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U.S. is World Leader in Spam
adept256 writes "Sophos outs 'dirty dozen' spam producing countries. And the USA is in the lead by a country mile. 'The United States is far and away the worst offender, accounting for nearly 60 percent of the world's spam. Even though European countries are responsible for less spam, they are still generating millions of junk emails a day,' said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos."
...and its spamming leader.
That way, Sophos themselves might produce a little less spam...
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
So many broadband & other high-speed connections left wide open that can relay data.
thelikesofwhich.com
What are you talking about? I should be getting my million dollars from Nigeria in the mail next week!
Spamming computers may appear to be foreign, but in the end, it's nearly always an American source. Or from the Netherlands for some reason in those stupid 419s.
If you're not blacklisting from Spamhaus's SBL+XBL of spam outfits & open relays, and dialup pools, those ones are natural things to start blocking on connect.
Doing the Right Thing should not be preempted by making a buck.
While you Americans are spamming the world, we Canucks are gulping down herbal viagra, slathering growth cream on our willies and Making Money Fast.. Laugh at us, will you?!
Trolling is a art,
Reading the article, a more interesting point is that at least 30% - which probably accounts for a large slice of the US end European contribution - is from compromised machines. They believe most of those are directed from Russia.
Aside from the absence of Russia, the only thing I find surprising about the list is the high position of Canada - second, 6.8%. Given Canad's relatively small population, that must make them the leader in spam-per-capita - an unpleasant distinction.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
I wonder if the recently passes Federal Anti-Spam legislation has had any effect on these numbers. Obviously not a big enough one, since according to these figures, so much spam still comes from the U.S. If these numbers can be tabulated, can they not also report the offenders to the police?
I also wonder if there is any way to bring the issue of unprotected computers to the public. Perhaps negligence penalties of some sort? I don't want to punish the wrong people, but it would be a lot harder to hack into all of these systems if they were administered properly.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
Without having some idea of what fraction of a country's email traffic is spam, these numbers just tell you which countries have a bigger internet presence, and absolutely nothing more.
This isn't who is writing the email is. It's where the computer that sends it out is. The article mentions that Russia should be higher on the list but a lot of SPAM is sent through compromised computers in America.
...for average US penis size.
:-)
Luckily, I'm British and we're only number 9 on the list
John.
The article indicates that the 'researchers' spent two days collecting information.
Only two days of research is a lame attempt at a research project.
For all we know, those responsible could alternate source every other week, thus invalidating this 'insightful' conclusion.
Also, the article fails to mention how they are so positive of the origin. Who knows how many open relays the spammers use.
I'd believe an article that indicates that the US has more open relays than any other country, as I would venture a guess that it's relative to total number of computers wired to the net.
my 2c
Well the article also points out that much of the spam may orriginate in Russia from the hackers there. Who then subsequently take advantage of zombie machines in countries like the USA.
Well just dont let GWB learn of this, just what we need him to do, start a new cold war over spam. It be his newest attempt to revitalize the economy.
30% Troll, 50% Underrated, 10% Interesting
Score:5, Troll
For example, a Nigerian email sent from a hotmail/yahoo account (they almost all are) would seemingly, by this standard, come from the US.
And then there's the thing they themselves point out; their methods of determining origin only go so far, hijacked machines / email routers configured to "wash" the headers of relayed stuff also go a long way to making the numbers invalid.
I still say the ultimate revenge is to paper-spam the big spammers. Sign them up for hundreds of thousands of magazines and all the rest.
The coup de grace would be then to package and mail a spammer the contents of my cats' litterbox the day after feeding them beef 'n' bean leftovers.
Of course the US is the leading producer of SPAM. It was invented here. And according to the SPAM Museum, Hormel produces 435 cans of spam PER MINUTE in Austin, Minnesota.
Are you Corn Fed?
Wow... when I see my next ad for "enlargment pills" I'll smile with delight that the ad I'm looking at was made in America...
Did I mention that by smile I mean Be menacingly overcome... and by delight I actually mean rage... sweet glorious rage.
Another reason for my heart to swell with pride for my country
The original generic sig.
Since so many USian companies block all email from the brazilian IPs should I now block all email from USian IPs?
This isn't a troll (despite sounding like one).
I'm very upset that my mail server, a very well maintained with a plethora of spam and virus filters, is blocked by asshat american sysadmins "just because we're spammers".
Ash nazg durbatuluk, ash nazg gimbatul Ash nazg thrakatuluk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul
P.S. Don't use the To: field when there is a perfectly good BCC: field that will do
Magic Eight Ball: Outlook not so good., Hmmm, how about Excel and Word?
...We're the richest, most powerful, most prosperous country in the history of mankind...Leading in spam is a small price to pay...
Dream on sunshine. Ever heard of the Roman Empire? Greeks? British? Germans? Even the French were more powerful in their day. You have some of North America, a little in the Middle East, and not a lot more. The greatest spammer in the history of mankind is not really an accolade to stand in the history books. In time, people will look back and say 'So they were number 1 in a well contended field for a short time... so what?'. You got a way to go yet sunshine. Don't think that one half-assed victory in the middle will make the emperors of old start saying 'Fuck me, wish we'd had that 'e-mail spam' thing to go along with our might legions'.
Damn I just realised I got trolled properly there.
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything." (attrib. Joseph Stalin)
Canada's population is 31.6 million (2003).
I looked at it as I wondered whether the Netherlands (16 million) would win in the spam/capita contest. Nah, canada wins. 3x the spam, 2x the population.
Reinout
Reinout van Rees
Obviously the "war on spam" needs to be fought on legally as well as technologically (and thanks to the fucked-up CAN-SPAM act some spammers are being given the green-light to annoy the hell out of us legally).
Assuming we ever have laws in place which state that genuine opt-in lists are the only valid way to advertise products then we still cannot sue the spammers who send junk to harvested addresses because of the problems involved with tracing them.
Tracing spammers is difficult/sometimes impossible because any computer on the internet can runs its own SMTP server to send mail to anywhere on the net. 10 years ago when the net was more innocent and less commercially corrup, this was fine, but nowadays this is just too powerful.
The problem is, if some clueless person (which probably accounts for 80% of net users) has their machine compromised by a virus or trojan than their computers are used to send out the spam, and as there are no log files the spammers are virutally impossible to trace.
Now imagine if the only way to send spam was via an approved mail server. For most of us this will be our ISPs, for the rest we will simply subscribe to one of the many official trusted ones.
Now the problem of reporting spam is a lot easier - complaints will be dealt with by the trusted mail servers who keep detailed logs of which customers have logged in to send mail, what IP address they used and at what time.
It doesn't matter if the customer deliberately sent out the spam or if they had been compromised by a trojan - the trusted mail servers can deny their customers the right to send more email until they have had an assurance from their customers that the problem has been fixed.
I'm not saying this is going to end spam altogether, but it should go a long way to curbing it.
What about all the spam which originates from, say, Nigeria or Amsterdam? Simple - unless the trusted mail server takes active steps to eradicating the spam they will no longer be trusted.
Sorry, but my karma just ran over your dogma.
A lot comes from Asian computers, but if you look into the spam itself (what it sells -> who is actually selling it), most comes in fact from the US.
Florida! Thanks to its weak spam laws.
This guy is way out there
And to prove it, you have a wonderfully syntactically challenged President.
Misunderestimated
The inhabitants of Greece are Grecians.
--
This sig is inoffensive.
.us ... you might want to think twice about why US companies aren't using it - and about whether companies all over the world are evil when they (also) want to use .com
it's in my head
One of the most effective means of dealing with Spam & when being required to hand out an email address is Spamgourmet (http://www.spamgourmet.com). You create an account and can then use unique email addresses of the form ..@spamgourmet.com . The cool thing about this is that for each email received on this account the counter is decreased and once it reaches zero all further emails will be discarded. This is great to hand out if you're ordering something from an online store and only want to receive 1-3 emails for order confirmation/shipment but not get any future spams.
The service is free and offers a couple of other neat features. I've been using it for about a year and it's been very reliable.
Highly recommended.
Heiko
Your own explanation demonstrates perfectly that you are the one who doesn't know what the national debt is.
Simply stated, the national debt is what taxpayers owe the treasury for purchases made by the government. When the amount of money spent by the government exceeds the amount of tax money collected, you have a budget deficit. The national debt is the total amount, plus interest, owed to the treasury.
It has nothing to do with international trade. I believe what you are refering to is called a "trade deficit".
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Read the response by the second guy to respond to me. Both legitimate and illegitimate email are going to track with the number of total servers (scaled by how many are unprotected) and number of internet-connected citizens (scaled by how many are internet-connected) among other variables he mentioned.
I mean, actually think about what you're saying. You would congratulate Antarctica for generating 0 spam. If you want to look at this without considering "ham" emails, look at the spam difference - (spam sent = spam received). I would argue that even this difference should be fractioned by how many total emails are sent received which really is a decent measure of internet presence, but even without it, you at least separate net spam "donors" from "recipients"
Honestly, if you don't normalize variables in comparing large sample sets with small, you absolutely cannot compare raw numbers. I could recommend statistical reference texts if you like.
we're number 1!!!!!!!!!!!!!
When punk rock is outlawed, only outlaws will have punk rock.
...but wait. Before ya know it, sending spam will be offshored to India too.
What?! The home of capitalism is also the home of spam?! How could this be? /sarcasm
WURD!!
Hey, don't be so down on yourselves. The US is the world leader in lots of things. Military spending, patent lawsuits, oil consumption...
Nah, it's just because we have so many more computers for the bad guys to zombify.
I agree. Just looking at the horribly butchered English that is in 95% of the spam that I get tells me that it not written by someone who's first language is English.
...not written by someone who's first language is English.
Like you, say?
Haida Manga
You didn't refute any of part of my statement you quoted. We ARE the richest, most powerful, and most prosperous. There's really no debate there.
SIG:Slashdot: indymedia for nerds.
That said, hopefully this study (not my little humor below, the sophos study) begin to, ever so slightly, shut up those people who claim that spam laws are useless because they will just drive spammers from one locale to the next. while this is true at the margins, the fact is that spam, like all business, is foremost local.
Does anyone know what metric was used to determine these rankings? Was it "country where the first SMTP transfer originated"? Was it "office address of the dude typing in the text of the spam"?
I hate it when dudes publish 'findings' and don't explain how they got them. So much for the scientific method and reproducibility -- they could have made the whole thing up!
[**NOTE** I am not saying they did make the numbers up, but as a matter of journalistic and scientific integrity, when you publish the results and don't publish the method used to determine those results, your cannot be evaluated as anything other than opinion. We're after facts, here, people, not truth.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
I think it is time that ISPs block, by default, all outbound port 25 traffic. Customers can either:
- Use the ISPs mail server (this accomodates 90% right away)
- Use a VPN or SMTP+AUTH(+SSL) on an alternate port to connect to their SMTP server of choice (this accomodates another 9%)
- For the remaining few that just have to run their own SMTP server, let them have a static IP and open up the ports
Of course, some consumer ISPs won't be willing to deal with the headaches of option #3, or perhaps might charge a bit more for it, which is entirely fair. Businesses need to block all egress port 25 period, there is rarely a legitamate need for an employee to run their own SMTP server (unless they work in the IT department, but then they can probably open the port up themselves).Its always inches or pounds.
I've never received anything promising to add centimeters or lose kilograms.