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71% of Spam Servers are Located in China
aspelling writes "
We all know that majority of consumer electronics and other goods sold
in US stores is produced in China. But China specialty extends beyond
consumer electronics, clothes and automotive components. According to Commtouch Software research 71%
of all spam servers are located in this People Republic. "Since Jan. 1,
we've seen probably a 30% to 40% increase" in spam traffic" Commtouch
CEO says. BusinessWeek reports
about this issue."
If China can keep much of the rest of the internet inaccessable to their citizens, why can't the rest of the world block the polution that China is transmitting?
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"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
Does the story differentiate between the two?
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
It was along the lines of "the capitalist countries will sell us the rope the hang them with". Those driven to financial gain eschewing possible ethical concerns will at best impose a lot of friction and drag on the system. They may end up poisoning the internet sufficiently to end a lot of net freedom we take for granted. I am sure China is more than happy to take our money as we bury ourselves.
Doesn't matter. The source machine is all I care about. If it's in China I don't care if the spammer is American, Chinese or Martian.
Trolling is a art,
Several people have mentioned blocking all of China, but what good will this do? Okay, most of the spam originates from there, but this wouldn't be an interesting study if most of the spam were obviously from China. I would imagine that most spammers are using relays of some sort and have a pretty good idea what they are doing. The country-wide blacklist may not be a bad idea but I question its effectiveness.
it is that 71% of a form of communication originates from a country that tries its damndest to stifle the voice of its people.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
If you put a credit card number into a site, what bank gets the transaction? That's how to track spammers.
Strange, because USA is still #1 in all 3 categories listed (scroll down) on spamhaus.org
/me sets mode -rant
Besides - who cares where the exploited servers are? Soon (my guess is - less than 6 months) the majority of spams will be sent via zombies taken over by some worm or virus. These computers will be spread all over the world. The only solution is to nip it in the butt. Make spam illegal (as it is in Europe) and sue the pants of the spammers. Enough of those stupid atempts to pretend something is being done. We all know that the spammers are from Gods own country - hijacking machines whereever it's easiest.
Spam may be coming from Chinese _servers_, but I doubt 71% of the spammers are Chinese. Everyone in this thread seems to think that actual Chinese people are doing the spamming. I don't think this is the case.
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>I [...] run my own mail server on my domain.
>Not everyone can run their own email servers. What about my mom or grandmother
Why don't you give them e-mail accounts on your domain and they'll get spam-free e-mail.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
That might be because the food product is properly called SPAM. (Follow your own links!)
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
There's just something that seems fundamentally wrong about connecting to a global network and then blacklisting half of it.
It's like buying Lucky Charms cereal, then filtering out all the marshmallows and throwing them in the garbage because they're not healthy. Very true, but if that's how you feel, why bother buying Lucky Charms?
Surely it would be more effective to implement challenge-response, or simply boycott email in favour of IM or a secure messageboard/contact form, or whatever you prefer. The problem is with email, not with Asia.
Besides, I think this study is bogus. All the studies I've previously seen pointed squarely at the USA as the primary source of spam. Empirical evidence from my own email box bears this out. Most of the spam I receive tends to come from residential cable modem/DSL lines in various countries, predominantly the states. I suspect that these are either virus-hijacked boxes, or people being paid to send spam through their home connection (ie, the ads placed on telephone polls: "Have an internet connection at home? Make up to $4,000/month with no effort required! Call now!")
Random and weird software I've written.
Taiwanese servers use the tw code, cn is used by the Reds. It's not technically hard to disambiguate the two countries-- so the question then becomes-- did the authors of the study at some point take the "One China" myth seriously?
No. This is a common misunderstanding. The majority of spammers are from the US.
How about reading the story?
They are talking about the Peoples Republic (of China), captial Beijing, "China is notorious for its Internet censorship efforts".
This doesn't sound like they are talking about Taiwan/Republic of China, (provisional) capital Taipei.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
Except, it's more like buying a box of lucky charms expecting to find marshmallows and the regular oats (or whatever it is) cereal and finding a bunch of dirty needles in it as well. SPAM is not supposed to be a part of the web. It's an unwelcome, criminal blight on it and it's being perpetrated by people who are actively trying to ruin a good thing for everyone else. I find it perfectly acceptable that these people be relegated to their own corner and thrown off the web.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
... is that those servers are used by spammers as open relay, not that those spams are originated there.
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There're just too many clueless email admins over there. They lack the skills of configuring a well behaved MTA (it's a pretty tough job these days indeed), and the language barrier is just making things worse. Most of the people are just configuring their mail servers according to howto-like articles written by some clueful guys, and those articles are mostly just laying out the steps, no how and why things should work that way. If you hop to any of the tech forums' email section, you'll find it's full of questions like:
"Help, I just configured my email server according to XXX but things didn't work out
"Help, why my smtp auth doesn't work? It'll accept any username/password
"Help, why I can send out email by can't receive?"
"Help, I got blacklisted by XXX, how can I get myself out?"
etc., etc.
So, it's a matter of educating them how to do things right. As a Chinese myself, I am trying hard to help out those poor guys by answering questions on those forums, and by helping them out translating the documentations to Chinese.
So please, don't shut the door to them, they just need to be educated.
gd
Relevant portion of the file at iana.org: