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."

Comments

Sure you CAN!

[CrankyFool]

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.

Crime pays

[DigiShaman]

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?

Re:Crime pays

[CaptBubba]

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.

Wrong legal consequences.

[Samuel Duncan]

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.

"compliant" spam...

[Doppleganger]

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...

Internet Death Penalty

[Graabein]

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.

Re:Internet Death Penalty

[xlsior]

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

CAN-SPAM's already making things worse, not better

[Maestro4k]

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:Silly Fools....

[Hanno]

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.)