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Endangered Countries On The Internet
Vande writes "Balkanalysis.com has an article about Macedonia being driven towards internet extinction as a result of some blacklists, which also include Bulgaria and Romania. Namely, this poorly written quote from the 'export bureau' (non-gov org) states the reason for being blacklisted: 'Pay close attention to shipping or contact addresses located in countries with a high reported incidence of online fraud and many e-commerce web sites have found a high incidents of on-line fraud as well, such as Africa, Nigeria, Macedonia, Colombia, etc..' They must have lost the stats on fraud from Russia, Israel and the USA itself, because Macedonia's negligible internet population cannot possibly account for that much trouble. Cutting off an entire country only hurts the legitimate users. And I thought all this time I was surfing the 'World Wide' Web :/"
For these who cant RTFA: Of course, not only "Wild East" countries like Russia and Israel exceed little Macedonia in terms of online criminal output. It would be utter hypocrisy to ignore the vast internet fraud industry in the United States itself.
In conclusion, if you must blacklist a country, you should start for these 3.
I'm a chainsmokin' alcoholic sociopath, so-ci-o-path
Brilliant. That's mentioned in the article, of course. But what the outcome is that any fraudsters can continue (though no evidence was offered of such), but the average home user will be stymied.
The problem isn't so much that there is a lot of fraud coming from these countries, but that the governments there do nothing to stop it. Rewarding a nation and a people who don't even have the wherewithal to police themselves is not the way to solve the problem. You solve the problem by making this lack of responsibility painful for them. If someone is being a screw up, you get behind them and kick them in the ass until they get their shit together. Refusing to do that because you're afraid someone might think you are being unfair doesn't do anyone any good.
Whether it be a nigerian 419 scam, or a scam escrow service, these kinds of operations exist because law enforcement in these places is on the take. It isn't just the scammers that are screwing you, its the police as well because they're getting a cut of the loot.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Sure, the USA might account for a lot of fraud because of the sheer Internet population here, but at least criminals here have at least some fear of getting prosecuted and thrown in jail. If a country doesn't enforce the law (or there isn't one there to enforce), then the entire country might as well be waging war on my servers.
Both the article and the writeup wonder how "tiny macedonia" could be a big enough problem to blacklist. Surely Russia and Israel have more scams?
What they're missing is that it's probably the ratio of fraudulent order volume to total order volume. It seems that the blacklisters are accusing Macedonia of too high a ratio of fraud.
These complainers are failing to see the merchant's viewpoint. Fraud can really bite into profits. If I were starting an e-commerce business, I wouldn't ship to any questionable countries. Sorry to hurt anyone's feelings, but it doesn't make business sense.
Sound like Macedonia needs to start catching and prosecuting the fraudsters, then publicize this fact to the e-commerce merchants.
I don't see why it's Slashdot's job to be free advertising for this guy's personal opinion
Whilst written from a personal perspective, the article raises valid issues. Some anti-spam RBLs just blacklist entire countries like Korea and China. See this here for more about that.
The difference is now it isn't just affecting email, but other parts of the web as well. It doesn't make living in one of these countries any easier, does it. If this article is to be believed, it seems that many admins have been quick to blacklist eg. macedonia perhaps because they are small and "not worth the risk" rather than actually being a source of trouble.
So, we're now excluding minorities on the so-called World-Wide-Web. Sure, it's an opiniated observation, but an observation that I'm glad to have encountered. I'm glad this article ran, I got something out of it. I'm sorry you didn't. At any rate, this article is a hell of a lot more "insightful" than the Linux Users Are Spoiled drivel I had to endure recently.
As things stand with certain massive netblocks that have sent me nothing but spam, viruses, phishing attempts, and 419 scams for several years, I am willing to risk losing one or two legitimate contacts in favor of eliminating thousands upon thousands of undesirable contacts.
And obviously, since you personally have only received unsolicited email from Nigeria, where you presumably have few social contacts, thousands upon thousands of them must be spammers/scammers and only one or two "legitimate contacts."
By that logic nearly every country in the world would be blocked by nearly every other country.
It would seem more reasonable to assume that, given the nature of spam, a few bad apples are spoiling it for thousands upon thousands of "legitimate contacts."
Yes, it would be nice if the respective governments would/could do something about it. Perhaps "we" should set them a shining example of how to go about it properly, for a change, before we bitch overmuch.
KFG
I feel I should point out that blacklisting an entire country is probably not as good an idea as it sounds, as it may just inadvertently set a dangerous precedent.
Before starting my current job, I did some systems admiistration work for small ISPs here in South Africa. At one point last year, after long deliberations and searching for any other solutions we could find, we finally decided to blacklist seven U.S. ISPs, because of the never ending tidal wave of spam and worm attacks that originated from these. It worked.
Following from this, I have often wondered about the possible effect of completely disconnecting the United States from the rest of the internet.
Just think for a moment my fellow non-Americans, no more "legal" spam, no more pop-up adds that come from nowhere, because a hapless user clicked "Yes" somewhere, no more propaganda web sites telling us how wonderful they are and how bad we are, no more "you will use DRM because our laws say so, even though they are not your laws" attitude, no more open source projects being distributed with half the functionality removed, because it might infringe on some insignificant U.S. software patent, and someone from the States might download it, putting the author in violation of the patent, no more Carnivore servers reading every word I type as I compose this post, because I just might be saying something that could "endanger the interests or national security of the United States", ah, bliss...
Since the introduction of the CAN-SPAM Act, spam, even non-compliant spam, has been increasing. American businesses seem to interpret the Act as a free license to spam everyone with impunity. Oh sure, the very large spammers eventually get shut down by multi-million dollar law suits filed under the Act by the very large American ISPs, but that really doesn't help the rest of the world, does it?
We've all read the statistics about how China is such a large source of spam, but what the statistics fail to tell you is that this spam originates from Chinese companies, being payed by American spammers to do their dirty work. If spam from China could not reach the United States, because the United States isn't there in internet terms, there would be no point for the spammers to continue hiring the Chinese to do this for them, and spam from China would probably decline.
I'm sorry if this hurts the feelings of all the American readers, but I feel I must point out that the rest of the Western world is getting very tired of your incessant moaning and paranoia.
Inter-without-America-Net anyone? If they can justify doing this, so can we. ISPs of the world, blacklist with impunity!
I realise that this post will probably get me flamed or even moderated into oblivion, but I think it does serve to illustrate an important point, of which even the United States should take heed.
If the U.S. can justify blacklisting an entire country because of a minute security threat, do we, the rest of the world, not have more than sufficient justification to blacklist the entire United States?
This is a dangerous door for the U.S. to open, and it swings both ways. Yes, blacklisting the entire U.S. does seem to be impractical, as we would probably loose most of the internet, but to be brutally honest, the only American web site I would miss is Slashdot.
The poster is rather plainly a Macedonian who is annoyed at having trouble with web sites. . .
.it's the USA's fault, Israel's fault, Russia's fault. . .
.
.especially given the limited news value of a pure opinion post.
Plainly. Any number of Slashdot stories have been based on similar complaints. Do they only count if it's an American doing the bitching?
. .
He said nothing of the kind. He pointed out a certain hypocrisy in the blacklisting.
I don't see why it's Slashdot's job to be free advertising for this guy's personal opinion. .
I rather thought that was one of its overt functions where the opinion might be relevant to the tech/computer/internet world.
. .
I disagree that it is pure opinion or of limited news value, but then I don't take a purely "western" point of view either.
C'mon, really, slashdot is a news site, not "opinionated rant of the week", for that I read the comments, not the articles.
And now you have mine.
KFG
Right, as if using the internet wasn't expensive enough already, you're going to be dialing international to a hypothetical ISP that has no qualms about selling accounts to foreign countries? The other issue is payment - Mastercard?
There is the other issue too. If it's so easy for people in these countries to get accountes elsewhere like the parent sugests... then it would be as easy for the non-legit users to get them as well.
This is why black listing whole countries doesn't work... you can always dialup to AOL in some other country.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Let me say on the out-set: I am not impressed. Since when has Africa been a country? This is what I find wrong in the "Western" Press. When ever something about a country in Africa is being discussed, The word "Africa" is used instead of the country. Africa is a continent with more than 50 countries, each with different peoples. I will give an example of Uganda which with is 24 million people, has more than 40 tribes. Each of these tribes is different in itself. I sympathize with those that fall into the topic's fraud.
As an African living in Canada, I hear Africa being lumped as a single entity when referring to a country in this vast place! Africa is unique in that it has climates ranging from temperate to tropical to semi-arid. Back to the point: I agree that this piece has been very very poorly written! But it's worth the read.
Unless you happen to live in one of these marginal countries, as the author of the original article does.
You are missing the point of a blacklist. Sure, blacklists can help slow undesired activity such as spam and fraud, but a lot still gets through, and nobody is debating that. The _real_ point of a blacklist is to _motivate_ people to fix the problems at the source. If Macedonia really was cut off from the Internet due to fraud, they wouldn't just sit there. They would start a crackdown on fraud so that they could get their Internet back. Sure, there's collateral damage. But what about all the people who would have been defrauded? Surely they should be counted as damage prevented. What about the increased security of the Internet as a whole, leading to higher worldwide trust of Internet businesses and Internet growth? I believe these things are much larger than the collateral damage.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
I live in Romania and I am well aware of the aspects of fraud and all, but that is NOT the main business on the net here; we also are trying to develop the infrastructure in order to provide the necessary cultural links between the individuals and the rest of the world. We fight our way through with the old rugged "securitate"(read gestapo) service in order to provide some privacy for the user.
You have no idea how difficult is to persuade a hacker to stop; in some cases we had to meet him in person and kick his ass.
And now this. There are some reasons why the fraud is taking place through and in Romania; one is the goverment because they don't have the necessary expertise to deal with the issue; second is the general state of poverty (generated by the corrupt goverment as well).
Of course you might say, it's your govt, deal with it, in the mean while you are blacklisted; but think about it: the net is the only viable way we can use to keep the people informed, to communicate to each other and all; and cutting us off will NOT lead to a fix, but to an even darker period for the people(read lemmings)
We thought that the WWW did something good here : it helped people learn about freedom and decent living; and now, what's gonna happend? China style WWW? It tastes bad already;
Back to 1947?
We're now arriving at a point where virus-infected users are booted off networks and told to clean their shit up, it's a logical extension that countries which can't police themselves suffer the same fate.
Like the virused home-user PC, its a matter of local responsibility, having better safeguards means the Web community won't ever need to act against you. I hope Macedonia actually takes action to regain the trust of the world rather than just looking for ways to get around the blacklists and relays through foreign proxies.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
And how do they do that, if the entire country is blocked?
Cheers,
Ian
>> use a proxy located somewhere else
> Brilliant. That's mentioned in the article, of course. But what the
> outcome is that any fraudsters can continue (though no evidence was
> offered of such), but the average home user will be stymied.
I blacklist only Romania on my servers. It has cut down the number of probes
by a good percentage.
Sure, they can use a proxy and a hacked system elsewhere. But the last
three rooted boxes I have seen have had log entries that show them
download their cracking tools from Romanian sites. Complaints about these
cretins to the abuse entities at their providers are completely ignored
-- not even acknowledged.
In contrast, any report of probe from a real US ISP (rare these days) is
replied to and I believe these boxes are taken offline right away. That
is why it is now relatively rare to see probes from US-based boxen.