage showing that they really *did* go medieval on him, but instead of pliers and blowtorches, they just let Jeff Stryker (google for it) fuck him in the ass for ten hours.

The deluxe edition, of course, would actually include the rape footage.

Aah, to dream.

Re:Being second sucks. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 00:48 · Score: 0

1) Moz comes with support for that built-in. M$IE SUXORZ
2) Mozilla/win32...?
3) Loser.

"compliant" spam... by Doppleganger · 2004-01-11 00:48 · Score: 5, Interesting

I actually received a spam the other day that claimed it was CAN SPAM compliant.

It seems someone got the bright idea to take the portion of the law that specifies the primary purpose of an email literally. So the top part of the mail (proudly pointed out as the "primary purpose") was a short joke. Then the email went on to its "secondary purpose"...

And at the bottom, of course, was a disclaimer that stated again which part was the "primary" purpose and which was the "secondary", just in case you hadn't noticed the big notices above.

I'd love to see someone try to argue this point of view to a judge with a straight face...

Re:"compliant" spam... by orthogonal · 2004-01-11 01:19 · Score: 3, Funny

I'd love to see someone try to argue this point of view to a judge with a straight face...

<voice ='Darl McBride'>Let me be the first to recommend David Boies; it's amazing the things he can argue with a straight face. For instance, did you know the GPL is unconstitutional?

Oh, and that'll be $699.00 for the advice....</voice>

--
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Re:"compliant" spam... by DarkFencer · 2004-01-11 02:49 · Score: 2, Interesting

The spam filter I run for large mail server recently contained a rule update that adds points to any message mentioning the CAN-SPAM law (or the H.R. Bill number of CAN-SPAM).

If someone puts that in their message they are either a semi-legitimate spammer trying to comply with the law (but still a spammer), or a completely illegitimate spammer trying to give themselves some semblance of legality.
Re:"compliant" spam... by Kent+Recal · 2004-01-11 05:33 · Score: 1

*shrug*
i don't get it, can't you just paste the damn thing?
Re:"compliant" spam... by Doppleganger · 2004-01-11 05:47 · Score: 1

Don't have it available, but this is pretty close...
---------

A man walked into a bar today... Ouch!
The primary purpose of this email was to bring you the FREE Joke of the Week! The secondary purpose is to bring you information about..

Be ROCK SOLID all night long!!
[insert rest of typical spam here]

DISCLAIMER: This is Not a Commercial Email Message and is Exempt From Guidelines Outlined in US Code S.877
The Primary Purpose of this Email is Not a Commercial Advertisement or Promotion of a Commercial Product or Service.
Re:"compliant" spam... by StarOwl · 2004-01-11 07:37 · Score: 1

Just for yucks, I went hunting through my spambox to find one of these so-called CAN-SPAM compliant spams.

It was sent to a variation of my address harvested off a comp.dcom.telecom post I made in August 1996, contains a phony return email address, and was sent via a box in Korea.

Dear Mr. Spammer: just because you say it's CAN-SPAM compliant, doesn't make it so.

Lucky for you, the CAN-SPAM bill prevents me from attempting legal action against you, even if I could identify you.

Gotta love Congress. Run by mostly clueless elephants and donkies.

And now what? by tacocat · 2004-01-11 00:51 · Score: 5, Insightful

Now that we've pretty much proven the the current Congress is entirely incapable of doing squat for it's voting constituents (and worlds for their Special Interest, PACs, and Business/Corporate campaign contributors) I am wondering what will really happen next.

This is pretty clear evidence that Congress doesn't really do a great job in protecting the interests of the voting public.

It seems to me that these people have forgotten that while we live in an Economic system called a Capitalist system, we live in a Political system called a Democracy. They are not the same system and not the same functionally.

Business has done an excellent job at protecting themselves at every turn under the banners of "Don't hurt the already ill economy" or "Free Trade, Capitalism forever" without any voices standing up for the basic rights of the voting public.

I would have expected that the issues surrounding the Internet would have become more political by now, but I believe I assumed that more people would care about these things. Recently I have been approached by a number of people who honestly thought that the CAN-SPAM law was going to solve all their problems. They thought I was full of BS when I told them CAN-SPAM actually legalized spam. But then they never read it and I did.

The reality is this: Congress will never really do anything to protect the private citizen unless there is some Corporation behind the initiative to either make money, or block their competition. I haven't really seen anything of late that would contradict this. Have you?

Re:And now what? by DukeLinux · 2004-01-11 02:07 · Score: 4, Insightful

I agree. Politicians can virtually take their votes for granted. The districts are so gerrymandered that it guarantees a select party will always take the seat. Also most people vote along party lines thinking that there is actually a difference. The rhetoric is different but the end result is the same: bigger government, higher taxes and less freedom. I vote against all incumbants. I do not favor any particular party and I try to understand the issues. Unfortunately, we are given little choice at the polls since things are so highly controlled. I would like to see some other countries come in and monitor our "free elections" for a change. They are a joke and so are we. As long as the peasants put up with the status quo then I guess we will get what we deserve. Perhaps when the American economy consists only of CEOs, Laywers and burger flippers people will get a clue...but I am not hopeful.
Re:And now what? by pjrc · 2004-01-11 02:43 · Score: 3, Insightful

Don't forget that voters also elected in a republican majority to both the house and senate, and floria fiasco aside (still nearly 50%) voted for a republican president.
Now, you were saying something about congress passing an act that favors big business and "doesn't really do a great job in protecting the interests if the voting public"....
It's pretty obvious that the voting public, faced with only two (viable) rather similar political parties, had chosen the one that clearly favors economic interests and opposes government regulation of business.
CAN-SPAM certainly appears to be a failure at regulating spam, but to call it a failure of democracy would be to ignore the will of the majority of voters, who clearly elected a majority of republicans to both the house and senate, and who showed strong support for Bush 3.5 years ago (even if the result was a "toss up").

--
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
Re:And now what? by kindbud · 2004-01-11 07:36 · Score: 1

This is pretty clear evidence that Congress doesn't really do a great job in protecting the interests of the voting public.

Letting Bush & Co. run roughshod over the Constitution wasn't sufficiently convincing, but failing to contain spam was? Oh brother...

--
Edith Keeler Must Die
Re:And now what? by kcbrown · 2004-01-11 08:17 · Score: 1

It seems to me that these people have forgotten that while we live in an Economic system called a Capitalist system, we live in a Political system called a Democracy. They are not the same system and not the same functionally.

They are the same system in the U.S.. This is because the sources of information that people use to make their decisions about who to vote for are owned by a small number of very large corporations that use their influence over what people see and hear to promote candidates that will behave as they (the media corporations) and their pals wish.
So if you're a candidate, you can kiss your candidacy goodbye unless you've made it clear to the media corps that you're willing to do what they want.
Even if the system weren't so rigged behind the scenes, it still blatantly and obviously favors those with money, since at the very least you have to have a lot of money to pay for all the advertising that goes with campaigning. Those candidates who have the most money get it from those entities that have the most money to give: large corporations.
So no matter how you slice it, the U.S. is a democracy in name only. In reality, it's a corporate plutocracy with the appearance of a democracy, and hence very much a "capitalist" political system.

--
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
Re:And now what? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 08:21 · Score: 0

I hate to break the bad news to you, but people who actually are vocal about wanting an anti-spam law are a minority. Yes, tha majority of americans are internet users, and the majority of those spam receivers, but most of them just don't care enough.

The essential problem is that in a two-party system the two parties, to compete more effectively for voters, start changing their viewpoints to represent the average (actually: median) voter. This has resulted in both the republican and democratic party basically reflecting the same ideas. What the republican party's extremists have been doing though is interesting. They're changing public perception of what is the average (everybody wants to be average) through the media (fox news and so on), so they can follow the crowds while getting closer to their own beliefs.

I say get rid of political parties. They offer very little benefit to the regular voter, and they distort the political process beyond reason.
Re:And now what? by jsebrech · 2004-01-11 08:24 · Score: 1

"Free Trade, Capitalism forever"

The free market economy's most efficient market model is free and complete competition. This requires that there are so many sellers and so many buyers that prices are set by supply and demand, rather than what's most profitable. Most of the pressure groups that use these pro-market arguments actually want to move away from a free market, and more towards an oligopoly (riaa) or monopoly (microsoft).

So, if you want to know the enemies of capitalism, just look at who is bribing the politicians.
Re:And now what? by B.D.Mills · 2004-01-11 10:36 · Score: 1

Congress will never really do anything to protect the private citizen

I read somewhere about an interesting tactic used some time ago to get the message across to these 'representatives'.

If you are a group with limited funds, what you do is you pick one particularly clueless incumbent representative in a seat that can change hands, and you focus all your attention on getting that representative voted out. Fund their opponents. Discredit the representative. If you can get that representative voted out, then you can send a clear message that you mean business. After that, you may find representatives more willing to listen to your group.

--

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke

Big EMAIL List by Nadsat · 2004-01-11 00:52 · Score: 4, Insightful

Well, in the meantime, the US Government is getting a large email list. Can anyone guess how it will first be used? Elections? Non-Profit group?

--

The Custom Mary

Re:Big EMAIL List by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 01:29 · Score: 0

Reservations for dinner and accomodation at Guantanamo Bay?
Re:Big EMAIL List by fractaltiger · 2004-01-11 05:05 · Score: 1

Nadsat said:

Well, in the meantime, the US Government is getting a large email list. Can anyone guess how it will first be used?

Aw crap! Thanks a lot slashdot! X-|

I just realized I'm already in it 'cause I have been sending forwarding my SPAM to that antispam address, uce@ftc.gov. So they have my mailto: headers for about 3 active accounts. At least this one I can opt out of legally and be sure that govt email can't be "illegally" refusing opt outs. But still.

--
"Wireless : LAN :: Laptop : Desktop"

In other equally shocking news... by arvindn · 2004-01-11 00:52 · Score: 4, Funny

SCO is not complying with the GPL ;^)

CAN-SPAM - Forces in the Ground by leoaugust · 2004-01-11 00:52 · Score: 4, Funny

The Onion Version of the CAN-SPAM

Adapted from An Article on War Advisors on Yahoo

Bush CAN-SPAM advisors: unfound Reductions in Spam (RIS)matter little - Perle & Frum Jan 09, 2004

Two of President George W. Bush's CAN-SPAM advisors said that the US inability to find legal spam in cyberspace means little.

"I don't think that you can draw any conclusion from the fact that the stockpiles of complaint spam were not found," Pentagon advisor Richard Perle said at the American Enterprise Institute.

Perle said he did not fear that the United States would lose credibility after Bush used spammers supposed weapons of mass mailings of SEX-SPAM as his principal justification for going to war with spammers.

"If others are going to take the view that, because these Reductions in Spam - aka RIS - weren't found, nothing that the United States says can be trusted -- there's not much we can do about that," he said. "It would be a foolish conclusion to draw."

On Thursday, another Washington think-tank, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said in a report that the US "administration officials systematically misrepresented the threat from Spam and SEX-SPAM."

However, Perle said the war on cyberspace was justified: "I think that what was done was right and prudent."

Perle appeared with Robert Frum, the former Bush speech writer who coined "Axis of Liberals." They were two of the hardline members of the administration who argued the need to Can Spam by CAN-SPAM.

Perle and Frum's book, "An End to Evil," promotes the so-called neo-conservative use of military force to pacify the world including the cyberspace.

They take aim at Saudi Arabia, US politicians, journalists and France -- all of whom they said stand in the way of Bush's "War on Terror."

"What troubles us is a pretty persistent Open Relay Mail Servers policy of trying to weaken and marginalize the United States within cyberspace," Perle said.

"All we ask from Spammers is that, in the construction of Spam as a political and commercial tool, spammers think of themselves as a partner with the United States in the protection of Western civilization. That's not a lot to ask."

"Let me add, I think FSF runs the very great risk of becoming isolated."

Frum, who left the White House in 2003, was as unswerving as Bush himself.

"Sometimes the right answer, when a person has a grievance against you, is to say: 'You're completely mistaken; that grievance comes out of a completely wrong way of looking at the world and you're just going to have to get over it'," Frum said.

We're not going to change."

--
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies ...

Re:CAN-SPAM - Forces in the Ground by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 04:00 · Score: 0

...which will be debunked in time together with all the other fake "We found WMDs!" claims.
I mean, it's practically debunked already. They've been buried for at least ten years, almost certainly a lot longer, and it appears to have been an attempt to destroy them. Regardless of whether they broke the letter of the UN resolutions (which right now seems unlikely), they certainly were unusable.
If the Bush apologists are going to use this as an argument for how Iraq was a real threat to the US, they better be prepared for being laughed at harder than ever before.
Re:CAN-SPAM - Forces in the Ground by GSloop · 2004-01-11 06:22 · Score: 1

Yes, they had mustard gas...

You know, that flatulance that comes from eating too much mustard.

Surely that's a WMD!

(As I've said before...)
---
Set this in context of what was accused... ...by the president in his State of the Union message. Anyone who listened to that speech would now reasonably expect our forces to be finding "25,000 liters" of anthrax, "38,000 liters" of botulinum toxin, "500 tons" of sarin,
mustard and VX nerve agent, and "29,984" munitions capable of delivering chemical agents -- along with a hidden nuclear weapons industry.

If these were "realistic" estimates of what Saddam had, and they were being honest about it, it's certainly not the kind of thing one smuggles out of the country under your shirt or hidden in your trousers. It's not the quantity that can be easily and quickly destroyed, especially without
notice.

So, was the imagery intentially deceptive? Was it intended to simply have shock value?

If these weapons DID exist, which, given the other statements and the credibility of the administrations, I don't believe they did - again, if they did, where are they now?

We'd better hope either that there were NONE, of that if there were, that we find them. Because if there were and we don't, then the only answer is "we don't know who has them."

Since the war was basically conducted to prevent the transfer of WMD to "bad-guys" or terrorists, then the very objective we used to promote the war was the outcome of it.

Frankly, IMHO, the President gave the whole world a bill of goods that was a total crock. The was was not justifiable on the WMD grounds. What might be a reasonable justification was the brutal dictator himself.

Yet to play that card, one would have to account for the US's part in arming and looking the other way when he did the dirty work for us. (Like attacking Iran and using WMD, which we provided intelligence data to make it more effective.) We forget how the US encouraged the Shia and Kurds to rise up against Saddam and then let them get cut down like wheat.

No, going to war against Iraq on humanitarian grounds wouldn't sell, certainly not for the hawks in this administration. And if we go to war on humanitarian grounds, then why was Bush so opposed to our involvement in Bosnia and the other conflicts around Serbia?
---

WMD, Bah! This whole revalation will disappear faster than the accusations that those mobile labs were for weapons production instead of hydrogen.

If you believe the above, then I've got beachfront property for sale in Nevada. Oh, a bridge too!

Cheers,
Greg

CAN-SPAM!!! So they can spam by deadmongrel · 2004-01-11 00:53 · Score: 4, Insightful

hey the act said they "CAN-SPAM" so they spammed. guess they are complient!. Seriously Law should be the first line of defence and shouldn't be the last one. enforcing a law internationally is very very difficult.I am not sure why this is even a news. I am sure this law is just a joke for most of the companies 'cause there would be loop holes which they can exploit.

Even if they are complient there are spam anyway. I don't think it makes much of a difference.

In Other News... by thrills33ker · 2004-01-11 00:54 · Score: 5, Funny

- Pope found to be Catholic. - Scientists conclude sky is "blue". - Evidence found of bear defacating in woods.

Re:In Other News... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 01:35 · Score: 1, Funny

You forgot "Frog's ass watertight." :)
~~~
Re:In Other News... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 02:26 · Score: 1, Funny

Scientists conclude sky is "blue".
No! It's all just part of a vast conspiracy! The sky is really green and they alter the pictures!
Re:In Other News... by LordK3nn3th · 2004-01-11 05:55 · Score: 1

Actually, it's black, the water vapor in the air just makes it appear blue (by scattering blue light from the sun).

--

---
Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.

Re:Being second sucks. by Mod+Me+God · 2004-01-11 00:56 · Score: 1

I think it is beastiality.

--
-- FreeNET user? Comfortable with the adverse selection?

Internet Death Penalty by Graabein · 2004-01-11 01:00 · Score: 5, Interesting

Anyone remember the USENET Death Penalty?

Methinks we have to get a little more drastic in order to have any effect on spam. I mean, everything else seems to fail.

Let's get extreme and start dropping packets from entire /24s from which spam is originating. In extreme cases, let's drop entire spam friendly ISPs. This is the only way to get rid of pink contracts, if all the customers of an ISP suddenly find that large parts of the Internet become unreachable to them.

If an ISP finds itself dropped from routing tables and unable to reach most/all of the rest of the 'net, I have a feeling they will get tough on spam and on clueless customers with open relays/proxies real fast. They'll have to, or they'll be out of business.

Yeah, I know this is extreme and drastic, but what else is there? SPF records won't be effective, laws don't do squat (a: because this is a global problem and b: because law enforcement haven't got the resources/motivation/whatever to enforce the laws anyway).

I'm just getting so sick and tired of these antisocial scumbags ruining email for the rest of us.

--
And remember kids: Never trust a computer you can actually lift.

Re:Internet Death Penalty by xlsior · 2004-01-11 01:47 · Score: 5, Interesting

Let's get extreme and start dropping packets from entire /24s from which spam is originating

Nice... Except you need to be *very* cautious about which /24's you're willing to drop, because part of the problem of spam these days is that is originates everywhere.Zombies, free trial accounts, hit-and-run dialup spammers, open relays, etc. Spam is something that affects every ISP these days, to greater or lesser extend.

As soon as you start blocking AOL and Earthlink's IP blocks because of the high volume of spam you get from them, you will also lose customers by the droves because all of a sudden they can't receive mail from their grandma anymore.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for spam filtering, as well as hitting the spammers themselves where it hurts, but 'extreme blocking' will hurt you and your own customers more than it will hurt the spammer.

Most spammers won't even see the rejections caused by your networks, since some other poor guy will be on the receiving end of all their bounces, and they truly won't care.

I personally use SpamBayes (Free, open source) for my spam filtering, which does an unbelievably good job of detecting spam, with no false positives so far. Written in Python, runs on Windows as well as Linux. http://spambayes.sourceforge.net
Re:Internet Death Penalty by dfeist · 2004-01-11 01:48 · Score: 2, Interesting

That _is_ worse than spam itself. You may be annoyed by spam, but I find it worse if my mail gets dropped because of some overzealous anti-spam-measures. First time it happened to me was when the SMTP-server of my provider was blocked by some list. So what should I do? Abandon my e-mail address and hope that it won't happen again? Yeah, thanks.
And now, it is not even possible to send mail from dialup addresses anymore - it is blocked. What happened to the beauty of the anarchistic system??? Mails not having "ASMTP" in the headers will now get blocked, too ... Soon we'll have whitelists?
That could stil be acceptable if it yielded any results. But it didn't. As far as I can see, more than 90% of the spam I get would not be blocked by any of those blocklists.

IP blocking is pointless. If you want less spam, use spamassassin or another decent and intelligent filter. I configured it very moderately (9 points to be marked as spam), it blocks 95% of all spam and I have not seen false positives yet.

--
Unix makes easy tasks hard and hard tasks possible. Windows makes easy tasks easy and hard tasks $29.95.
Re:Internet Death Penalty by jellomizer · 2004-01-11 01:54 · Score: 2, Insightful

Ok now the real problem is who is going to enforce it.
You don't want one large company to make the decision for you because then they can just block all their competitors because they were "Spamming people" with their technical newsletters that they signed up for.
Having the government control it could be seen as a form of censoring information, and besides the government will be really expensive and take for ever to get things done, "You call them up to tell them that you closed your open relays, they check it out (by opening the routing table checking it and then closing it) and go yep your all set your now running spam free please wait 4 to 6 weeks until your operational again.
You don't want those little small companies/organizations like the ones who do blacklisting do it. Because if they don't like you they wont put it back up and these people will have to go threw hundreds or thousands of these little companies to start their network again.
If you are to tough on "Spam Friendly ISP" which are often smaller ISP to may or may not like Spam and sell the guy bandwidth and go here is your internet connection we promise not to filter any of your date or monitor any of your information anything illegal you do is your responsibility not yours.

My proposal is much more simpler. Most of the Spam (The Illegal Stuff especially) goes thew open relays (which are often operated by incompetent sysadmins or by people who don't know better), Now if you fine the relay $1000 a week for leaving wide open. Then most likely most people will close it. Now here is the good part $500 a week of the fine money goes to the person/organization who discovered the open relay. Now $1000 a week may not seem to much for those big corporation (but most of those have pretty tight systems) but for those small companies $1000 a week is a good chunk of cash but not normally enough to put them out of business, but they would be happy to put the extra time and/or money to fix the problem to avoid the expenses. Now with a lot of the relays closed and the people who are fining them have extra cash in their pockets. There is a lot less illegal spam and the spam that does go threw will be much more manageable (because the routing to the abuser is far more visible and more easily enforced.

--
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Re:Internet Death Penalty by LiquidCoooled · 2004-01-11 01:55 · Score: 2, Informative

SPF records CAN work - consider if the majority of ISPs in your own country start using them. 99% of your email comes from your own friends and family within the country, and would be catered for. The rouge ISPs that DONT publish the records can all go to hell as long as my friends can contact me.

I realise that for certain public addresses SPF wont work, since the idea is to hear from unknown customers no matter where they are, but for the normal user it should cut down on a greater majority of it.

--
liqbase :: faster than paper
Re:Internet Death Penalty by pjrc · 2004-01-11 03:07 · Score: 1

Let's get extreme and start dropping packets from entire /24s from which spam is originating.
This is exactly what many of the blacklists have been attempting for quite some time. Create collateral damage to put pressure on ISPs. It hasn't stopped spam, but it has put a lot of pressure on ISPs and caused spammers a lot of pain.
Fortunately, most people don't believe in harming innocent bystanders, and nowadays, most anti-spam filters are evaluted both on how few false positives as well as how much spam is remove.
But dropping packets, and not just discarding or rejecting email messages, is another completely different matter. A lot has been written about how the usefulness and degree of freedom of internet communication depends on backbone providers NOT giving preference to some types of packets over others. This is a huge fundamental issue, and you can find many slashdot "stores" that link to much writing on this important topic, mostly by Lessig.
The short story is that backbone providers dropping packets based on their source, destination, or content is a very dangerous matter than threatens the freedom of all internet communication.
Yeah, I know this is extreme and drastic, but what else is there?
You can't think of a good solution, so therefore an obviously very bad one is justified?
SPF records won't be effective,
SPF is designed to stop forgery, and if widely deployed, it probably will do that pretty effectively. Since the final design spec was frozen only 32 days ago, it's still a bit early to write SPF off as a failure.
laws don't do squat (a: because this is a global problem and b: because law enforcement haven't got the resources/motivation/whatever to enforce the laws anyway).
The CAN-SPAM law probably won't do much. But this is more a matter of the will (or lack thereof) of those who enacted it. Remember that both the house, senate and president are republican.... so a pro-business, anti-regulation stance is what one should expect.
Regarding those two points:
a: Most spammers are in the United States
b: laws can, if worded correctly, provide funding or other mechanisms for enforcement. Just because CAN-SPAM fails to do this doesn't mean a pro-regulation, anti-business law couldn't set asside funds and resources and lower the bar for enforcement.

--
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
Re:Internet Death Penalty by Hoser+McMoose · 2004-01-11 05:50 · Score: 1

Open relays are defintiely yesterday's technology, they are rarely used by spammers anymore (mainly because there aren't nearly as many of them anymore and there are so many easier methods for spammers to use).

These days it's all done through open proxies or special spamming applications. These are setup using worms and proxies (SoBig, MiMail, etc.) and run on the systems of your average everyday joe-user with broadband connections. Sure, you could fine all these users (though you could only do so in a country by country basis), but do you really want to fine someone's grandmother just because she didn't install the latest patch to her Windows box (or her Mac, or whatever other OS she happens to be running that was compromised)? This would certainly not be a popular law with anyone except the most ovezealous geeks.
Re:Internet Death Penalty by ahodgson · 2004-01-11 08:29 · Score: 1

Do you really want to fine people who don't maintain their cars, keep their signal lights and brakes working? That would certainly not be a popular law with anyone except the most overzealous drivers.
Re:Internet Death Penalty by DynaSoar · 2004-01-11 10:18 · Score: 1

Graabein (96715) sez: "Anyone remember the USENET Death Penalty?...Let's get extreme and start dropping packets from entire /24s from which spam is originating."

Yes, I remember the UDPs well, particularly the UUNet action. I spent 48 straight hours talking to media people about it. I was the press contact. (Some stuff about it is archived at www.sputum.com).

You missed the point on how a UDP operated. Yes, there were massive cancel messages sent to control.cancel. But that would have accomplished very little. They didn;t care if their customers spammed as long as they got paid. They wouldn't have cared if their customers' spam didn't get seen as long as they got paid.

What got their attention was the media coverage. We made sure UUNet was made out to be the bad guy by providing ample evidence that they were not being a good net.neighbor and that we had made every reasonable attempt to get them to stop. They had something to lose that we could never have touched without the press being involved: their stock prices.

Spam is not just a technical problem, it's also a social problem. Therefore the solution will be both technical and social. An IDP would work, but only if it included the associated publicity. Black hole type efforts either only approach the technical end, or just fail to adequately make the necessary information public enough.

And yes, there was, and would be, collateral damage. Some innocent people were lost to usenet during the UDPs. The vast majority of email we received from those affected understood what was going on and why, and wrote to express support.

Note too that an IDP would be conducted with the same parameter of participation: 100% voluntary. Cancel messages to usenet are processed or not according to each newsadmin's choice; they control the switch on their own system. We could not, nor wanted to, force anyone's participation. The same with mailadmins who use filters or black hole lists. They choose to use them or not. They would have notice by the list's source that such an action was upcoming, as long as they paid attention to news updated coming from their filter source. If they failed to pay attention, then either they're operating irresponsibly, or they implicitly trust their filter source.

--
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Re:Internet Death Penalty by darien · 2004-01-11 11:05 · Score: 1

Hey, I just started using the Windows version of SpamBayes today and so far I'd recommend it very highly. I used to use POPFile, but SpamBayes' integration with MS Outlook is something else. You can even have a column in your inbox view showing the % probability assigned to each message of its being spam (scores above a user-specified score are automatically moved to a junk folder). Very good stuff.
Re:Internet Death Penalty by owlstead · 2004-01-11 14:36 · Score: 2, Insightful

Yup, my ISP has actually gone to court to stop spammers (they won, hear hear). They scan for open relays on their clients hosts and they block the smtp port by default (you can switch that off though). Still they appear on blocklists now and then.

If extreme blocking would just be hitting the innocent I am all for it. But we must make pretty sure that the scheme is actually doing this. A lot of guys are hosting pretty usefull mailinglists on this ISP's accounts. We don't want to loose those against the fight against spammers.
Re:Internet Death Penalty by owlstead · 2004-01-11 14:38 · Score: 1

If extreme blocking would just be hitting the innocent

Don't drink and slashdot, that's all I am saying.

D'oh!
Re:Internet Death Penalty by drinkypoo · 2004-01-11 19:34 · Score: 1

I think I speak for many other people (though probably not a majority) when I say fuck those guys. The only real problem with open relay lists and such is that it's too hard to get off of them. People deserve to be added to a blackhole list when they are an open spam relay, because through their negligence of whatever sort, they are enabling spammers to spam.
Of course, on the other hand, if people would use spam blocking software on their email servers, at the very least blocking known relays (though, see point number one for caveats) then we would have far less of a problem.
And, on the gripping hand, if the idiots who buy stuff from spammers (or hell, just those who buy stuff from links in spam) would cut it out, then the spammers would stop. As always, it comes down to the consumer in a capitalistic society.

--
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:Internet Death Penalty by JuggleGeek · 2004-01-12 08:08 · Score: 1

Let's get extreme and start dropping packets from entire /24s from which spam is originating.
Haven't you heard of spews.org? If you use the Spews DNSBL list then you've got the thing you just asked for.
It will cut down on the amount of spam by a huge amount. And it does it early - as soon as the spammer tries to send mail, your mail-server takes the sending systems IP and runs it through the DNS check. If it's listed as a spammer, then it doesn't allow them to deliver the mail at all, which saves bandwidth. That's the good news.
The bad news is that if you do this, you're trusting someone you don't know (SPEWS is an annonymous group) to decide who is spamming, who should be listed, who shouldn't, etc. And since SPEWS does do the "escalation" that you ask for, it's just a matter of time before you find out that someone you *want* to receive email from is sending from a SPEWS listed IP.
For some people, that's acceptable. For others, it isn't.
Similarly, whether you use SPEWS or not, it's quite possible that you'll find yourself listed at some point. Since they escalate, it's quite possible that one spammer on a cable-modem account can get lots of other cable modem users listed. It's similarly possible that one SWBell DSL user can get a large number of other DSL users listed. And if you happen to be using one of those listed IP's, that could be you.
I'm not pro-SPEWS or anti-SPEWS. I think it's a good solution for some people. For others, there is too high a risk of legitimate mail being refused due to being listed. I personally don't use them - but I'm glad they exist, as I believe they do put additional pressure on spam-friendly ISP's.

No, you got it all wrong... by John+Seminal · 2004-01-11 01:02 · Score: 1

For those 3 out of 1000 emails that complied to the can spam law, I bet you they were not of the viagra variety. So filtering the compliant emails will not fix anything. For the hell of it, why not block anything that is not can spam compliant and only allow the compliant email in. Is that possible?

I have an idea. Why not use a slashdot like feature with emails? You can have your friends, foes and such. And you can rate -1 to +5 sources of email. And you can set a threshold for what emails you accept. Something like accept all emails from friends, and anything with a +2 or higher. All we would need is one database to keep track of the ratings.

--

Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."

Re:No, you got it all wrong... by fjin · 2004-01-11 01:27 · Score: 5, Informative

You haven't heard before about:
Spamassassin
SpamAssassin(tm) is a mail filter to identify spam.
Using its rule base, it uses a wide range of heuristic tests on mail headers and body text to identify "spam", also known as unsolicited commercial email.

and Razor
What is Vipul's Razor?
Vipul's Razor is a distributed, collaborative, spam detection and filtering network. Through user contribution, Razor establishes a distributed and constantly updating catalogue of spam in propagation that is consulted by email clients to filter out known spam. Detection is done with statistical and randomized signatures that efficiently spot mutating spam content. User input is validated through reputation assignments based on consensus on report and revoke assertions which in turn is used for computing confidence values associated with individual signatures.
Re:No, you got it all wrong... by Pembers · 2004-01-11 01:38 · Score: 1

Why not use a slashdot like feature with emails?

Such things already exist. Try a Google search on "realtime blackhole list".

All we would need is one database to keep track of the ratings.

Well, if it's like Slashdot's moderation system, it would be subject to all the same abuses that Slashdot itself (allegedly) is. But it seems the spammers already have pretty good tools for dealing with centralised blacklist databases.

--
Just another wannabe fantasy novelist...
Re:No, you got it all wrong... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 01:41 · Score: 0

Why not use a slashdot like feature with emails?
Have slashdot delete them like this message will be before you know it.
Re:No, you got it all wrong... by AndroidCat · 2004-01-11 02:13 · Score: 1

If you want to learn more about semantic webs and Friend Of A Friend systems (and Enemy Of An Enemy too, no doubt), then starting points would be FOAF Vocabulary Specification and RDF Interest Group You don't always need a central database for this, but it helps.

--
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Re:No, you got it all wrong... by ahknight · 2004-01-11 02:48 · Score: 3, Insightful

What is Vipul's Razor?

It compares your mail to everyone else's spam to see if it's spam, too.

(Was that so hard?)
Re:No, you got it all wrong... by Felinoid · 2004-01-11 05:31 · Score: 1

For those 3 out of 1000 emails that complied to the can spam law,
He was suggesting filtering the spam that clamed to comply not spam that actually complys.

Remember "This is not spam" apearing in just about every peace of spam in the early days?

In the early days every spammer was trying to redefine spam as "everyone else".
Some called it S.P.A.M. an accranym giving spam a unique deffinition.
Some clamed spam was a Usenet only thing.
Some just clamed they weren't spamming.

So I have no doupt that any spammer clamming to comply with the Can-Spam law do so becouse they don't actually do anything of the sort.

Spammers like to believe they can redefine laws to mean anything they want them to mean.

--
I don't actually exist.
Re:No, you got it all wrong... by geminidomino · 2004-01-12 15:47 · Score: 1

I have an idea. Why not use a slashdot like feature with emails? You can have your friends, foes and such. And you can rate -1 to +5 sources of email. And you can set a threshold for what emails you accept. Something like accept all emails from friends, and anything with a +2 or higher. All we would need is one database to keep track of the ratings.
The problem with this is the same problem as "opt-out" links (assuming the spammers actually honored those in the first place). Basically you have to let every single spamming scumbag hit you at least once. The problem with programs like SpamAssassin (which I do use on anything that gets past my blocks) is that they wait until the mail is ON your server to do thier magic, thus they're still sucking the bandwidth that the RECEIVER pays for.

Re:Being second sucks. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 01:06 · Score: 0

Mozilla is bloated, slow and most important of all: downright ugly. Why the fucking hell do you expect me to install this huge pile of shit just to view a picture of some ugly hag eating shit or whatever?

Re:Being second sucks. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 01:08 · Score: 0

*shrug* Get Firebird. :P

Re:Being second sucks. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 01:10 · Score: 0

Nooooooo! Just post a LINK.

Rule #1 - Spammers Lie by csk_1975 · 2004-01-11 01:11 · Score: 3, Interesting

Of the 1452 spam I received in my 3 accounts this weekend there are 157 references mentioning compliance with the Can-Spam act. Twenty of these said that they complied by including a valid reply address, a valid postal address and a working removal mechanism. The only one which actually met all of these criteria was from hurricane-map.com sent to an administrative address - 69.6.58.0/23 is blocked to everything else but to this address :-(.

So Scott Richter, one of the most infamous spammers on the planet, doesn't seem to be complying with Rule #1, what is the world coming to?

CAN-SPAM's already making things worse, not better by Maestro4k · 2004-01-11 01:11 · Score: 4, Interesting

Starting shortly after 12/16 when the bill was signed the amount of spam I received on an older account roughly doubled. I wasn't too surprised, figured a few spammers were desperately trying to send out as much spam as possible before 1/1.

Well, after 1/1 the amount of spam I receive on that account went up again. Right now it's about triple the amount before 12/16, and quickly pushing on four times it. I'm also seeing more efforts at E-mail guessing (sending E-mails to every possible combination of account names at a given host). These are pretty obvious when they show up on an account that's never been used, and has never (and still isn't) listed anywhere on the Internet (or otherwise).

From where I'm sitting, looks like the spammers are having a field day, and the only thing that's changed is the problem got worse. Thanks congress, remind me to vote against all incumbents next election.

Re:Finally by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 01:14 · Score: 0

How can a question about CAN-SPAM in a story about CAN-SPAM be offtopic?

Re:Being second sucks. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 01:16 · Score: 0

You really must become a more customer-oriented troll, you know.

Re:Being second sucks. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 01:20 · Score: 0

Unfortunately /. corrupts the link. (swallows all ;,/) Unless I use normal "outside" link... which requires outside webspace. And the whole concept behind this troll is that it's SLASHDOT that hosts the image (which is illegal in great most of states)

No kidding, violation logs from today... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 01:21 · Score: 5, Informative

As I understand it, CAN-SPAM makes it illegal to use open proxies to relay messages. We run a proxy scanner on every email that comes into our server, through an exim pipe. Any sending host which is an open proxy on a common port is reported to us via IRC. The following IRC log can be explained one of three ways:

[01:02] <SpamBot> SpamTrap found a proxy! 82.138.193.50 (host1.greenwichtraining.adsl.telecomplete.net) [ 01:05] <SpamBot> SpamTrap found a proxy! 200.95.36.167 (dsl-200-95-36-167.prod-infinitum.com.mx) [01:08] <SpamBot> SpamTrap found a proxy! 200.45.247.170 (host247170.arnet.net.ar) [01:41] <SpamBot> SpamTrap found a proxy! 200.90.212.26 (26-212-90.adsl.terra.cl) [01:41] <SpamBot> SpamTrap found a proxy! 200.95.74.41 (dsl-200-95-74-41.prod-infinitum.com.mx) [01:59] <SpamBot> SpamTrap found a proxy! 218.75.131.4 (218.75.131.4) [02:10] <SpamBot> SpamTrap found a proxy! 194.2.149.201 (194.2.149.201) [02:18] <SpamBot> SpamTrap found a proxy! 61.233.205.110 (61.233.205.110) [02:29] <SpamBot> SpamTrap found a proxy! 200.84.79.92 (dC8544F5C.dslam-03-24-3-02-01-01.rmg.dsl.cantv.ne t) [02:37] <SpamBot> SpamTrap found a proxy! 81.134.29.16 (host81-134-29-16.in-addr.btopenworld.com) [02:55 ] <SpamBot> SpamTrap found a proxy! 200.43.19.71 (dsl-200-43-19-71.users.telpin.com.ar) [02:57] <SpamBot> SpamTrap found a proxy! 200.225.210.173 (iplus-ura-225-210-173.xdsl-fixo.ctbcnetsuper.com. br) [03:07] <SpamBot> SpamTrap found a proxy! 200.42.43.63 (200-42-43-63.dsl.prima.net.ar) [03:27] <SpamBot> SpamTrap found a proxy! 62.236.142.192 (62-236-142-192.hpna.wlannet.com) [04:50] <SpamBot> SpamTrap found a proxy! 81.225.52.204 (h204n5c1o1044.bredband.skanova.com)

[Note: rogue spaces in the timestamps were inserted by Slashdot.]

1) USA-based spammers don't give a shit about the new law

2) Overseas-based spammers have increased exponentially

3) USA-based spammers are offshoring just like every other IT industry

Will we soon be inundated with reports of Bangalore being the spam capitol of the world? After all, they aren't subject to the jurisdiction of USA-based spam laws. Forget offshoring your tech support, now you can offshore your spamming operations and be in total compliance with the law...

Re:No kidding, violation logs from today... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 03:06 · Score: 0

No kidding wrote:

> As I understand it, CAN-SPAM makes it illegal to use open proxies to relay messages. We run a proxy scanner on every email that comes into our server, through an exim pipe. Any sending host which is an open proxy on a common port is reported to us via IRC.

Ohhhh, I *like* it! Use it to update your DNS RBL's on a dynamic basis, so only the first such spam gets through.

Do you have a published hook to the code, so I can bring mention of it to the spam conference at MIT next week?
Re:No kidding, violation logs from today... by mousse-man · 2004-01-11 05:40 · Score: 1

I suspect the only way to nab US spammers is to use foreign laws against them and have them walk into the trap when they go on holiday somewhere. I'd personally hate to be charged with theft in Saudi Arabia...
Re:No kidding, violation logs from today... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 12:42 · Score: 0

Try:
qmail-relayreject obviously you can build reporting to IRC, rrd, syslog, etc

spam section of qmail add-ons

smart spam throttle

It goes on and on, and that is just the stuff for qmail...

Re:Being second sucks. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 01:26 · Score: 0

http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2397.html

Welcome to 2001 by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 01:26 · Score: 0

The UDP is nothing compared to SPEWS.

Your description fits spews.org (the Spam Prevention Early Warning System, a/k/a SPEWS) perfectly. SPEWS has been in operation for a few years now. If a spammer is in your /24, your /24 will be listed and nobody there can send email to SPEWS subscribers.

Re:Welcome to 2001 by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 01:49 · Score: 3, Interesting

Yup. SPEWS is what happens when spam drives people into an insanity like the one the original poster is on the verge of. Dropping entire blocks results in 'collateral damage' (non-offenders getting blocked) and there's no real rationalization (though many or offered by the likes of SPEWS) that can justify that. No, not even 'well the innocent victims can crusade against the ip provider and serve our just cause in effecting change'. Get real. When it happened to me I just switched to an ip on a different block for the mail server. I say SPEWS can go fuck themselves. And I think that's a pretty common reaction for non-spammers who suffer from them. In the end they defeat themselves by making enemies not only of spammers, but everyone who hasn't quite lost their sanity. Granted, sanity can be hard to hang onto sometimes when considering the spam problem, but it's worth making the effort in the long run.
Re:Welcome to 2001 by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 09:46 · Score: 0

You still think as if it's not the ISP's fault they let people spam. This isn't the 1990s when nearly all spam was sent from broken-into mail servers. Nowadays, many ISPs make money by offering their services to spammers at a premium. You can't block the spammer's specific IP anymore, because the ISP will change the spammer to a different IP and place an innocent customer in the blocked IP. If you block a smaller range of addresses, the ISP moves the spammer to an unblocked range. Eventually, you have to block the entire ISP, and such blocks don't happen on lists like SPEWS unless the earlier steps have already been tried.

The people who have "lost their sanity" are spam tolerators like Something Awful, which openly supports its ISP's spamming because the extra revenue from spamming lowers the cost of service for them.
Re:Welcome to 2001 by jcr · 2004-01-11 11:00 · Score: 1

I say SPEWS can go fuck themselves.

Nobody says you have to use their list. I'll use it, because it's effective.

-jcr

--
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."

Re:Being second sucks. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 01:27 · Score: 0

Okay, okay, great. So I just decoded it with mimencode. So whose hole is it? A monkey's? Or is it just some really ugly nigger woman?

Re:Being second sucks. by SharpFang · 2004-01-11 01:32 · Score: 1

Man, that's the most beautiful animal in the world! A mare!

--
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2

thank you. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 01:36 · Score: 1, Interesting

Now I have something to point to when people go on and on about how bad South Korea is for spam. I know that they are bad when it comes to security (read open proxies), but for the most part, South Korean spammers abide by the regulation that they must put [ADV] in the subject line of the message.

Re:thank you. by AndroidCat · 2004-01-11 04:09 · Score: 1

The amount of spam I've received routed through South Korea has declined over the last couple of years. It peaked when all the schools installed the same distro with open proxies (and other problems), but has tapered off. Possible causes: fixing installations, general blocking of Korea (causing spammers to avoid it), and the huge availablity of open proxy home machines on DSL elsewhere. I doubt it's due to Korean ISPs aquiring clue or a working abuse address.

--
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Re:thank you. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 04:25 · Score: 0

It's definitely not due to Korean ISPs acquiring a clue, I can tell you that.

Re:Being second sucks. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 01:36 · Score: 0

Aaah. Sex with a mare. I get it. Tee hee. Oh well.

Good luck with your future trolls here on ./

In other news... by haxor.dk · 2004-01-11 01:47 · Score: 3, Funny

A new study suggests that dictators are shown to be significantly more brutal than democratically elected officials, and big businesses usually fuck the consumer more over than small businesses.

What a fucking surprise!

(please excuse the irony).

prediction by VanillaCoke420 · 2004-01-11 01:47 · Score: 3, Funny

Now when we've had spammers that doesn't care about anti-spam laws, I guess that we'll have greedy lawyers and lying politicians any day now...

SPAM statistics. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 01:55 · Score: 1, Informative

Over the last three weeks my mail gateway has caught 65400 pieces of spam, 186 claim to be can-spam complient... Go go CAN-SPAM...

PS Thank you Spamassasin team!

Spammer are liars and stupid... by NoSuchGuy · 2004-01-11 01:57 · Score: 1

but their customers are bloody stupid when they are suckers for "penis patches", "bigger breast" and "everlasting erections"....?

Britons buying fake Viagra.

--
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/

Headline News by Jonathan+Quince · 2004-01-11 01:59 · Score: 2, Funny

Politicians Lie, Cheat, Break Campaign Promises
Violence in Middle East
Slashdotter Criticizes Microsoft
Dog Bites Man
CAN-SPAM Does Nothing To Reduce Spam, Study Finds

--
Microsoft Windows is, fittingly, the official Desktop OS of Olig

(mod parent up please) by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 02:01 · Score: 0

You would post something so informative after I've used my last mod point.

Silly Fools.... by Gorillaka · 2004-01-11 02:07 · Score: 5, Insightful

Analogy: Certain groups are upset with the amount of rugby being played over in Austailia. So they lobby congress and have a bill passed against it. But wait! They're still playing rugby in Austrailia.. what happened, we passed laws against it!?

Most of the spam does NOT come from the US. It's retarded to assume that these spammers all over the world are expected to change their core business model because the US passes some law.

"But wait, I know that a lot of the ringleaders behind all this MUST be in the US". Sure.. but the reason they can hide themselves so well is because they're breaking a dozen other more serious laws in the process of sending out their crap. CANSPAM is seriously the least of their worries.

The spam situation in the world right now is one of those things we'll tell our grandchildren about some day.. as someone growing up under globalization will laugh at the 'crazy' notion that two individuals on the same internet weren't governed by the exact same set of laws.

So anyway, until full globalization is upon us (hey.. I guess the one perk is that it'll cut down on spam), your best bet is to upgrade your filters and use Shadango.com. In case any of you haven't heard yet, Shadango allows you to check all of your accounts from one interface (imap, pop, aol, y!, hotmail, etc), PLUS if filters ALL of them for you in real time. I seriously did not believe it worked until I tried it.. I've actually had the first spam-free week since the mid 90s. Check it out.. it works.

That's my two cents

Kevin

Re:Silly Fools.... by Brainiac252 · 2004-01-11 02:21 · Score: 2, Informative

Yo, I was involved in the alpha testing of shadango awhile ago. When I signed up I used the word "alpha10" in the promotional code box. It got me a paid tester account...i think it might still work. Plus, they recently started filtering POP accounts so now the amt of spam I get on my hotmail has dropped considerably. From my experience Shadango is definitely worth the try. Ian Welsh
Re:Silly Fools.... by benkrembs · 2004-01-11 02:33 · Score: 1, Informative

Somebody please mod the parent up! The whole slashdot crowd can hear this message once and for all -- most spam does not come from the US!! Seriously. And the rest of the world can give a sh*t about the laws we pass.

As an example, here's a summary from the crap I submitted to spamcop this morning.. ".il, .it, .fr, .pi". Hmmmm... I don't even know what backwards country those tlds are from, but I do notice a pattern. No .com

Our laws will have no affect on the big fish.. maybe there will be a few highly publicized cases of some newbie, stupid spammers being prosecuted under this law, but believe me: you can expect to find your Inbox fuller than ever this coming year.

I keep seeing tunnels at the end of all these lights,

Ben
Re:Silly Fools.... by arkhan_jg · 2004-01-11 02:44 · Score: 4, Insightful

Moust of the spam does NOT come from the US. It's retarded to assume that these spammers all over the world are expected to change their core business model because the US passes some law.
I think you are incorrect in this assumption. spamhaus shows that, of the 200 or so top spammers (that create 90% of the spam) almost all are american or canadian based. They are also invariably advertising US goods and websites, priced in US dollars, from US-based companies, with the one exception of nigerian scammers. If America can get it's house in order, then the world spam problem will be massively reduced.
Admittedly, much of the spam is bounced off asian proxies, or trojaned windows boxes; but that just shows that american and european ISP's crackdown on open relays and spammers is having at least some effect.
What NEEDS to happen is
a) much greater action by american law enforcement for fraud by the sellers and spammers, along with prosecution of the other major offenses.
b) laws specifically drafted to make spam illegal, unless opt-in, with heavy penalties and again, strong enforcement.
Client side spam filters are a sticking-plaster on an amputated limb. They help filter your own mail, at the risk of false positives (which are increasing, given the increasing attempts by spammers to make their mail pass baynesian filters). They do nothing to reduce the massive load on the infrastructure caused by spammers.
Currently, this is a US problem that is affecting the world.

--
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
Re:Silly Fools.... by soothsayer491 · 2004-01-11 02:52 · Score: 3, Interesting

Very good point.. but you did leave out one of the 'up and coming' spam launching points -- zombie computers.

I recently upgraded a few networks at a local school, and noticed two very sluggish machines. They were the same build as the rest of them, but seemed to be working pretty hard even when they were just sitting there unused. I suspected a problem, so I isolated them and scanned their hard drives. I found a virus -- nothing unusual there (it is a public school) -- but I also found that they were firing off spam as fast as they could work. No mass email program had been installed, but it was working through a backdoor that the virus had opened.
Very good point.. but you did leave out one of the 'up and coming' spam launching points -- zombie computers.

I recently upgraded a few networks at a local school, and noticed two very sluggish machines. They were the same build as the rest of them, but seemed to be working pretty hard even when they were just sitting there unused. I suspected a problem, so I isolated them and scanned their hard drives. I found a virus -- nothing unusual there (it is a public school) -- but I also found that they were firing off spam as fast as they could work. No mass email program had been installed, but it was working through a backdoor that the virus had opened.

I've heard about this happening in the past, but I'd never witnessed it first hand. I was alone in the room, and it kinda sends chills down your spine to realize that somebody else in the world is also using that machine, and that they'll notice when you turn it off. I mean, I'm sure he had a million others.. but still.. creepy.

I wanted to delve into the problem further -- to see how he was controlling them, and from where -- but alas, I was running short on time as it is. Also, an individual like this obviously has 0 morals anyway.. I'd hate for him to find out I was the one who shut down some of his handywork.

Anyone else had experience like this?
Re:Silly Fools.... by Hanno · 2004-01-11 03:40 · Score: 4, Interesting

Most of the spam does NOT come from the US.

It DOES. It's only RELAYED through foreign computers.

Professional American spammers set up boxes and rape relays outside of the US to avoid being linked with the originating IP of their spam.

Some of the best known spammers are known to have hired servers at Asian and Third World providers. And then there are the current waves of mail viruses that turn the victims' computers into spam relays, also with the primary intention of setting up a network of spam relays to hide the spam's origin.

But most of the professional spammers DO operate from Northern America. Look up the listings on Spamhaus.

(And yes, we in Europe have the same problem. There is a Swiss professional spammer who has set up his computers in South America and a German spam gang using computers in Holland and Eastern Europe. It's easy to hide your tracks that way. But the spam DOES originate in Switzerland and Germany, it's only RELAYED through other countries.)

--

------------------
You may like my a cappella music
Re:Silly Fools.... by Hanno · 2004-01-11 03:42 · Score: 3, Interesting

most spam does not come from the US!! Seriously. And the rest of the world can give a sh*t about the laws we pass. [..] Our laws will have no affect on the big fish.

The big fish are Americans.

--

------------------
You may like my a cappella music
Re:Silly Fools.... by jez9999 · 2004-01-11 04:04 · Score: 2, Funny

here's a summary from the crap I submitted to spamcop this morning.. ".il, .it, .fr, .pi". Hmmmm... I don't even know what backwards country those tlds are from

Israel, Italy, France. Yup, really backward countries, I can see! :-)

As for .pi, it doesn't appear to exist. Maybe you got an e-mail from a particularly overzealous mathematician.

--
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Re:Silly Fools.... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-12 02:18 · Score: 0

If you attempt to claim competency on spam, please tell us if you just look at the sender's e-mail addresses or the web domains that the spam refers to. In the future, check the web domains with whois, and think again.

freedom of Speech by MonkeysKickAss · 2004-01-11 02:11 · Score: 1, Funny

As an American people have the right to spam others because of the freedom of speech act in our bill of rights but there are limits. Who can decide who has a bigger voice, if all men are created equall then why are there some people that have more power than others and have a bigger sayn in what happens. This is message is just saying that people should haved the freedom of speech, I myself do not condone spam but just was putting out the facts Thank You

--
MonkeysKickAss

Re:freedom of Speech by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 05:51 · Score: 0

As an American people have the right to spam others because of the freedom of speech act in our bill of rights

a) There is no "freedom of speech act" in your bill of rights.

b) spam is not speech.

c) you are an idiot.

if all men are created equall

Clearly, they are not. You, my friend, are exhibit A.
Re:freedom of Speech by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-12 02:20 · Score: 0

As an American people you have the right to babble internally. That's it. So as long as you keep the spam within the US borders I'm fine with it.

Is the solution already in the pipeline? by Tau+Zero · 2004-01-11 02:12 · Score: 2, Interesting

As soon as you start blocking AOL and Earthlink's IP blocks because of the high volume of spam you get from them...

If AOL and Earthlink implement SPF correctly, and also throttle outgoing mail to prevent use by spammers (say, 1 message per minute), wouldn't that effectively make them useless to spammers without affecting grandma in the least?

--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.

Re:Is the solution already in the pipeline? by dfeist · 2004-01-11 03:43 · Score: 1

One message per minute is not acceptable. I sometimes do send much more e-mail. It can be legitimate to send mail to more than one person.

For me, there is _nothing_ worse than a legitimate e-mail not coming through - especially if it's without notice. And in my experience, blocklists are not effective against spam, and it was more than one time that I could not send someone a mail because of some blocklist.
And what's the point - Spammers have circumvented every anti-spam measure so far. Statistical analysis is the only prevention method that yields acceptable results.

--
Unix makes easy tasks hard and hard tasks possible. Windows makes easy tasks easy and hard tasks $29.95.

Reminds me of the so-called 'do not call' list by filtersweep · 2004-01-11 02:12 · Score: 2, Interesting

I berated a 'sales consultant' that definitely sounded more like a telemarketer, although he claimed it was a 'courtesy call.' When I mentioned that I was on a do-not-call list (I don't know if there is a federal one that has any teeth yet, but we do have a state list) he claimed that they were exempt because "we" had a 'prior business arrangement.' His reponse sounded very scripted, meaning they had anticipated curmudgeons such as myself protesting. This prior business arrangement was dubiously linked to a warranty card I had filled out for some product made by a subsidiary company.

There will be all sorts of loop-holes... and all the caveats attached to the emails will take up even more bandwidth- just as arguing with a telemarketer about a calling list wastes even more time.

The pathetic aspect of all this is someone somewhere is making money on it, or it would not exist-

--

Those that suggest you "dance like no one is watching" really want to see you make a complete fool of yourself.

Re:Reminds me of the so-called 'do not call' list by /dev/trash · 2004-01-11 05:43 · Score: 2, Insightful

Yeah the "Prior business arrangment" part needs clarified but the more important question is why did you fill out and return the warranty card in the first place?
Re:Reminds me of the so-called 'do not call' list by gcaseye6677 · 2004-01-11 11:19 · Score: 1

Its garbage like this that does not make me the slightest bit sympathetic to jobs being lost in the 'annoyance marketing industry'. When a company uses tactics that are obviously unwanted by their supposed customers, they should go out of business. For companies that are affected by new laws aimed at spam or telemarketing, there is a way they could improve their bottom line: Stop selling crap that nobody wants. If the only way a product can be sold is to trick or berate someone into buying it, sales are SUPPOSED to suffer. I am not the slightest bit impressed by companies who make some lame excuse about why they can legally telemarket or spam me after I've made it clear that I don't want their solicitations.

source and blocks by midgley · 2004-01-11 02:18 · Score: 2, Insightful

Much of the spam I get appears to come from the US, but clearly the spammers can buy hosting in other areas as life is made harder for them in the US.

What is as relevant is that no legitimate email comes to me from (for instance) the Chinas, and little from the rest of Asia, whereas there are people I want to hear from in the US.

So I can easily block large IP ranges but I cannot easily do that against the US spammers.

This idea is stupid by keeboo · 2004-01-11 02:19 · Score: 2, Insightful

Let's get extreme and start dropping packets from entire /24s from which spam is originating. In extreme cases, let's drop entire spam friendly ISPs.
This is the only way to get rid of pink contracts, if all the customers of an ISP suddenly find that large parts of the Internet become unreachable to them.

Righ... Let's say you get some SPAM from an ISP in Argentina (200.x.x.x) - "oh, let's block the entire /24".
Great idea, now not only you blocked the whole country, but almost the entire South America.

Unfortunately the IP gluttony in the Northen Hemisphere didn't leave much IPs left to the "3rd World". -- Thus, you can't treat the networks here as if you were in the Asia or Europe.

Re:This idea is stupid by AndroidCat · 2004-01-11 02:35 · Score: 1

Dropping 200.x.x.x would be dropping an /8. Perhaps extreme, but I don't know anyone in South America, and could easily whitelist them if I did. Get some ISPs that are serious about abuse, and people and blocklists will probably be glad to open holes for their net-blocks.

--
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Re:This idea is stupid by abreauj · 2004-01-11 09:43 · Score: 2, Informative

Righ... Let's say you get some SPAM from an ISP in Argentina (200.x.x.x) - "oh, let's block the entire /24". Great idea, now not only you blocked the whole country, but almost the entire South America.

I don't believe the entire South American continent shares a single IP range containing only 254 useable addresses.

What you describe here, 200.x.x.x, is a /8, not a /24. A /24 might be something like 200.47.218.x
Re:This idea is stupid by OzPixel · 2004-01-11 13:26 · Score: 1

Someone wrote :
I don't believe the entire South American continent shares a single IP range containing only 254 useable addresses.

What you describe here, 200.x.x.x, is a /8, not a /24. A /24 might be something like 200.47.218.x

(for once, I agree with the people who say there should be a "-1, Wrong" moderation).

You have it exactly backwards - 200.x.x.x represents a range of IP addresses where the first 8 bits are known (11001000), and the remaining 24 are unknown (those 'x's above). Thus, a /24 network, 16 million-odd addresses, starting from 200.0.0.0 and going to 200.255.255.255.
200.47.218.x is a /8.
Re:This idea is stupid by ahodgson · 2004-01-13 11:28 · Score: 1

No, you have it exactly backwards. the /8 or the /24 refer to the number of bits in the address that signify the network portion of the address. a /8 is 16 million-odd addresses. A /24 is 256 addresses.

Not me by krewemaynard · 2004-01-11 02:39 · Score: 1

this almost deserves an i-told-you-so. spam is not a problem that will be solved by legislation alone, no matter how well (or poorly) it's written. spam laws will only create confusion, needless worries for legitimate email uses, and government overhead.

the spam solution will ultimately be a combo of clear, concise law (HA), tech-based solutions (like verifying the sender, etc), and user savvy.

--krewe

--
I saw it on Slashdot, it must be true!

Re:Not me by Anonym0us+Cow+Herd · 2004-01-11 03:27 · Score: 1

spam is not a problem that will be solved by legislation alone

The junk fax problem was getting out of control in the early 90's. (NINTEEN-ninties that is)

That one was solved by legislation PLUS enforcement.

--
The price of freedom is eternal litigation.
Re:Not me by theCoder · 2004-01-11 06:20 · Score: 1

tech-based solutions (like verifying the sender, etc)

I fear this will never happen either, unfortunately. I say this because there is already (and has been around for years) a way to do this, but very few people use it. The very simple solution is to sign all your messages. No changes to SMTP or DNS or other mail infastructure are required, so all it takes is for individuals to start doing it. If everyone starts signing their email, then Spammers will have to as well, or risk getting sent to the bit bucket. Just the act of signing will increase their costs (CPU time to compute the sign), but it also causes them to be easily identified. It wouldn't take long for people to start a list of known spamming keys (signed, of course, so the spammers couldn't mess that up). In theory, spammers could generate a key for each spam (or groups of spam), but that would still increase their costs.

As an added bonus, people would have an easy way to start encrypting messages sent to one another. I'm still waiting to hear why this wouldn't work (and it's too hard doesn't count -- the existing anti-spam methods already make my life too hard).

I sign all my outgoing email messages. If you do as well, that's great! If not, why not?

--
"Save the whales, feed the hungry, free the mallocs" -- author unknown
Re:Not me by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 06:54 · Score: 0

spam is not a problem that will be solved by legislation alone, no matter how well (or poorly) it's written.

That's right - the spam problem will only be contained when the real-life identities of the spammers have been determined, and they have been slowly tortured to death on public TV as an example to other spammers.
Re:Not me by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 10:33 · Score: 1, Informative

Back in the day, when Outlook was growing in popularity, Microsoft made a decision which has forever tarnished e-mail - making HTML e-mails the default.

What they *could* have done, which would have benefited everyone, would be incorporating encryption/signing in their e-mail product. Then everyone would be using it by now, instead of HTML crap.

Oh well.
Re:Not me by jcr · 2004-01-11 10:37 · Score: 1

The Junk FAX problem wasn't solved, it was reduced by legislation and enforcement. The biggest junk faxer (Sanford Wallace) went on to spamming e-mail , and I expect that e-mail has simply superseded junk faxing since it's more lucrative for that kind of scum.

Nevertheless, I'm still seeing pump-and-dump stock scams in the incoming fax bin at my office, as well as a smattering of people trying to sell us inkjet and copier supplies. All in all, the junk faxes coming into our department total about eight or nine messages a day.

-jcr

--
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."

Spammers are people too by cmwck · 2004-01-11 02:39 · Score: 0, Redundant

It's nice to see that the kind folks at the DMA are finally standing up for the spammer's right to send America billions of email ads for stuff it doesn't need and won't buy.

This "opt-out" rule is completely backwards. This implies the general public wants to be bombarded with crap by default, unless otherwise specified. And the only way you can "otherwise specify" is by going through hundreds of opt-out procedures for each specific spammer. We might as well just highlight them all and hit delete like we've allways done.

Other countries seem to be on the right track, though. In the UK, you have to opt in if companies want to send you spam (unless you're allready their customer), and in Italy the maximum penalty for spamming is 3 years in prison as well as big fines.

Why do I have a sneaking suspicion that if we were to have some law completely barring unsolicited spam that groups like the DMA would have a Free Speech fit and call it unconstitutional?

--
-C.

Spam vs. TV commercials by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · 2004-01-11 02:45 · Score: 2, Insightful

Do you cry because television stations have commercials without asking for your consent?

No, but then it doesn't cost me money to download commercials, the commercials go towards supporting the programmes I actually want to watch, commercials provide a useful break during longer programmes, and it takes me no effort to ignore a commercial without them building up until my TV no longer shows me programmes any more.

--
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.

International law... by rotciv86 · 2004-01-11 02:59 · Score: 2, Insightful

How can we enforce spam laws on companies based offshore?

--

My ghEtt0 webpage.

Re:International law... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 03:38 · Score: 1, Informative

most spammers are USA or canadian based

http://www.spamhaus.org/rokso/index.lasso

ain't truth a bitch

Bob the SPAMMER... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 03:05 · Score: 0

CAN he SPAM it? Bob the SPAMMER, yes he CAN.

Here's an even bigger shock by joebagodonuts · 2004-01-11 03:08 · Score: 1

: A company that sells products to block spam conducts a study that finds that there is still a need for products that they sell.

I just find it ironic.

--
"Give a woman two glasses of wine and some pad thai, and they'll agree to just about anything." the Sports Guy

Re:Here's an even bigger shock by Kent+Recal · 2004-01-11 04:55 · Score: 1

It's called grass root marketing.

You guys are so pessimistic by big-magic · 2004-01-11 03:12 · Score: 1

The CAN-SPAM act has only been in effect a couple weeks. Did you expect miracles? I don't know what the ultimate effectiveness of this law will be. It may never work. But if the FTC starts really cracking down, the lives of hard core spammers could get very interesting. But I suspect the FTC will wait some time before they do anything. That way, anyone still not in compliance will have no excuse.

Although the spam problem looks pretty ugly today, I think with a few simple changes it can be brought under control. I believe a combination of CAN-SPAM, deployment of SPF, and wide spread use of tools like spamassassin (or similar) will take a real bite out of the spam problem. It won't be any one thing, it will be a combination of small things.

SPAM detection by Baron_Yam · 2004-01-11 03:16 · Score: 1

Should it not be relatively easy to detect a brute force E-mail guessing attempt? I'd say that if you get a series of emails to several different bad email addresses in a very short period of time, you should automatically block the IP address from which they are coming.

Of course, I also regularly see dictionary attacks against mailservers where someone's script is trying to get in as 'root' 'admin' or 'administrator'. One of these days I need to get around to logging and blocking that.

Re:SPAM detection by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 06:54 · Score: 0

Should it not be relatively easy to detect a brute force E-mail guessing attempt?

Sure it is. Sendmail has had that option for some time, it's called BAD_RCPT_THROTTLE. Put this in your sendmail.mc file (it will make sendmail pause after 3 bad recipients):

define(`confBAD_RCPT_THROTTLE', 3)dnl

Unfortunately, the default pause time is only 1 second. You need to edit the srvrsmtp.c file. Look for "Possible SMTP RCPT flood" in the source code, and a few lines below that is "(void) sleep(1);" change it to "(void) sleep(3600);" which will make sendmail pause for an hour.
Re:SPAM detection by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 08:32 · Score: 0

Actually, I think this isn't as effective as you would hope it is. Spammers could easily set their tcp timeouts so that this wouldn't work all that well. A better approach is to still communicate, but do it really slowly (take 50 seconds for every tcp ack, and make sure you ask for lots of resends).

how 'bout the "U CAN SPAM" act? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 03:18 · Score: 2, Insightful

"You CAN indeed SPAM" is probably what the authors intended.

Most spammers ARE from the US by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 03:22 · Score: 2, Insightful

get your head out the sand, blind patriot
http://www.spamhaus.org/rokso/index.lasso

I - for one - am getting less spam now by Hjallli · 2004-01-11 03:24 · Score: 1

For some reason I have been receiving a lot less spam in the past few days than I did before. So have a lot of my friends (and yes we are using different email servers, even in different continents). I doubt that we can thank the flawed CAN SPAM legislation, but what else could it be?

It would be interesting to hear if others have noticed the same and have theories on why this is happening.

Physical punishment? by finelinebob · 2004-01-11 03:40 · Score: 1

Lock'em up and make them eat ... SPAM!

Don't believe you by Tim+Ward · 2004-01-11 03:41 · Score: 1

Most spammers are from overseas in non-cooperative countries (with the US). This is a US law. What do they care?

The vast majority of spam I get is US-based. Sure, it's been passed through a Chinese server or a hacked Italian ADSL box on the way, but the request to send US dollars to a US postal address is sometimes a bit of a give-away.

Apart from the Nigerian stuff, most of which seems come from Amsterdam these days, spam is very largely a US product.

Does this new law make it illegal for US citizens to spam foreigners (whether or not using an offshore relay)? Thought not. Business as usual.

They don't bust spammers for fraud, either by swb · 2004-01-11 03:42 · Score: 3, Informative

So why should they bust them for violating the spam law? The government has totally ignored the absolutely fraudulent nature of spamvertised products, despite the fact that the money trail is easier to follow than the email trail.

I suspect there will be political pressure to "bust" a couple of spammers, and they probably will nail a couple of small-timers and will trumpet it as a success, saying something like "Mr. Spam King sent over one million spam messages" -- the same bogus logic used in drug busts, when they value the drugs based on their smallest-possible-street-transaction value instead of the likely wholesale value.

Part of the reason I think there will be little enforcement, at least from the Bush administration, is that I've read that mainstream businesses are actually profiting from spam indirectly by selling customer lists that include email addresses. They don't sell directly to spammers, but they filter through direct marketers who ultimately DO sell to spammers.

OK..What Would You Do? by reallocate · 2004-01-11 03:48 · Score: 3, Insightful

>> An anti-spam law ought to ensure that people do not receive spam.

How would you propose doing that? Making something illegal doesn't make it go away. One might as well argue that "an anti-murder law ought to ensure that people do not commit murder."

Fine or arrest everyone who creates spam? OK. What's your definition of spam?

Mandate changes to SMTP? OK, but the cost of implementing the changes will be paid by you and me.

Mandate some kind of magic spam blocking code in all operating systems and mail programs? OK, but if legislation can compel you to use one kind of software, it can compel you not to use another.

No one likes spam. But, stompinmg your feet and decaliming that someone ought to make it go away isn't especially useful.

--
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"

Cut the purse strings. by rotciv86 · 2004-01-11 03:49 · Score: 2, Insightful

The spammers must be making money from sending all this spam, how many people actually click through and order the junk being peddled? I imagine if nobody ordered anything from spammers there'd end up being no profit and no reason to spam.

--

My ghEtt0 webpage.

It seems like either could be accurate by UnRDJ · 2004-01-11 03:59 · Score: 1

I think what he meant was to "CAN" (as in get rid of) spammers.

Heh by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 04:06 · Score: 0

I love the idea that this is news to you. :)

"Well, gosh, the Congress always stood up for the little guy before, or so we thought. But then along come this CAN-SPAM act and blam, their cover is blown. Turns out they're just handing out pork to their friends in their districts! If it weren't for this bill, we might have never known!

I believe this is what a spammer would respond... by bennomatic · 2004-01-11 04:30 · Score: 1

apices concretion insight megawatt millet gaberones fluency insect browbeaten atropos necklace superposable churchgoing abrasion ignore american rhetorician imperative beverly fro against downhill presentation prognosis chickadee will goniometer snobbish alizarin leprosy incorrect gyrfalcon diagnostic incontrovertible holly clapboard slate warranty sloganeer protagonist methodology cage homesick insult helen botulism sclerotic transmute

Those f****ers are wreaking havoc with my filters!

--
The CB App. What's your 20?

Re:Cut the purse strings. by mark-t · 2004-01-11 04:41 · Score: 1

The chief problem with that is that you can't possibly know for certain that the person whose product is being advertised by the spam ever endorsed the spamming in the first place.

If you penalize the person who actually sells the product advertised in spam, then what stops a person from spamming with ads for their competitor or some other company the spammer may not like simply in order to cause that company some financial discomfort?

--
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'

Another shocking development! by Rick+Zeman · 2004-01-11 04:58 · Score: 1

Kitten naps.

Remember, you don't have to be a moron to be a politician...but it sure helps.

Mad libs! by GQuon · 2004-01-11 05:01 · Score: 2, Informative

Recently. spammers have been trying to train spam traps with random words. It's alsmost like seing the words put into a mad libs exercise.
Will this confuse filters like spamassassin?

P.S. One of the more interresting ones I got follows. What is an appellant hazelnut? And can diseases be exorcised?

insinuate guilty overture aegean mcelroy emery niggardly bobbin briggs pushout creed quizzes return accomplish explanatory cofactor frances melissa biharmonic his milieu alphabet groom septate appellant hazelnut diphtheria exorcise

--
Irene KHAAAAAAN!

Re:Mad libs! by eggboard · 2004-01-11 05:58 · Score: 1

I assume that this is an attempt to defeat Bayesian filters by filling them with words that would reduce the efficiency of statistical analysis. But it doesn't seem to: the various Bayesian filters that are in spam-matching software I use identify them without fail.

--
Freelance tech journalist for the Economist, MIT Technology Review, Macworld, and others
Re:Mad libs! by kindbud · 2004-01-11 07:23 · Score: 1

Will this confuse filters like spamassassin?

No, it doesn't. The SpamAssassin rules are independent of the Bayesian analysis. Those rules match on the other text, the stuff that actually tries to sell you something, or get you to click on something.

The effect it would have on the Bayesian filters is to give those words closer to a neutral score, to the extent that they also appear in ordinary emails that the Bayesian system has learned. But the remaining words that only spammers use would end up being scored higher. How many regular emails do you get that use the words "diptheria" or "biharmonic."? Do any of your friends use the word "niggardly" or "milieu" on a regular basis? Dictionary attacks on the Bayesian system only seem to make it more able to recognize dictionary attacks. :)

--
Edith Keeler Must Die
Re:Mad libs! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 09:32 · Score: 0

This crap is insanely easy to filter..... Especially the ones that inject HTML tags in the body of the message or deliberately misspelled words.

I'm catching all of these quite effectively.
Re:Mad libs! by elemental23 · 2004-01-11 09:56 · Score: 1

Dada poetry! It's art!

--
I like my women like my coffee... pale and bitter.
Re:Mad libs! by drinkypoo · 2004-01-11 19:42 · Score: 1

At least Mozilla's spam filtering (and only release versions, I don't run nightlies any more, I want software to work and I don't want to spend time guessing which nightly I should be running) is confused by them. I get a lot of spam filter misses on spam with random and/or misspelled words in their subject and body. However, the spam filter in question should not be held up as an example, because it regularly decides that totally innocuous messages which my other filters have moved to other mailboxes are spam and should be re-queued when I enter that folder to read them. As such, I now have to enter my junk folder before any of my folders past the inbox, check and delete junk, THEN go read up in the other folders. Yay! I can't wait for a new Mozilla Thunderbird. Note that I had the same problem using Mozilla 1.6a, which I no longer use because Mozilla (and Mozilla Firebird shares this problem incidentally) was loading only partial pages in many cases.

--
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:Mad libs! by Steve+B · 2004-01-12 09:09 · Score: 1

This is an attempt to sabotage computer defenses for the purpose of gaining unauthorized access, and as such should be punished under existing computer-cracking laws (even if it doesn't work: an unsuccessful attempt to commit a crime is still a crime in itself).

--
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.

Re:CAN-SPAM's already making things worse, not bet by Rick+Zeman · 2004-01-11 05:12 · Score: 1

I'm getting roughly the same amount (~200/day...the perils of having the same email address since the innocent days of the internet).

The big difference I've seen, though, is they're all of the penis/ebay/paris hilton/viagra/drugs variety, all from open proxies and owned windoze boxen. What's totally vanished from my mailbox is spam from any company that pretended to have any legitimacy, the ones who sincerely pretended that I opted in, and the ones who didn't try to hide their origins.

I wonder if they scoured their "opt-in" lists and dropped me (doubtful), or if they're gearing up for the The Big Push CAN-SPAM or not, I'm not going to press any of their damn links to unsubscribe. I'll still report them to Spamcop.

Here's your fire... by $ASANY · 2004-01-11 05:27 · Score: 2, Informative

For those sites that make money from collecting information from spam victims, there is a way to fight back: check out Web Form Flooder at http://formflood.sourceforge.net

It's still beta, but I'm unaware of any other tools that allow you to strike back at a spammer. With it you can crapflood a spammer's database, and possibly render it economically useless. So if you're pissed at the hundredth mortgage quote solicitation, fire it up and get just a little bit of revenge.

Re:Here's your fire... by omega_cubed · 2004-01-11 07:53 · Score: 1

I've considered doing that many times, and even wrote my own scripts to do so. But if massive number of people adopt to flooding web forms, I see a natural medium for DDoS attacks:

Cracker: hum, I don't like [insert site name here], hah, they have a contact us page... now...
[sends out SPAM containing links to that page]
Instant /.!

--
Engineers also speak PDE, only in a different dialect.
Re:Here's your fire... by Pathwalker · 2004-01-11 15:08 · Score: 1

There's also Unsolicited Commando.

It's a small java based application that generates realistic appearing information, and submits it to web forms assigned by a central server.

Unsolicited Commando appears to be intended to keep generating a steady trickle of real looking bogus data, rather than trying to overload the database with a torrent of obvious junk.

This probably wastes more of the spammer's time than just dumping a lot of junk into the form, as the more realistic the fake entries appear, the more likely that the spammer will have to follow them up to check the accuracy.
Re:Here's your fire... by $ASANY · 2004-01-11 15:50 · Score: 1

I'm a HUGE fan of UC and I've talked to the developer frequently. I run it regularly. I think a lot more people should than do now. Web Form Flooder and Unsolicited Commando both do a good job of making the data they submit hard to diffentiate from normal traffic. Web Form Flooder can be configured to submit slowly or as fast as it can. In a lot of ways they're pretty similar.
The main difference is that with Unsolicited Commando you are executing "attack orders" that are issued from a central site. That is a great facility, as they do the work of identifying real spammers and it prevents abuse. Web Form Flooder allows the user to specify a target, which requires more personal responsibility but allows you to take more immediate action against a spammer that hits you. Web Form Flooder is still in beta and has a few quirks that are being worked on, but UC is pretty stable.
These two efforts are cross-pollinating each other to a degree. Web Form Flooder is GPL and may be influencing UC somewhat (It did at least cause a platform-independent version to be released) and formflood has used some of the ideas from UC. UC's client source code is released publicly, but the server side isn't. UC actually inspired formflood, since there wasn't a UC version that was Linux-friendly until only recently. The homepage for formflood has a link to UC.
The result is that there are multiple tools out there, both which are excellent, and handle the issue in slightly different ways. Should spammers find a way to protect against one, the other might still be effective while the other makes changes. With different algorithms used to generate random data, it's harder to identify bogus data. The more tools out there that do this, probably the better off we are.

What ISP has filed a lawsuit? by Animats · 2004-01-11 05:55 · Score: 1

ISPs can file lawsuits under this act. Have any been filed? Why not?

I want to subscribe to a service which sues spammers. The CAN-SPAM act's definition of an ISP seems to include a service like SpamCop. But SpamCop doesn't have a litigation staff, and their parent, IronPort sells spammer-friendly million-email-per-hour "mail delivery engines". We need a replacement for SpamCop which sues at least one spammer per month.

Re:What ISP has filed a lawsuit? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 09:45 · Score: 0

Still being unclear on the true meaning of what defines an ISP, I'm toying with the idea of providing a small public Mail server, but first want to establish myself as an ISP.

I still provide Email service, but only to a small circle of friends, but don't charge for the service, and it's clear that if you don't make money providing these services, then can't be considered an ISP.

Spamcop offers both free and pay services, so I suppose SpamCop would fall in that category, but i have yet to find a clear definition on just what an ISP is,
and what kinds of services one would want to provide to be considered as an ISP.

If I can get some clarity on that (still working on it), and if I can be an ISP if I offer a 'payed for' email service, and people would flock to my door, I assure you I would setup the most spam-free service possible, and vigerously track down and prosecute ANYONE violating any of my user's Email addresses.

I've already got an awsome collection of spam management modules in place and under test, and when completed, it can report up to 5000 spams per day with just 3 - 5 mins of setup prior to just letting it go off and report it.

I was thinking of starting off with about 100 customers, but people just abhore the thought of paying for email when they can get a Hotmail or Yahoo one for free.

Of course I would offer a lot of services unavailable anywhere else. But really folks, would people actually pay for such a service?

Use the RIAA's method by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 06:08 · Score: 0

Get some black leather jackets with "CAN-SPAM" on them in big yellow letters and find some ex-cops to wear them. Have your crack team of spam police hunt down spammers and make them sign over their computer hardware.

Rule #2 - When Spammers tell the truth see rule #1 by Felinoid · 2004-01-11 06:43 · Score: 1

Most spammers use the opt out list to sell to other spammers.

Scott Richter clames to be all for the anti-spam laws and runs a strictly opt in operation.
However this seams highly unlikely when he is also listed as one of the top spammers.

Refrence links:
Why Scott Richter is Doomed
PC world artical on spam
Microsoft artical This one on the illegal activitys of Scott Richter.

Scott Richter clames he's folowing all the rules but evedence suggests otherwise.

--
I don't actually exist.

Re: Should it not be relatively easy...? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 06:46 · Score: 0

Of course, I also regularly see dictionary attacks against mailservers where someone's script is trying to get in as 'root' 'admin' or 'administrator'. One of these days I need to get around to logging and blocking that.

...and you answer your own question. It is easy, but it's a low-priority iron on the fire. (And usually, those dictionary attacks are coming from a distributed zombie base.)

MX Logic speaking out of both sides? by EvilStein · 2004-01-11 06:59 · Score: 1

1|08|04

MX Logic Finds Nearly 100 Percent of Spam Not Compliant with New CAN-SPAM Law

12|16|03

MX Logic Applauds National Anti-Spam Law

-----
Ok, they applaud the CAN-SPAM act but then turn around and realize that it was a bad idea less than a month later. Heh.

Re:MX Logic speaking out of both sides? by empee · 2004-01-11 12:44 · Score: 1

You're an idiot.

"finding spam not compliant with new law" does NOT equal "realizes new law was a bad idea".
Re:MX Logic speaking out of both sides? by EvilStein · 2004-01-12 09:20 · Score: 1

There's no nead to be a dickhead. Name calling is childish.

It does seem a bit strange that a company who applauds the new law as "a step forward" would turn around and basically say "it's not working yet."

MX Logic also sells anti-spam solutions. It's in the ir best interest that CAN-SPAM *not* work. They can sell more anti-spam products that way.

If it's so spam friendly, by KalvinB · 2004-01-11 07:09 · Score: 0

why aren't they complying?

Because if they complied current big name filters would stop being idiotic and counterproductive and actually block spammers at a reasonable level of accuracy.

Stop being stupid and blocking IPs. It's counterproductive. You're throwing napalm on an ant hill and most of the time, the ant you're going after has already moved somewhere else.

It should be a punishable offense for such idiots who block legitimate IP from sending e-mails. If a company is using an ISP that happened to get a spammer onboard and the company ends up being blacklisted and losing business, the makers of the blacklist should rightfully be sued for lost business and denial of services. Imaine if a citizen set up a road block on a highway just because they heard criminals used it. When cops break into the wrong house, they get sued. So should blacklist runners.

It is not YOUR job to deny ME the ability to send e-mail just because someone on my IP range sent spam.

I've found simply filtering out links that spams contain is perfectly fine at getting rid of spam. And if spammers want to e-mail me, they still can. I only block their advertisments. That's the idea. You block the spam, not the person or legitimate e-mail.

I'd like to see lawsuits start being brought against blacklist runners and won. Their method is in many cases as reported on slashdot but not called as such, criminal.

A simple means to block spam Countless spammers link to the same URLs so block the URLs and you block countless spammers. Block 1 IP and you maybe block a spammer, and most likely piss off a legitimate user who's now using that IP.

Ben

--
Work Safe Porn

Re:If it's so spam friendly, by mousse-man · 2004-01-11 08:04 · Score: 1

The problem is that the whole SMTP conversation still takes place and eats up valuable bandwidth. Better kill the spammer's connection before it even comes to spewing.
Re:If it's so spam friendly, by Halo1 · 2004-01-11 08:48 · Score: 3, Informative

Stop being stupid and blocking IPs. It's counterproductive. You're throwing napalm on an ant hill and most of the time, the ant you're going after has already moved somewhere else.
If that were the case, almost nobody would use blacklists.
It should be a punishable offense for such idiots who block legitimate IP from sending e-mails.
The recipient has full rights to determine for himself who is legitimised to send him mail.
If a company is using an ISP that happened to get a spammer onboard and the company ends up being blacklisted and losing business, the makers of the blacklist should rightfully be sued for lost business and denial of services.
Blacklists don't block anyone's mail. Its users do, and those users have the full rights to decide who gets to make use of their property or the services they pay for.
Imaine if a citizen set up a road block on a highway just because they heard criminals used it.
Blacklists merely advise you to avoid a highway. They can not and do not block anything.
I'd like to see lawsuits start being brought against blacklist runners and won. Their method is in many cases as reported on slashdot but not called as such, criminal.
Voicing an opinion is actually one of the rights protected in pretty much every constitution around the world.

--
Donate free food here
Re:If it's so spam friendly, by the+eric+conspiracy · 2004-01-11 12:40 · Score: 1

Imaine if a citizen set up a road block on a highway just because they heard criminals used it. When cops break into the wrong house, they get sued. So should blacklist runners.

Imagine if somebody was calling your house 700 times a day with ads for porn, illegal drugs, fraudulent offers and attempts to steal your credit information. Wouldn't you take severe and immediate action to block those phone calls? Even if it meant that you might miss some calls from legal telemarketers?
Re:If it's so spam friendly, by arothmanmusic · 2004-01-11 16:48 · Score: 1

Blacklists don't block anyone's mail. Its users do, and those users have the full rights to decide who gets to make use of their property or the services they pay for.
I mentioned this above, but I'll repeat myself... the end user often has no clue what their ISP or company's anti-spam service is doing. I can't count the number of customers that we are no longer able to support via email at my office because their office's mail service bounces our mail as spam... we have to support them by phone now, costing us money and time.

Subscribing to a blacklist service is sort of like hiring a bouncer for your party. He probably does a good job of keeping out anyone uninvited. But what happens when you order a pizza and he punches the pizza guy in the face? No pizza for you!!! And you may not even find out that the pizza guy showed up until his employer calls to ask why you didn't pay for the pizza...
Re:If it's so spam friendly, by Halo1 · 2004-01-11 19:58 · Score: 1

I mentioned this above, but I'll repeat myself... the end user often has no clue what their ISP or company's anti-spam service is doing.
Then the ISP/company is at fault, not the blacklist.
Subscribing to a blacklist service is sort of like hiring a bouncer for your party. He probably does a good job of keeping out anyone uninvited. But what happens when you order a pizza and he punches the pizza guy in the face?
Blacklists are indeed by no means flawless, and I'll never claim that. It's just that spammers made the situation so bad, that a lot of people are willing to put up with the negative side effects of blacklists in order to keep their email (system) usable and/or to try to do something against pro-spam ISP's (like when they use lists like SPEWS).

--
Donate free food here
Re:If it's so spam friendly, by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 20:16 · Score: 0

You're joking aren't you.
Ofcourse I have the right to block any email I want from passing through MY servers.
Looks like too many of your kind get confused as to where thier _rights_ start and end
Re:If it's so spam friendly, by Steve+B · 2004-01-12 09:06 · Score: 1

To explain in terms such as even a troll such as yourself can understand.
My mail server is my private property. If I program it to reject your e-mail because you have the same IP block as a spammer, that's my prerogative. If I program it to reject your e-mail because you run an open relay (even one that hasn't been abused yet), that's my prerogative. If I program it to reject your e-mail because you don't wear matching socks, that's my prerogative.
End of discussion.

--
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.

SPAM Isn't the problem.... by The+Bandit · 2004-01-11 07:10 · Score: 2, Insightful

What's the problem is the fact that it is assumed that I wanted to be opt-in'ed. Who decided for me that I WANTED all the spam. If the government would simply make it into law for spammers and telemarketers that they assume I'm not already opt'ed in, the things would be better. Make the people that contact us PROVE that we signed up for their crap.

Re:SPAM Isn't the problem.... by WebGangsta · 2004-01-12 03:12 · Score: 1

Right -- don't just say "you've received this message because you agreed to do so from one of our third-party marketers". Why not tell us exactly which website we agreed to receive emails from. Show us the audit trail of mailing list purchases so we can go back to the original source and clear that checkbox.

1000 spams in a week? by kindbud · 2004-01-11 07:17 · Score: 2, Informative

The mail servers I run for my employer reject 400 spams every minute. Those are the ones with SpamAssassin scores greater than 10. 1000 spams in a week is a very small amount. They should be grateful. ;)

--
Edith Keeler Must Die

Block me and I will sue you by KalvinB · 2004-01-11 07:21 · Score: 1, Insightful

If you block a range of IPs that happens to have a legitimate user that relies on e-mails to conduct business I hope you get your house repossesed.

People subscribe to my web-site and I send them e-mails back to give them their account information with password. If you blacklist my IP you've just stolen money from me. I'll still get their notices since I can check my account for funds transfers. But there's no way to send them their passwords. So you just cost me money and I will sue you. I'm on a one year contract with the ISP so I can't very well move. Or maybe you'd also like to be sued for the costs of breaking the contract and for the cost of moving somewhere else.

These braindead blacklist runners (such as yourself who thinks dropping IP ranges is a good idea) have probably pissed off enough people by now to start a decent sized class action lawsuit.

It doesn't work. It's counterproductive. And you're inviting lawsuits from your "collateral damage" and frankly I'd like to see some go to court.

ISPs don't need to answer to blacklists. They do not define the law. ISP's who happen to get a spammer on board have committed no criminal act. If you blacklist them, they have every legal right to sue you for everything you own.

If your method of dealing with spam invades my privacy or my pocketbook it's wrong. Use your brain and come up with something better.

Ben

--
Work Safe Porn

Re:Block me and I will sue you by mousse-man · 2004-01-11 08:21 · Score: 2, Insightful

The problem is plain simple.

1. ISP has spammers. They spam. They annoy people and start costing people and companies money (yes, it costs money to filter that junk and to install the filters). ISP doesn't do squat about solving the problem, and when finally, the spammer just moves on. The ISP has no incentive to clean up the mess.

2. Users get annoyed. Badly annoyed. They want to stop spammers right now.

3. Users create a blacklist of IP spaces that should be avoided like hell.

4. Users start using blacklists. Amongst these users, there are a few providers. The providers chose to use the blacklist, not the user, and not the person who provides the blacklist. In effect, the blacklist is a free expressions of sections of the internet that degenerated into into the digital equivalent of sewers.

5. Providers get complains of people like you since lots of mail get bounced. Providers finds out that he harbors at least one spammer. Provider gets onto his feet, boots spammers from his IP space, blacklists go away after a few days/weeks.Else, provider loses customers to other providers which did something about spam and all who remain are even more comitted to spamming. There's an option now that the provider might survive on pink contracts alone, but that's not very probable.

Actually, I have an idea: Anybody who wants everybody else to stop using blacklists should be member of a special club that immediately pays every expense incurred by providers and companies to fight spam, without any legal recourse if you get a 1 Million US-$ bill for this fund.

Until then, stop whining and look for providers that aren't featured on blacklists.

This explicitely includes SpewSpew.net.
Re:Block me and I will sue you by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 08:36 · Score: 0

Go ahead and (try to) sue, asshole. No-one is under any obligation to accept your email, regardless of whether you're making money off it or not. I'd also like to see someone go to court - do you not wonder why nobody has? (hint: it's because there's no obligation to accept mail from other people). I'm adding your site to my blacklist, just because you're a cunt. It probably won't affect any email you send, unfortunately, but I do hope you think that is invading your privacy or pocketbook. Sue me. Go ahead. Fuckwit.
Re:Block me and I will sue you by seb249 · 2004-01-11 10:36 · Score: 1

In addition to running servers for other users i run my own mail server for my self and family at home.
Whilst your method of blocking mail based on http links does have some method ( i have not tried it as of yet) I do block mail from ip addresses and ip address space from which i receive spam. I do try to email the abuse addresses or the technical contacts of those ip's directly (very infrequently do i get a reply probably due to the amount of complaints they do receive) I then look at where the network is ask myself am i likely to get valid emails from that network - is there anyone i know who uses the network ? If not i choose to not accept mail or any traffic from that network. This is my right. It is my machine and my bandwidth.

That said i am always looking for new ways to fight spam.

Thankyou for your tip
Re:Block me and I will sue you by jcr · 2004-01-11 10:47 · Score: 1

If you blacklist my IP you've just stolen money from me.

No, not by a long shot. If I blacklist your IP number, or even your ISP's entire class B, all I've done is *advise* people that spammers are in your vicinity. It's still entirely up to them to listen to your traffic or not.

-jcr

--
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Re:Block me and I will sue you by chl · 2004-01-11 11:34 · Score: 1

Blacklist operators are not blocking you. Individual users block you because they made a personal decision to act on certain suggestions made by blacklist operators. You cannot force them to receive your email if they want to use blacklists. You will be laughed out of court.
chl
Re:Block me and I will sue you by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 12:03 · Score: 2, Insightful

If you blacklist my IP you've just stolen money from me.

The recipient does the blocking, not the list(s) they voluntarily use to facilitate and automate it. It's not your IP, if your provider's space is being listed. The internet is a large, cooperative pool of privately owned and operated networks. If entity A chooses not to receive email/packets/whatever from entity B, it's their choice. Suing a blocklist is literally shooting the messenger.

These braindead blacklist runners (such as yourself who thinks dropping IP ranges is a good idea) have probably pissed off enough people by now to start a decent sized class action lawsuit.

Cartooneys are subject to automatic listing on many blocklists. As Nike put it - Just Do It!

It doesn't work. It's counterproductive. And you're inviting lawsuits from your "collateral damage" and frankly I'd like to see some go to court.

Of course it works. You are here whining, aren't you? At the wrong people, might I add.

ISPs don't need to answer to blacklists. They do not define the law. ISP's who happen to get a spammer on board have committed no criminal act. If you blacklist them, they have every legal right to sue you for everything you own.

Of course ISPs don't answer to blacklists. But blacklists answer to their users; those that choose not to receive email from networks the blocklist operators choose to list. If they do so irresponsibly, their users will stop using them (goes for ISP vs blocklist(s) they use AND ISP vs its users).

Regarding legal threats and cartooneyism, do as the spammers do - outsource the blocklists, and perhaps devise a different delivery mechanism, less prone to lawsuits and DDoS attacks. Zone files have even been posted to Yahoo! groups.

ps. I am not affiliated with any such blocklist
Re:Block me and I will sue you by the+eric+conspiracy · 2004-01-11 13:06 · Score: 1

If you blacklist my IP you've just stolen money from me.

The reason you are getting blacklisted is because you are sharing an IP space with people who are sending illegal spam. THEY are the ones that are costing you money, not people who are trying to avoid getting overwhelmed by this garbage.

You should be writing your congressman and ISP requesting that they write stronger laws, and enforce the ones on the books.
Re:Block me and I will sue you by arothmanmusic · 2004-01-11 16:41 · Score: 1

The unfortunate truth is that the end user, if they are on an ISP or a corporate server, often doesn't even know that their service is subscribed to a blacklist.

I got a very irate call from a customer of my company's the other day who wanted a full refund due to "lack of customer support"... turns out that his company's ISP was subscribed to Spamhaus, who have us listed as spammers, and it was killing all of our replies to his support questions. His company had signed up with the anti-spam service, thereby interfering with our contractual obligation to support our product. We don't take kindly to that. And the response from Spamhaus? "Stop spamming." We don't. Great, that really solves the problem...

Anyway, I think end-user spam blocking programs are the safest way to go. If you aren't getting mail that you were expecting, you can see if it was blocked in your filter, refine your rules, and retrieve the message. By using massive blacklists and ISP-side filters, you run a much bigger risk of losing wanted mail with the crap.
Re:Block me and I will sue you by JuggleGeek · 2004-01-12 08:43 · Score: 1

If you blacklist them, they have every legal right to sue you for everything you own.
Sure. After all, the people who create blacklists shouldn't have the right to say "Lots of spam comes from these IP ranges."
Similarly, ISP's and businesses who don't want lots of spam shouldn't be able to say "We don't accept mail from listed IP's" (whether the listing is Spews, Spamcop, Spamhaus, or their own local list.
You're an idiot. You should try suing SPEWS - it'll be good for you.

Shock! Gasp! Horror! by penginkun · 2004-01-11 07:29 · Score: 1

You mean...

People who were criminals under already established state laws...

Are STILL BREAKING THE LAW in the face of a crappy, un-needed federal law?

I mean, why isn't there a law against breaking the law or something?

I keep saying this, and will do so until somebody actually listens: When spammers start dying, spam will cease. Make the death penalty mandatory for repeat offenders, do it today. It's the only way to stop the problem. Write your congressbot today! ;)

Less spam from holiday maintenance? by Licensed2Hack · 2004-01-11 08:31 · Score: 1

I haven't recorded the numbers on my @yahoo.com account, but I am definately getting less spam there. This email account is the one I have used in almost all usenet postings for the past 8 years or so, therefore all spammers have it on their lists.

The biggest difference has been the HUGE reduction in SWEN and similar crap. My 6MB of freebie space would be full in just a few hours (2 hrs during two separate SWEN flurries) and now it might not even fill up in 24 hours. I wonder if many corps did some major maintenance over the holidays and finally patched up their desktops, nuking the viruses and spam relays that infected their networks.

Re:CAN-SPAM's already making things worse, not bet by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 08:34 · Score: 0

What's amusing to me is that while my hotmail account now receives about one spam a day, my isp mail account now receives about 50 percent more spam than a year ago. And, yes, I know this is due to hotmail's spam filtering, but my isp has spam filtering too, and for some reason it's not as effective.

Spammers must have figured out sending to hotmail addresses is pointless. I'm even motivated to start using again for serious communication.

one word... by kalislashdot · 2004-01-11 08:59 · Score: 1

DUH!

Why do idiot politions think they can regulate SPAM like they did with the do not call list. Which I must say is working great. I have had ZERO calls since it started.

Re:The point? by symbolic · 2004-01-11 09:13 · Score: 1

What's the point of having this anti-spam law in the US anyways? The real point I mean. Is it an attempt to make American citizens or the people of the world think that the US is tough on spam or something?

Of course it is- the same way the U.S. government this it's going to fight terrorism by repealing the 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Same mindset, and most likely, the same results.

Sue me and you will lose the countersuit. by jcr · 2004-01-11 10:56 · Score: 1

I'm on a one year contract with the ISP so I can't very well move

If you didn't do the due diligence and get a contract that lets you drop the ISP for being a cluless spam hoster, that's your problem, and nobody else's.

If you blacklist them, they have every legal right to sue you for everything you own.

First amendment, sunshine. Go cope.

-jcr

--
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."

MX Logic sells spam stopping software by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 11:38 · Score: 0

What else did you expect from a company that sells anti-spam software? Did you think they would say "Problem solved, yay!" NOOO The anti-spam industry is big like the anti-virus industry. They keep the bad, so they can make some bucks.

CAN-SPAM is not weak by crucini · 2004-01-11 11:47 · Score: 2, Interesting

Did you read the law? It does not say it's OK to spam. It bans the vast majority of spam and prescribes harsh penalties. It allows up to one year imprisonment for sending spam with false headers, which is pretty much all the spam I get. Without false headers, spam becomes impractical for lots of reasons.
And what is your basis for claiming that there is no enforcement? The Justice Department doesn't usually publicize investigations until they're over. It will take months for investigators to start tracking down spammers and building solid cases against them.

This is a good, strong, well-designed law. For some reason the groupthink on slashdot claims it is "weak". I'd urge everyone to actually read the law before commenting on it.

Re:CAN-SPAM is not weak by anthony_dipierro · 2004-01-11 17:08 · Score: 3, Insightful

I have read the law. It's full of loopholes. Yes, the vast majority of current spam is probably covered by it, but it's quite easy for spammers to adapt to the law to comply with it. That is, if it is actually enforced, which I tend to believe it won't be. There's just far too much spam and spammers cover their tracks far too well for the government to enforce any anti-spam law.
Re:CAN-SPAM is not weak by geminidomino · 2004-01-11 19:01 · Score: 2, Interesting

Have YOU read the law? It does NOT make spamming illegal, it makes forging headers illegal, it makes deceptive subjects illegal, it OVERRIDES state laws that were stronger, it REMOVES the individual right to private action, and you sure as hell know they aren't going to actually ENFORCE the law. I've seen 5-week-old infants with more teeth than this law.

Either you really don't have a clue, you haven't read the law, or you're a spammer/DMA shill.
Re:CAN-SPAM is not weak by JuggleGeek · 2004-01-12 07:41 · Score: 1

Did you read the law? It does not say it's OK to spam.
It damn sure does! Sure, it tells them to "spam honestly", not to forge headers, not to use faked up subject lines and such - but as long as they do that, the law makes it quite clear that it's legal, and the law overrules state laws that required "ADV" warnings or, in California's case, made spam illegal.
It sounds like you haven't read the law. It also sounds like you are a spammer, else you wouldn't be so thrilled with a law that does nothing useful.
Re:CAN-SPAM is not weak by crucini · 2004-01-12 09:33 · Score: 1

...it's quite easy for spammers to adapt to the law to comply with it. ... spammers cover their tracks far too well ...

But these are two opposite courses of action. Spammers who comply with the law lose all their ability to cover their tracks. Without relay abuse and proxy abuse, it becomes easy to blackhole their IP ranges. I don't think they can stay in business. Spammers who cover their tracks will rack up more violations of this new law. The law allows five years imprisonment for many of the track-covering tactics that spammers use. I don't know how many counts a typical spammer would be charged with, but I think it's enough to motivate the FBI and US Attorneys.

And it wouldn't be too hard for the FBI to find spammers, even the ones covering their tracks. At some point, they have to touch the real world in order to make money. That leaves a paper trail that can be subpoenad. It doesn't matter how many open relays or proxies a spammer uses if he, or his accomplice, sells things and charges credit cards.

I can't tell whether the FBI will enforce this law vigorously. But Congress has given them the weapon they need.
Re:CAN-SPAM is not weak by crucini · 2004-01-12 09:46 · Score: 1

This law wisely bans practices that are clearly wrong and can be proven in court. While you might wish for a ban on unsolicited bulk email, it would be harder to prove a violation of such a ban, since the defendant would naturally claim that the email was solicited. Likewise, people could easily be falsely accused under that ban.

...it OVERRIDES state laws that were stronger...

Congress is supposed to regulate interstate commerce. This is a national, if not international problem, and must be addressed on a national level. While it's commendable that some states took the lead in developing anti-spam legislation, it is not in the US's best interests to have a patchwork of different state laws governing interstate commerce. Congress was right to override the state laws.

... and you sure as hell know they aren't going to actually ENFORCE the law ...

Again, I ask you to support this assertion.
Re:CAN-SPAM is not weak by crucini · 2004-01-12 10:04 · Score: 1

The law does not say it's OK to spam. Just because it doesn't contain the blanket prohibition you apparently desired does not mean it approves or legitimizes spam.

Nothing in this Act shall be construed to have any effect on the lawfulness or unlawfulness, under any other provision of law, of the adoption, implementation, or enforcement by a provider of Internet access service of a policy of declining to transmit, route, relay, handle, or store certain types of electronic mail messages.

In other words, you can continue to block spam, and the spammers cannot claim that this law legitimizes their actions.

Congress wisely chose a minimally intrusive measure. We already have good spam blocking techniques, but the ability of spammers to falsify information and abuse relays and proxies has limited the effectiveness of these techniques. This law removes some of a spammer's camouflage and brings him into more direct confrontation with anti-spam defenses. If this law proves inadequate, maybe a harsher, more intrusive law will be considered. But first we should learn what the effect of CANSPAM, in combination with anti-spam defenses, will be.
Re:CAN-SPAM is not weak by JuggleGeek · 2004-01-12 10:29 · Score: 1

It was previously illegal according to California law to send spam. Now Can Spam comes into effect, which overrides California law. And now spam is legal.
Tell me again how it doesn't legalize spam?
I won't reply to whatever nonsense you post - arguing with idiots is a waste of my time, and idiots like you can't be educated.
Re:CAN-SPAM is not weak by anthony_dipierro · 2004-01-12 10:33 · Score: 1

Spammers who comply with the law lose all their ability to cover their tracks.

Yeah, but they aren't the ones who the law can be enforced against.

Without relay abuse and proxy abuse, it becomes easy to blackhole their IP ranges. I don't think they can stay in business.

Even with IPv4 there are billions of IP addresses. And blocking IP ranges is going to hit legitimate emailers as well as spammers, when the spammers move on to new IPs and new customers take over those IPs. Are you going to ban all dialup IPs? If so you can do that already, and adding in a block of open relays you can eliminate relay abuse and proxy abuse already.

The law allows five years imprisonment for many of the track-covering tactics that spammers use. I don't know how many counts a typical spammer would be charged with, but I think it's enough to motivate the FBI and US Attorneys.

It's far too easy for spammers to either live outside the United States or to use services outside the United States which won't give up the information needed for the FBI or US Attorneys to catch them.

At some point, they have to touch the real world in order to make money.

Sure, but plenty of the real world lies outside the United States.

I can't tell whether the FBI will enforce this law vigorously. But Congress has given them the weapon they need.

Unlimited time and money?
Re:CAN-SPAM is not weak by geminidomino · 2004-01-12 15:43 · Score: 1

The law does not say it's OK to spam. Just because it doesn't contain the blanket prohibition you apparently desired does not mean it approves or legitimizes spam.
Nothing in this Act shall be construed to have any effect on the lawfulness or unlawfulness, under any other provision of law, of the adoption, implementation, or enforcement by a provider of Internet access service of a policy of declining to transmit, route, relay, handle, or store certain types of electronic mail messages.
In other words, you can continue to block spam, and the spammers cannot claim that this law legitimizes their actions.
If spammers had any sort of ethics in the first place, they wouldn't be stealing. People like that (including spammers) love to use the excuse that "it's not illegal" so the little blurb about the lawfulness of spam is utterly pointless. The only ones who ever see it are Lawyers, Anti-spam geeks, and pro-spam/clueless /. posters who have no idea of the state of bulk email.
Re:CAN-SPAM is not weak by Thuktun · 2004-01-13 11:53 · Score: 1

Did you read the law? It does not say it's OK to spam. It bans the vast majority of spam and prescribes harsh penalties.

Read it again. It doesn't actually ban spam! It bans many of the bad behaviors normally exhibited by spammers trying to hide themselves, blame others, and steal services, but doesn't actually prohibit spam itself.

As it says, you indeed CAN-SPAM.

filter effectiveness by danielsfca2 · 2004-01-11 12:46 · Score: 1

Lately the filter in Apple's Mail.app (10.3.1 version, not 10.3.2) has gotten close to 100% effectiveness for me. Combined with my "Anything base64-encoded is junk" filter, I'm only getting about one spam a week outside the Junk folder. So far it doesn't seem to be thrown off by the mad-libs stuff.

Totally unenforcable. by Chmcginn · 2004-01-11 14:04 · Score: 2, Insightful

the only way to stop spam is with a HEFTY FINE to the company whose goods were advertised.

Sure, that's a great idea... until company A starts sending out spam advertising company B's products, having been paid by company C (B's competition)...

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Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?

Thanks to all who replied! by Graabein · 2004-01-11 15:23 · Score: 1

I'd just like to say thanks to all who replied to my "Internet Death Penalty" comment.

Some say I must be on the verge of losing my sanity, some say the IDP wouldn't work, most of you say that there would simply be too much collateral damage.

You're all correct, of course (except the guy who threatened with a lawsuit. He can go play in traffic). My point still stands though, we have to come up with something new as nothing so far has worked. The worthless and scumsucking social rejects commonly known as spammers are ruining email and costing the rest of us a lot of money.

I run several email servers, for various sites and companies, but let me use my own server as an example here. I host about 20 domains on it, mostly vanity domains for friends, but also a couple of small mom-and-pop type businesses. That server is currently rejecting close to 100,000 SPAM messages per month on the frontend (through the use of DNSBLs). On the backend SpamAssassin identifies another 3,000 or so per month.

Anyone see a problem with this picture? A small server like this having to fight off over 100K SPAM messages every month? This is insane and yes, I am losing both patience and sanity. The problem is only getting worse too, only back in October the rate was 75K messages per month. That's a 33% increase in SPAM in two months! A look at my daily logs since the new year tells me it's still increasing. This means I'm going to have to upgrade the hardware on my email gateway yet again in not too long.

I. Have. Had. Enough.

Note: I've been patient. I've been constantly upgrading defenses for years, keeping track of which DNSBLs work and which have closed down, tuning SpamAssassin and trying out various bayesian filters etc. All the while I've been waiting for lawmakers to realize that this is a big problem and that it is a global problem. I've been thinking that technology probably isn't the best way to deal with this, as at its core it's a social (or is that sociological?) problem.

As many have said before me, this is a classic case of the tragedy of the commons. A small group of socially irresponsible people are abusing a common good, in the process ruining it, all in the name of making a quick buck.

How does society protect itself from people like that in other contexts? With laws. We reject, we ostracize and we punish. In civilized society we leave the punishment to law enforcement. In the case of SPAM many countries have passed laws against it, but there are really only a handful of countries that "count" and those countries have been less than vigilant in their fight against SPAM so far. I'm talking about China and Korea of course, as well as Brazil and Argentina. These countries may not originate all the SPAM out there, but they sure do host a lot of spammers and relay a lot of SPAM.

But most of all I'm talking about the US of A, simply because a whole lot of the SPAM relayed through those other countries originates in the US. I've held on to my sanity, clutching at the hopes of impending legislation with teeth. For a while there really was hope, several states passed good laws. And then came CAN-SPAM.

Now what? The volume of SPAM is not going down, even if CAN-SPAM was enforced to the letter. I'd still have scumbags out there trying to steal my bandwidth and server resources. To all of you complaining that blacklists (and the IDP) are evil, why is this so hard to understand? The spammers are stealing my resources, period! Yes, I have voluntarily connected my network to the Internet, but I have never asked for this deluge of electronic sewage!

I want these anti-social misfits punished by society, I want the common good to prevail over the stupidity and greed of a few scam artists and I want this to happen in a civilized way (through laws and law enforcement).

If that doesn't happen we will have no recourse but to fall back on technology and in that case we

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And remember kids: Never trust a computer you can actually lift.

Australia and rugby by NewsWatcher · 2004-01-11 15:27 · Score: 1

Actually, given the Howard government's sycophantic attitude towards the US, if America passed a law limiting the amount of rugby we in Australia could play, it would probably be rubber stamped here too. Maybe you should have chosen a less compliant nation, like New Zealand, for your example.

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If the pattern goes 9am, 10am, 11am, why isn't noon 12am?

I'm not sure where I fall on this law... by arothmanmusic · 2004-01-11 16:56 · Score: 1

On one hand, I think the law takes the right approach. It's an attempt to kill off the worst of the spammers ... those who obfuscate, spoof, mislead, and generally piss people off, while still leaving room for legit businesses to send legit advertisements within certain limits. If it were enforceable, it'd be a perfect law.

The problem is that it's a law that only applies to people that are already almost impossible to track down. It's sort of like a law against prank calling from a payphone... unless you watch every payphone and trace every call, you'll never catch anyone.

I think the thought behind the act was pretty solid, but the framers obviously have no clue about the technology they're ruling on. They've passed a law with no teeth at all.

You pulled the trigger by KalvinB · 2004-01-11 17:23 · Score: 1

"THEY are the ones that are costing you money"

No, they're not. Blacklists cost legitimate businesses and ISP customers money because blacklists are run by incompetent people that think they're in charge of the internet. There are better ways to block spam than by napalming an ISP. They're not solving anything. They're just making the problem worse by annoying and possibly destroying the businesses of more innocent people than spammers.

And nobody said I was blacklisted. But I stongly suggest that those who have been start a class action lawsuit. It would also be a good idea to avoid ISPs that make use of these idiotic blacklists. I'd rather be at an ISP that takes an intelligent stand on SPAM.

Maybe it will finally wake up the idiots in charge of the lists so they finally do something productive to stop spam. Blacklisting IPs of countless innocent people over an IP that the spammer is most likely not using anymore is idiotic and irresponsible.

If it invades my privacy, my pocket book, or napalms a village it's not a solution.

The people running programs that fingerprint spam are actual solutions. Why? Because the stop SPAM. Not spammers. Fuck the spammers. You can never stop them. But you can stop their messages by filtering intelligently. Trying to stop people from sending any and all e-mails is just dense.

I get virtually no spam simply by filtering the URLS spammers use. It's simple and if Joe Spammer suddenly gets a genuine interest in my site and wants to talk to me, he can. But if he sends spam advertising URLS I've filtered they don't get through. And it doesn't matter who Joe Spammer is. If an URL does get through, it's caught with the next update and countless spammers are taken care of. All without blocking a single IP.

More Info Here

Ben

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Work Safe Porn

Re:You pulled the trigger by the+eric+conspiracy · 2004-01-12 15:56 · Score: 1

They're not solving anything.

WRONG. They are doing plenty to help me. I was getting over 600 spams per day into the several email accounts I use. The day installed a black list based spam filter my spam dropped by over 99%. The blacklists solved a major problem for me.

Blacklists cost legitimate businesses and ISP customers money

Tough. Until legitmate businesses and ISPs come up with some way for me to use email without being flooded by illegal crap, I will use these filters.

If it invades my privacy, my pocket book

I am SORRY, but you have zero, and I mean ZERO sympathy from me. I will operate my computer EXACTLY as I please, and that surely means my inbox is going to be filtered using one or more blacklists until there is an alternative.

Maybe it will finally wake up the idiots in charge of the lists so they finally do something productive to stop spam

Right. These guys are absolute heros. They HAVE done something that stops spam. You haven't done squat to stop spam. In fact, you want to put the spam stoppers out of business. If you don't like it, well it's UP TO YOU TO COME UP WITH AN ALTERNATIVE. Not them, they are doing their part to stop spam. Maybe you don't like how they are doing it, but YOU are offering ZERO alternatives.

Now, what are YOU doing to stop spam? How are you part of the solution?

Advocating suing blackhole services is NOT being constructive.

Rgulating the wrong end of the problem by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 17:42 · Score: 0

One would assume that spam is sent for a reason - commerical reason that is. What is needed is a law that makes it illegal to advertise via spam. Instead of chasing elusive spammers nail those who pay them. That should be easy:
- follow he link in the spam to the commercial site
- make a credit card payment
- get the identity of the receiver from the credit card company
- put them in jail
- from their records get the identity of the spammer
- put them in jail too

Re:Rgulating the wrong end of the problem by arothmanmusic · 2004-01-12 03:13 · Score: 1

Don't know if that's the solution either... there's already a lot of people out of work without taking away a major stream of revenue from legitimate businesses.

Don't forget, not all email ads are 'shotgun approach'. My company sells software and we are very careful and specific about who we send email ads to, and therefore have a high rate of positive responses. If it were suddenly illegal to advertise by email we'd lose a big chunk of our sales leads, and therefore have to fire employees.

The CAN-SPAM law makes some sense in that it makes it illegal to send an unsolicited mail without a clear subject and a clear statement that it's an advertisement. Basically it makes it easier for people who don't want ads to block them. The problem is that the spam which people hate the most is already tough to block, and making it illegal doesn't help technology to block it.

Compute time by PleaseDontBeTaken · 2004-01-11 19:51 · Score: 1

So let's say everyone signs.

option 1: just a signature.
that's the same problem as an email address. easy for a spammer to use someone else's.

option 2: what i think you intended: pr-key signed message digest.
who checks the signature before dropping it in the bit bucket? each end-user? could work, but how does the proggy know where to get the public key?
keygen for each spam doesn't really matter if you are a spammer. who cares if someone fakes your fake signature? make fake key pairs that aren't really sets of primes. or just gen 1415 real primes and use each x,y combo to generate 1,000,405 key pairs. sure, that would be cryptographic suicide, but again, why would a spammer care if they are just going to ignore the existing laws?
okay, so maybe you then slow down the servers that register pks so that people can't register keys so quickly. but just one "rogue" signature server and you are SOL. don't have all the signature servers in your list--well, then you start dropping legimate mail. and, you create a chokepoint like DNS for people to start holding you up for charges.

what's wrong with SPF? that seems like an idea that can work.

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one more thing by PleaseDontBeTaken · 2004-01-11 19:57 · Score: 1

does the "normal" signature algorithm take into account the recipient? i'm guessing it doesn't. then the message digest pre-signature will be the same for each message the spammer sends, which would negate the real compute time problem.

finally, i thought that network capacity was the real constraint on spammers, not compute time. already they slightly vary each message to try to get around kill lists.

sorry to be a naysayer - i get as much spam as everyone else.

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Re:one more thing by theCoder · 2004-01-12 00:27 · Score: 1

option 1: just a signature.
that's the same problem as an email address. easy for a spammer to use someone else's.

If someone's that careless with their private key and spammers get a hold of it, then they deserve to be joe-jobbed.

option 2: what i think you intended: pr-key signed message digest.
who checks the signature before dropping it in the bit bucket? each end-user? could work, but how does the proggy know where to get the public key?

The end user for now, though as it gets more and more accepted, it could be even automated at the SMTP server level. It could also be used as another rule in a spamassassin type system. Also, some people (not me) want a whitelist email system, so they might deny all emails not signed by those on the list.

keygen for each spam doesn't really matter if you are a spammer. who cares if someone fakes your fake signature? make fake key pairs that aren't really sets of primes. or just gen 1415 real primes and use each x,y combo to generate 1,000,405 key pairs. sure, that would be cryptographic suicide, but again, why would a spammer care if they are just going to ignore the existing laws?

That's an interesting point. It does still raise the spammers cost of doing business. If this becomes a problem, then perhaps filters could be written smarter to deal with poorly constructed keys.

okay, so maybe you then slow down the servers that register pks so that people can't register keys so quickly. but just one "rogue" signature server and you are SOL. don't have all the signature servers in your list--well, then you start dropping legimate mail. and, you create a chokepoint like DNS for people to start holding you up for charges.

That was actually another thought I had that I didn't put into my post. Delaying the appearance of public keys on the keyservers would slow down spammers without significantly hurting everyone else (in theory, people wouldn't need to register new keys all that often). I think right now, the keyservers do have a built in time delay like that, just because of how they replicate the keys across the various servers (though I could be wrong). You're right, however, about what to do with mail that doesn't pass verification. Do you just kill it, or drop it in a folder to look at later, or send an automated reply to the sender (can be bad when we're dealing with spam)? That sort of policy decison will probably be best left up to each individual. I'd probably err on the side of caution, and glance at those emails. Others may just toss them.

what's wrong with SPF? that seems like an idea that can work.

SPF is a neat idea, but it's not something I can easily do. It may be another weapon in the fight against spam, but it's not one I can wield. It also makes it harder to send email (you have to send from the right IP, or relay through that right IP). I almost mentioned it in my original post as well (as another tool), but decided not to.

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"Save the whales, feed the hungry, free the mallocs" -- author unknown

Re:CAN-SPAM's already making things worse, not bet by Maestro4k · 2004-01-11 20:05 · Score: 1

Same here, everything's of the definitely ilegal type of spam. (Since we all know there is no magic pill to make you have greater sex, etc. And if they mention Viagra, 99 to 1 they're not legally selling it.) I've just started fowarding them all to the ftc's collection address, epecially since I get about one Nigerian scam letter a month as well.

MX Logic "study" bogus by rduke15 · 2004-01-11 23:58 · Score: 1

While it would be interesting to see what the "you can spam" act changes or doesn't, MX Logic won't tell you anything.

They say they tested 1000 spams. How did they select them? How many were from the US? (Foreign spams are not supposed to comply with the US law anyway). In the US-originated spams, what wasn't compliant? False headers? No working "remove" link? What else?

They will not tell you what they tested, probably because they didn't do it seriously, and their only point is to say "spam is still a problem" (what a scoop!), and "therefore you need to buy our anti-spam software".

This bogus "study" should not have made any news in The Register or on /. It's just an advertizing press release.

America a Democracy??? by FreckledGruntBuggly · 2004-01-12 01:21 · Score: 1

Sorry, but even the government doesn't call the USA a democracy. I think officially it is a democratic Republic. However, a truer definition is probably a self-perpetuating oligarchy. The two big parties have set things up so noone else gets to play, and the system of huge campaign contributions from vested interests is part of this.

America does have local democracy, with citizens initiatives and things like that, but the federal level is locked up solid to keep the established ruling classes in power. You have to join the elite club or you don't get elected. Somehow I don't think this was what the writers of the constitution really had in mind...

Well, duh. by Rogerborg · 2004-01-12 01:45 · Score: 1

Further comment superfluous.

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If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.

Wrong assumption by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-12 02:14 · Score: 0

I won't claim my statistical selection of spam is representative but I re-check all of the spam getting through my spamassassin (1-2 out of ~100 per day). More than half of the spammer domains are registered in the USA. Go figure.

Open WiFi relays? by apachetoolbox · 2004-01-12 11:00 · Score: 1

That's just too unrealistic. I can hit 20+ open 802.11 access points just driving 5 miles to work.

Figures... I now get spam from x10.com by sdo1 · 2004-01-12 11:13 · Score: 1

Well, I should have seen this coming. Since it's now OK for any company to spam just as long as the subject isn't overtly fraudulent and there's a valid way to unsubscribe, I just received spam from our friends at x10.com. I've never gotten anything form them before and it would appear that the spam is indeed in compliance with the CAN SPAM act.

Let the floodgates open...

-S

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--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?

I did offer a solution by KalvinB · 2004-01-12 19:18 · Score: 1

I use an intelligent method (mentioned in my post no less so feel free to learn how to read. It's even posted with source code at my web-site as indicated in the post) to filter spam that doesn't involve screwing legitimate businesses or invading anyone's privacy.

I think advocating suing blacklists who fuck over legitimate businesses is the only way to get them to start being more responsible.

We've allowed these idiots to do more damage than the spammers.

"I will use these filters."

I'm not talking about you numbnuts. I'm talking about the rampant irresponsible use of these braindead blacklists by major companies. You know, people who actually matter.

If you want to tear down a building you can use a nuclear weapon but some intelligently placed dynamite will do the job much better.

Morons like yourself can pretend that blocking IPs that spammers don't use is going to solve problems or you can start taking an intelligent approach to spam.

So yes, my new stance is that legitimate companies that become victims of blacklists should form a class action lawsuit and sue the people who own those lists.

Seeing how blindly defensive you are of such lists, it's obvious it's the only way. They've been given way too much power by the geek community.

To the point now that sacrificing privacy and hard earned money over spam sounds like a good idea.

It's braindead.

Ben

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Work Safe Porn

Re:I did offer a solution by ahodgson · 2004-01-13 11:32 · Score: 1

The only thing that will stop spammers is to run them out of places to hide. That means hurting the ISP's that harbour them, as badly as possible, until they stop supporting spammers. It is, in fact, the ONLY thing that has ever been effective in this fight. It got Sanford Wallace to stop spamming.

You can pussy around with filters all you want, but as long as the ISP you give money to every month is also taking money from spammers, you're a legitimate target.
Re:I did offer a solution by the+eric+conspiracy · 2004-01-13 15:14 · Score: 1

I took a look at your 'spam analysis'. It is very, very simplistic and naive. For example you make the statement:

"anti-spam people build up these massive lists of internet addresses and whatnot to try to block spammers from getting spam through but, by forging headers, using proxies, etc these spammers bypass these filters. What's really pathetic about this ill-conceived plan to stop spam is that spammers don't use static IPs to send spam."

The fact is that current blackholes recognize dynamic IPs as a primary source of spam, and list them. Detection of dynamic IPs as spam origin points is one to the oldest spam filtering techniques.

HTML does not allow for the obfuscation of links. You cannot insert random crap into an &ltimg src="http://something.com/image.jpg"> or it won't show up.

Not correct at all. HTML links support a wide variety of encoding schemes including use of alternative character sets. The o in something could actually be replaced by something in Cyrillic that LOOKS like an o, but isn't at all.

The fact is like many people who have used the internet for a long time, and have some programming skills, I have written filters myself. I have also tested a large number of products written by others, and the conclusion is inescapable. Blackholing is one of the most powerful anti-spam tools. Some people like you get bent because they have problems with it, but with large ISPs like AOL recieving billions of spams a day, it's a fact of life. Suing MAPS etc. out of existance will only force individual organizations to maintain their own lists, and then you will REALLY have a problem. At least with the current situation you know where to go to challenge a listing.

This just in... by The+I+Shing · 2004-01-14 04:29 · Score: 1

This just in...

Beer importers in 1921 found not to be complying with the Volstead Act.

Back then, government agents would raid warehouses and smash barrels with axes (we all remember those scenes from The Untouchables). How about doing the same with spammers? Send agents to their homes and offices to smash up their computers. What fun!

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Spammers Not Complying With CAN-SPAM

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