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USA, UK, Australia Sign Anti-Spam Memorandum

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the but-what-does-it-mean-man dept.

securitas writes "Computerworld's Todd R. Weiss reports that the USA, Britain and Australia have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for six agencies to share resources to fight spam. The MoU lets the government agencies 'share information and work together to detect, investigate and track spammers' as well as 'exchange evidence and coordinate enforcement efforts.' The agencies involved include the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), its counterparts in the UK and Australia, and several other consumer protection agencies. You can get a full list of participating government bodies from the FTC press release, 'Consumer Protection Cops Join Forces to Fight Illegal Spam'. You can also get the spam MoU full text in PDF format from the FTC. More at The Register, vnunet, The Age/Sydney Morning Herald and InfoWorld."

10 of 92 comments (clear)

  1. Potential for misuse? by bhmit1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    share information and work together to detect, investigate and track spammers

    So is this just forming some back channels to track anyone, or are their limits to ensure that only spammers are tracked. And if there are limits, how do they define a spammer?

  2. Absent from the list by Chatmag · · Score: 4, Insightful

    China, Korea, and Brazil are absent from the list. It just figures the countries sending the most spam are not onboard.

    --
    Pete Carr Owner Chatmag.com
    1. Re:Absent from the list by Chatmag · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I"m going by message headers that I recieve in emails, and that most URL's in spam point to servers in those countries. Fighting spam also means taking down the web sites that they point to.

      Granted, a large number of professional spammers are in the USA. What I have not seen covered very much is the new law enacted July 1st here in Florida that makes sending spam a Class C Felony. Everyone complains about Florida being spammers paradise, and now that Florida is on the track to cleaning up spammers, no one notices.

      --
      Pete Carr Owner Chatmag.com
    2. Re:Absent from the list by bhmit1 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Are you just guessing? Or pulling figures out of your ass? The US is sending like 56.7% of all SPAM.

      To pull a figure out of my own ass, I'd guess that 56.7% of all insecure machines that can be hijacked and used to relay spam are located in the US. That doesn't mean that the person doing the hijacking is in the US, which is why you need agreements with China, Korea, Brasil, Russia, etc.

  3. Re:spam by machacker · · Score: 1, Insightful

    what's "right" and what's the constituition is different. it's not nice to swear at a cop but you have all the right to. In fact, there was a case where a guy said "fuck you" to a cop. The cop arrested him and the guys sued the cop for violating his first amendment rights. The guy won. Even though it's wasn't nice to swear at the cop, it was within his rights and protected by the first amendment. The second that we infringe on someone's freedom of speech and say it's ok, we set a precedent that the freedom of speech isn't absoulte. It's just a matter of time before it becomes illegal to insult or criticize the president. That's not a democracy or republic, that's a dictatorship. Btw, i only know of 3 actuall limitations to free speech: Copyrights and patents witch are evil (Jefferson called them a "neccesary evil"). libel and slander, and threats or or things that can cause iminent danger (can't threaten to kill someone or yell fire in a crowded theater). Personally, i think we should just get rid of copyrights and patents or at least make them 10 years without renewal.

    Now spam. For every 1,000,000 people who get spammed, like 5 respond. If those 5 morons didn't respond, the spammers would go out of buisness. Personally, instead of making it illegal to spam (spammers won't care about the law) we should just fight fire with fire. massive DOS attacks against the servers sending out spam for example.

  4. One small step... But only a small step.. by eamacnaghten · · Score: 4, Insightful
    I welcome this statement of co-operation, but it is only a very small step in the right direction, and it will do little good and have hardly any effect.

    Spammers will always find a way to spam so long as there is money in it. If that money is denied them they will stop. "CAN-SPAM" acts need to be changed to "CANT-SPAM" - and internationally at that - and spammers need to be hit where it counts - in their bank balance.

    However - I do not see the above happening. All countries need to participate and co-operate, not just the ones involved in the press release, do you really see THAT happening? Also legislation NEEDS to be passed that the US have already shown they cannot - and most other countries will not dare to try - not good for the future there.

    I suppose we will have to get used to the usefulness of Email becoming more and more diluted, of the endless race between anti-spam software and spammers getting round it and so on. I think we will still have the internet and inboxes getting clogged up with that rubbish for some time yet - if not from now on in.

    --

    Web Sig: Eddy Currents

  5. Save trees instead of bandwidth! by Lank · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Seriously, I hear anti-spam sentiments every day on here. I hate spam myself, but it's semi-tolerable and it only takes 1-2 minutes a day to sort it out from the real e-mail I get. But when I get ~5 piece of printed real mail, well, doesn't anyone seem to mind that? So over the course of a year, I would get approximately 1500 piece of physical junk mail, and that must kill a bunch of trees I would think. I would actually prefer spam to printed junk. I am a quasi-environmentalist, though...

    --
    Gotta get me one of these!
    1. Re:Save trees instead of bandwidth! by WuphonsReach · · Score: 2, Insightful

      But when I get ~5 piece of printed real mail, well, doesn't anyone seem to mind that?

      That's because we know that the sender paid the USPS to deliver that mail. Sure, they get bulk mail rates, but at least there are expenses involved. Spam has a much lower cost to the sender, and if the sender breaks the rules (hijacks other machines or uses an open-relay) the sender doesn't even have to pay for the bandwidth used to send the spam. I don't know of any USPS offices that would allow someone to drop off a million letters without being both a known customer and with proper postage affixed.

      Secondly, I have yet to see printed bulk mail that has a "track back" feature to determine whether or not it was accepted, opened, acted upon.

      --
      Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
    2. Re:Save trees instead of bandwidth! by leeward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That assumes the trade-off is that the people responsible for most spam would be sending mail if they were unable to spam. That is simply completely false. If some magical perfect technological fix for spam were implemented tomorrow, your level of junk snail mail would not change at all.

  6. Fighting SPAM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Isn't it odd that we must shut down ISP's utilize millions of man-hours finding spammers? Is anyone following the money? Seems to me that should be much easier to find out who is collecting and shutting down that end rather than some (talented?) intermediary schmuck on a public terminal sening out E-mails