Slashdot Mirror
NYT on Spam Cops
yet another coward writes "The New York Times reports on new measures against spam. (Sperm sample required, sorry ladies) Microsoft has increased efforts to track and prosecute spammers. Hotmail receives 2 billion (2 * 10^9) spam messages per day. In a twist of weirdness, the Direct Marketing Association is funding investigators who cooperate with the FBI on spam investigations. Spamhaus also gets a mention."
In a twist of weirdness, the Direct Marketing Association is funding investigators who cooperate with the FBI on spam investigations.
sounds like phillip morris funding anti-smoking campaigns.
This notice on their site makes clear what uses of their materials is acceptable. Reposting verbatim to other sites is definitely not.
Moderators should not be encouraging this type of behavior by making them "insightful". Slashdot should respect other peoples copyrights, don't forget how evil violating the GPL is.
Slashdot Moderation: From positive to terrible in 2 "insightful" posts.
Sperm sample required, sorry ladies
/., and that looks a bit unprofessional for the front page.
This is kind of off topic, but does anyone else feel that the New York Times, "registration required," jokes are getting a little out of hand. I mean, the first time someone said, "soul sucking registration," it was pretty funny, but now it's just getting lame. I think it's gone the way of the step 1 step 2 step 3 profit jokes.
No offence intended to whoever posted the article. I'm sure they were just joking around, but a lot of people read
Not unless and until they accept that the rules must be based on opt-in, not opt-out. Unfortunately, it has become clear that the only way there is any chance of getting them to accept this is to make it clear that an unsolicited opt-out advertisement from a "legitimate" business will be considered equivalent to the sleaziest "p3n!s pill" spewing.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Well, actually you don't need a fast connection.
As a matter of fact, it would be undesirable for these slime to leave that much of a trail back to themselves (ie, the IP they've connected to the internet would be included in mail they originated from themselves).
No, instead a lot of them look for open relay mailservers. For the uninitiated, an open relay is a mail server that will accept mail from anybody to anybody.
Then the spammer sends *one* mail to the relay with 10,000 bcc addresses. The victim relay then has the task of sending out the 10,000 messages while the spammer looks for another open relay to send more spam through.
This is where it is even scarier that spammers are "hooking up" with virus writers. Sure, it used to be the virus would just send copies of itself to your friends and family. But, now they're getting sophisticated enough to become open relays for spamming or even *hosting the website* that the spam points to (!).
You're right... it *is* far to easy, but much easier than you even thought. >8(
Diplomacy is the art of saying, "Nice doggie!" until you can find a rock.
The problem with "legitimate" spam is that there would be 'way too much of it. Let's say that there are 100,000 "legitimate" spam senders, each of whom sends me one spam per year. That's almost 300/day -- worse than I have now. 100,000 is very definately a lowball estimate, and one per year is simply silly.
The "unsubscribe" business is a con -- you will have to unsubscribe to every company and mailing list provider that might want you to buy something. I'll also bet that most of them will be set up as obfuscated web pages that will actually subscribe you to extra lists (unsubscribe to List A, be automatically subscribed to Lists B through Z unless you find the Magic Button).
Let's face it. There is *no* *such* *thing* as "legitamate" spam -- if we want to keep e-mail as a useful means of communication.
Welcome to the Turing Tarpit, where everything is possible but nothing interesting is easy.
"sperm samples winging their way to NYT"
Good Lord! What kind of sperm do you freaks have? My sperm SWIM thank you very much.