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Russia, China World's Biggest Spammers

Posted by timothy on from the water-among-earth's-wettest-substances dept.

An anonymous reader writes "According to this ZDNet article, The Spamhaus Project has warned that organised cirminal gangs in Russia are supplying U.S.-based spammers with details of compromised PCs that can be manipulated to send junk mail. According to Spamhaus director Steve Linford, the Russian gangs aren't constrained by any anti-spam or cybercrime laws in their home country and have no respect for legislation implemented in other countries. Also, apparently 70 percent of spam is sent from China by American spam outfits who in turn have hosting arrangements with Chinese ISPs."

9 of 435 comments (clear)

  1. What is the best way to stop this? by TJ_Phazerhacki · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Maybe not completely relevant to the specific subject, but what is the best way to stop this?

    User end filters are a necessity these days, and even then, I still spend at least 15 min each day dealing with the spam. My personal box - No One else knows the address, it is for my own internal network purposes, is chock full of the stuff.

    What do other slashdot'ers do? What can we hope to see in the near future?

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    1. Re:What is the best way to stop this? by YrWrstNtmr · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Maybe not completely relevant to the specific subject, but what is the best way to stop this?

      Due to the global nature of the internet, the only way is to wait until the governments of China and Russia change due to public, internal pressure. Note that this may take some time.

      In the meantime, SpamBayes might help.

    2. Re:What is the best way to stop this? by halowolf · · Score: 5, Insightful
      While end user filters are a necessity, they should be the last line of defense, because by the time the SPAM has reached you, it has stolen the bandwidth, CPU cycles and disk space to get there.

      I currently sit in the "email itself must change" camp to fix the problem of SPAM. Of course its an impractical camp to sit in at the moment, but things are moving along slowly.

      I can't see that addressing the problem of SPAM on an international law basis is going to yield any results in the near and not so near future.

      Just random opinions on my part...

    3. Re:What is the best way to stop this? by lars_boegild_thomsen · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Aren't you missing one important fact here? That most of the spam are promoting american products? This is a big like fighting drugs by throwing the addicts to jail and hitting small time street pushers. The only way to deal with this is to his the ones that profit big time - which are the ones trying to sell their products using these questionable means.

      Fact is if I look at my inbox - something like 95 % of all Spam promote questionable american products, 2-3 % is in russian so I don't even know what it promotes - and I have yet to see ONE spam mail that actually try to sell a Chinese product.

  2. 70% from US? by westendgirl · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If 70% 70 percent of spam is sent from China by American spam outfits, wouldn't that make the US the biggest spammer?

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  3. Why does this remind me of illegal drugs? by Infonaut · · Score: 5, Insightful
    It's the damned Columbians making all that cocaine! The friggin' Afghans are selling opium again!

    Evil Russian spammers! Chinese spammers want to take down America!

    And yet, in both cases there is plenty of demand from within the States. If it ain't rich kids experimenting, it's poor kids escaping with drugs from South America or Asia. If it's not a "bulk emailer" in California, it's a "clever marketer" in Florida sending millions of unsolicited email via servers in Russia or China.

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  4. Well, technically by dedazo · · Score: 5, Insightful
    The US is the largest spammer in the world. Russia and China would be the largest spam relays.

    That title is wrong.

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  5. Bullshit by autopr0n · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Headline should read, US Spammers using services of Chinese ISPs, Russian mob. The Spam originates here, and ends up here. The vast majority of Spam is in English, and targeting an American audience.

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    autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
  6. A simple Question... by Lord_Pain · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why are we not punishing the fools who hire these spamming bastages to promote their business?

    After all if the source of the spammers income dwindles then they wither. Perhaps I'm being overly simplistic.

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