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Spammers Not Complying With CAN-SPAM
Zelphyr writes "The Register is reporting on a study done by MX Logic found that of 1000 messages tested, only three complied with the recently enacted CAN-SPAM act. Little wonder why the spammers weren't shaking in their boots when this spam friendly anti-spam bill was passed."
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).
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
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.
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...
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?
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
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.
No, it's an accurate description of the law. It means you CAN SPAM.
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.
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
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.
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.
/24".
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
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.
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.
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?)
How can we enforce spam laws on companies based offshore?
My ghEtt0 webpage.
"You CAN indeed SPAM" is probably what the authors intended.
get your head out the sand, blind patriot
http://www.spamhaus.org/rokso/index.lasso
>> 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"
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.
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?
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.
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
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)...
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
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.
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.