UN Takes Aim At Spam Epidemic

clester writes "CNN reports 'The United Nations is aiming to bring a "modern day epidemic" of junk e-mail under control within the next two years by standardizing legislation around the world to make it easier to prosecute spammers, a leading expert said Tuesday.' The full story reports that as much as 85 percent of all e-mail may be categorized as spam and that the problem is rapidly spreading to cell phones in the form of text messages..."

Comments

The UN?!?

[Samir Gupta]

Even a cursory follower of international affairs probably knows just how, ahem, "effective" the paper tiger that is the UN has been in accomplishing their intended goals and ensuring their resolutions are adhered to in places such as Iraq, Palestine, etc, while not being bogged down in internecine politics...

Although spam is different from war and peace, I see the same issue here. If one rogue nation chooses to defy UN law, there's not too much they can do...

Re:The UN?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

the Iraq had no WMD, so the UN resolutions have been ensured and adhered.

Once the last resisting country (USA) adheres to the UN resolutions as well I think there's a good chance for this to work as well.

Re:The UN?!?

[QuantumRiff]

Yes, cause who would listen to a part of the UN that is pushing this? the silly ITU.(International Telecommunications Union). These are the guys pushed the standards for telephones, like dialing internationally, and equipment working together.. Bet your local telecom and cell companies all followed the ITU's mandate to the letter, or else they wouldn't interconnect with the rest of the world.. Which is a pretty good idea, if you ask me.

Re:The UN?!?

[nsayer]

If one rogue nation chooses to defy UN law, there's not too much they can do...

That doesn't mean that nothing can be done... I and everyone else with a firewall in front of a mailserver can blackhole those nations that choose to tolerate spam.

I can't wait for IPv6... It should be even easier to throw away traffic from entire nations than it is now.

Re:The UN?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

You didn't actually read David Kay's report, did you?

I'll assume not because you've jumped on the mass-media hyped lack of huge stockpiles of WMD and come to the conclusion that Iraq was in compliance with all 18 or 19 UN resolutions.

Saddam's Iraq was chock full of illegal rockets, weapons research programs, and had never stopped shooting at UN forces enforcing the no-fly zones.

And if Saddam didn't have stockpiles of WMD when the US and about 20 or 30 other countries invaded, that meant he failed to comply with the UN resolutions that required him to account for the stockpiles he certainly had during the Iran war and the first Gulf War - when we did find them.

The fact that Saddam used the Money for Food program to subvert and corrupt the UN (and other countries...) is just evidence to stay far, far away from them when importand things are on the line. Just like Bill Clinton did when he opted to stop the genocide in Bosnia - another non-UN invasion by the US.

Re:The UN?!?

[Schemat1c]

dunno.. we haven't had a world war in half a century..

That is not due to the UN but to the arsenal of nukes which backed up the Cold War. It was only the threat of total annihilation that prevented WWIII.

Re:The UN?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

There was no UN forces enforcing the no-fly zone; those were American and British only. The no-fly zones had nothing to do with the UN Resolutions.

Actually, there were French forces, too.

There might have been other countries, too. The no-fly zones were enforced under the authority of the UN resolutions that provided the legal basis for the invasion of Iraq in 1991 that forced Saddam to pull out of Kuwait.

Re:The UN?!?

[EugeneK]

I stand corrected about the French participation in the no-fly zones (though France as well as Russia and others in the UN did not support the escalation of the bombing that took place in the 90's).

You didn't provide any citation for the no-fly zones having anything to do with the UN resolutions, however.

Re:The UN?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

It required Iraq to account for the weapons, sure. It permitted the use of force should Iraq fail to comply, yes. But who was to judge this?

The UN was to decide if Iraq complied, and according to the inspectors, Iraq was. The US decided Iraq failed and took matters into its own hands, defying the UN and even threatening to endager the UN workers who were still there.

Also, weapons deteriorate. The Iran conflict was when? 1980?

If you were asked to prove you did not possess something, how could you comply? By allowing me to search your property. That is the only way. You cannot prove a negative, but you can prove something cannot be found with reasonable means and time. The UN workers were busy proving that. Sure they were taking a while. It's a big country. Bush was simply eager to get his war on. (A video of him before his solemn announcement demonstrated this.)

So who defied the UN?

Re:The UN?!?

[halowolf]

But my current Inbox shows that this approach doesn't work effectivly. Has the SPAM epedemic been stopped? No we have SPAM. A country gets blacklisted, the citizens can't send email, there is a momentary lull and the spammers move somewhere else and the whole process starts over again, leaving ruin it is wake. There are now networks of zombies within our own systems sending out SPAM because of these blocades.

In stead of ostracising countries from communication with email, they should be helped with stopping SPAM traffic from their network and helped back onto the internation email sending stage. If nothing else the UN could at least help with that. Not just punishing a whole country of innocent users with the few bad apples in them.

Again and again we see examples of the thought process that maintaining a blockade against a country will force that country to comply with international demands, and again and again we see years and sometime decades of suffering by citizens before a resolution is actually reached.

I may be sounding like I'm taking this a little out of perspective, but how quickly citizens from the so called developed countries with this attitude would cry out that their freedoms are being stepped upon if someone dared to blacklist them.

Re:The UN?!?

[blackula]

Actually the ITU adopted standards that had previously been established. They just decided to take credit for standards that already existed.

Re:The UN?!?

[Naffer]

My best friend's Laptop was acting as a spam zombie for the the last month. I finally was able to clean it up when he got back home for the summer. Tell bush to hit Tau Kappa Epsilon at U.C.B. in the fall, that should get rid of some spam.

Re:The UN?!?

[TyrranzzX]

So long as there's a free and open system for people to use, there'll be those that abuse it. We must, as a people, ensure that nobody destroys that openness, government, terrorists, or morons, lest our freedom will be gone. That freedom; the freedom that makes the entire thing great.

Re:The UN?!?

[tigersha]

Sign. Again, people confuse the UN with the UN Security Council. The UN has the following other part who have, well, done great things:

UNESCO
UNHCR The Commission for Refugees
WHO (THe World Helath ORganization. Has Smallpos lately?

I could go on a bit, but the UN is much more about making people over the world work together than just the security council. Ok, its an inefficient organization, and probably wastes money like there is no tomorrow, but they do good work.

Legislations Effect

[maeltor]

How much will legislation actually do though?

Until a method is found that kills or significantly makes spam nearly impossible to send or makes the profits significantly less than the costs of operating, all legislation will do is drive the spammers further and further underground...

Re:Legislations Effect

[bmw]

all legislation will do is drive the spammers further and further underground...

I agree with you but the article did mention that there are known major spammers that they are unable to prosecute. So maybe we do need a few more laws. I think the key here is to get these anti-spam laws passed in (nearly) all countries so that spammers have fewer places to hide geographically.

Re:Legislations Effect

[lessthanjakejohn]

Here is the article

People love e-mail because it's easy and cheap. People hate spam--junk e-mail--well, because it's easy and cheap. At roughly a hundredth of a cent per message, a spammer can blast a million e-mails promoting ways to make money for a mere $100 initial investment. With such an economical advertising medium, it's hard for spammers not to recover their money. Unless, of course, they have to pay more for their trouble--a concept now being pursued at Microsoft.

Tools aimed at stemming the tide of electronic junk mail have proliferated recently, and most approaches rely on various filtering techniques. One common method is to search the subject line for certain words and such phrases as "eliminate debt" or "work from home." But those filters can also screen out legitimate e-mail that happens to contain the trigger words and can send critical e-mail unread to the "junk" folder, costing businesses dearly. That's why programmers have been looking for spam-blocking techniques that don't depend on message content.

Microsoft's concept is simple: make the sender's computer devote processor cycles to solving a mathematical problem. Incoming e-mail from an unknown sender gets delivered only once the recipient's computer verifies that a specific problem has been solved. "Computer time is money," says Cynthia Dwork, a Microsoft researcher who helped originate the idea while she was working at IBM. This cost won't overload legitimate mailers, who send only a few messages at a time, but it could be daunting for a spammer.

Over the last year, Joshua Goodman at Microsoft Research in Redmond, WA, has been working on ways to implement Dwork's idea. The challenge assigned by the recipient's computer, says Goodman, might be to solve a mathematical function that uses inputs such as the sender's name, recipient's name, time, and the content of the message itself as variables. Such an operation would typically take 10 seconds of computer time, says Dwork. That would limit a computer to sending some 8,000 e-mails a day--plenty for an individual but not enough to make it worth a spammer's while. For legitimate mass e-mail such as newsletters, subscribers could create rosters of known senders whose messages would be allowed through without their having to punch the computational ticket.

A similar project called Camram is under way in the open-source software community, says coordinator Eric S. Johansson. Goodman says, "We want to drive up the cost of using e-mail--not for the ordinary user but for the spammer."

Re:Legislations Effect

[silentbozo]

Spammers have already made strides in bypassing any such limits on their spamming. Accepting e-mails from untrusted senders only after they've done computation, only means that spammers will go after faster computers (to spam more serially), and deliver from multiple IP addresses (as they do already, to increase throughput by spamming in parallel.) To avoid instant blacklisting via honeypot addresses, spammers routinely make spamming runs from dozens of machines at the same time, in order to use the shotgun effect to their advantage.

Besides, the spammers don't care how much work the machines do - they're not their machines. The price could be storing data on the local hard drive, or having a bounty taken out on the IP, and the spammer could care less what happens to the zombie.

Re:Legislations Effect

[lp-habu]

I think the key here is to get these anti-spam laws passed in (nearly) all countries so that spammers have fewer places to hide geographically.

"Fewer" doesn't help; all they need is one. Expecting a United Nations sponsored legal solution to help here is equivalent to saying that there wouldn't be any problems in the world "if we could all just get along". There are only two ways to restrain people from doing things we don't like: social ostracism or physical force. Spammers are not likely to respond directly to social ostracism.

Re:Legislations Effect

[minas-beede]

"Until a method is found that kills or significantly makes spam nearly impossible to send or makes the profits significantly less than the costs of operating, all legislation will do is drive the spammers further and further underground..."

No, a method has to both be found and recognized as such by enough of those who can effectively use the method to make it succeed. That could start by someone doing an actual analysis of the spam problem, not one of those fake analyses that SURPRISE! leads to the conclusion that whatever the person doing the analysis favors is the right solution. You know: filters, or blocklists, or sender verification - those things, the "analyses" that lead to them.

I look at the current spam problem, I see it is mostly abuse, I conclude methods that target the abuse (and that don't wait until the spam has reached the destination email server) have promise. Where do you see any authority even mention such an approach?

Spammers are anonymous? Then how is it I know the name (Dave Patton) of one who sent out open relay test messages - just from the test messages? I don't know the name but someone is sending open relay test messages to smtps1@transedge.com from dialups at preserv.net. Is that a hard lead to follow?

The sad truth is that most people, and that includes ASTA and the ASRG of the IETF, don't do adequate analysis before beginning to "design." ASTA, for crying out loud, is still pushing "secure your open relay" when RFC 2505 (which describes WHY open relays should be secured) says doing that is not a way to end spam. ASTA makes other "secure your system" recommendations and those, too, will not work to end spam nor to even cripple it. ASTA realizes that and puts its real hope in changing the email protocol. Meanwhile all the rest of us are supposed to busy ourselves with meaningless effort - while the world continues to lose $25 billion/year on spam.

At that cost wouldn't you think somebody would do a full analysis and come up with all the kinds of abuse used by the spammers and all the ways that the abuse can be countered? OK, how about just one way - who do you see showing that? (Securing systems does NOT counter abuse - don't waste my time by naming that one. It is good practice but it is not a way to end spam - and after the system is secure is a good time to begin thinking of ways to use that secure system to fight spam, not merely to move it out of the "abusable system" category.) Secure systems don't bother spammers, and most of them are good enough to tell the spammer they are secure so the spammer knows instantly to not waste any time on them and to instead look for another insecure system. Quit kidding yourself about "secure your systems."

(Heck, if you're doing an analysis, figure out how spammers could use blocklists to find the abusable systems not yet listed so that spam can be sent to through those abusable systems to the mailboxes protected by the block lists.)

Re:Legislations Effect

[minas-beede]

Whoa there. I'm guessing that you are just ranting in general. Considering half of the comments you "rebuffed" in my post were NOT even mentioned in my post, I'm hoping that you weren't personally attacking me, because I largely agree with you.

Excellent guess. I used your post as a springboard from which to launch my diatribe. If you believe all those silly fables then it's directed at you - but I hope you don't believe them.

I've had good success against spammers using anti-abuse methods and others (Micheal Tokarev, Ron Guilmette, to name two) have had superb success. The methods are horribly neglected and terribly under-appreciated. The way to stop almost any abuse isn't to make everyone immune to it, it's to go after the abusers. It's smart to protect your wallet in various ways against pickpockets - but methods that target pickpockets work against them. Telling everyone to "secure your wallet" but never watching for, never arresting and trying pickpockets would mean that the pickpockets were being given a free ride and could pick pockets safely as long as there were pockets to be picked. That would be terrible - but change the discussion to spam and you have ASTA advising everyone to do the equivalent of "secure your wallet" and saying everyone should simply not watch for any signs of pickpockets - it's the fault of the victims when they get robbed. There's a slight difference - but it doesn't destroy the value of the example.

Re:Legislations Effect

[Hoser McMoose]

The problem with this theory is three-fold:

1. It places a load on the sending of legitimate e-mail. Not a big deal for people such as myself who's out-going e-mail is usually in the single-digits for the day (and often week), but what about for big ISPs or news services? The big ISPs and mail services (ie those that are needed to make such a system work) would require WAY more computing power to send out legit messages. Similarly you would need to calculate the solution in order to verify that the sender is actually doing the calculations and not just spitting a set of random numbers back at you, so the big mail servers get hit on both ends. When you're sending and receiving hundreds of millions of messages a day (billions in the case of AOL and MSN/Hotmail), that translates to a LOT of computer time and a LOT of added expenses.

2. I can pretty much assure you that whatever someone comes up with as an equation to solve some spammer will find a way around actually spending the pre-message computing time of solving it.

3. Spammers don't send e-mail using conventional mail servers anyway. A VERY significant portion of spam is delivered through broadband connected PCs that have been 0wned by some virus or worm. The quantity of vulnerble systems is pretty much infinite and there's nothing that's going to change this in the near future. In fact, I suspect that it's going to get MUCH worse before it will get any better.

I do tend to agree that simply making spam illegal is not going to do anything, the trick is in enforcement. Most of what spammers are doing has been illegal for AGES. Using viruses and worms to infect computers has been a crime in most countries for many years now. Same goes for illegal credit card scams, bank fraud and all the other trash that spammers are "selling". Hell, even the pr0n spam is almost always illegal as it often gets sent to children's inboxes. New laws are not what is needed, enforcement of existing laws is the trick.

Still, end the end, as long as there are millions upon millions of complete *MORONS* out there willing to spend their hard-earned cash to buy pills to "enhance their manhood", spam will exist in one form or another.

Shouldn't they...

[lukateake]

be stopping real travesties like war and disease?

Re:Shouldn't they...

[Pharmboy]

be stopping real travesties like war and disease?

That would require courage. Don't hold your breath. They are too busy trying to block investigations into abuse from the "oil for food" program.

Mod it down or whatever, I don't care, but the UN is working very hard to fulfill GW's statement, that they are irrelevent. They COULD be very powerful and effective, but the individual players (and yes, often us as well) are too busy with their own little power trips and rip offs.

Re:Shouldn't they...

[Jugalator]

Shouldn't they...
be stopping real travesties like war and disease?

They can work with more than one thing at once.

Re:Shouldn't they...

[Mashiki]

The UN will not have ANY mandate or ANY power until they remove non-democratic countries that do not;
1) respect their people.
2) have a binding constitution.
3) have a system of government that is subservient to the people.
4) have an media system which is private.
5) ensures that non-democratic nations do not have the same standing as democratic nations.

People can call the US a dictatorship and all the rest, I like calling Canada a dictatorship. God knows Darth Jean treated the country like his own piggy bank. The point is this, each of the G8 countries fall under those first 4 points. Each of the G8 countries fall under the 3 fundamental points of which lead to personal freedom.

1) Common Law (Upholds Property Rights)
2) Free Society (Liberty)
3) Market Economy (Wealth Generation)

Without those, and without the people having those rights...the countries in that organization are meaningless. It gives dictatorships the ability to be 'as powerful' as the EU, or the US. It gives butchering Syria or N.Korea as much 'moral' right as Canada or Japan.

You can not have a 'moral' organization which places corrupt, immoral, and terrorist entities at the same levels as those who are not. Our governments are accountable to US(the people)...me...you...the guy down the street.

Their governments are accountable the the guy holding the gun to his head, saying protest or die...then raping his wife and daughter for fun. Or killing someone to ensure 'loyalty'...

Bah...I don't care...mod me down, up. Kiss my ass...whatever. The UN is failing, because it puts the 'bad guys' on the same footing as the 'good guys'. If you are having a moral clarity problem trying to figure out the difference between the two...I'd suggest an actual trip to one of those 'socialist paradises'.

Sit in front of your computers, decry 'international law' but you fail to see the reasons as to 'why' it fails, bah. The same reason as to why the League of Nations failed, the same reason as to why the "Arab Leauge" are nothing but dictators who control hate filled media but are willing not only to condem us(the west) for 'evil' acts, but were unwilling to stop them from happening in their own backyard. The same reason as to why a war broke out a few hours from Paris...and it took NATO and the US to stop it. The same reason as to why Kofi is afraid of what the oil for food program will really show, and how 'deep' the corruption really is. You think the US is profiteering? Not even close. If you didn't hear...the UN head inspector for the "Oil for Food" program was killed by a bomb the other day. Very strange. Not to mention the governments who have the most 'vested' interest, want to turn this from a 'legal' to 'political' investigation. Ask why Kofi and the General council reprimanded and censured a couple of workers who wrote about what really happened in Africa. It goes on and on and on.

It's so damn corrupt that even ex-stalinists would be rolling with glee at the kick-backs.

If you want to reply, I may or may not read it.

Spelling and Grammar Nazi's can pike off.

In typical UN fashion...

[calags]

... the chairman of the anti-spam committee will be the representative from Nigeria.

Thank goodness

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one was worried about how to stop the spam epidemic. I'm glad the UN has finally stepped in to fix things. I'll bet the spammers are shaking in their boots, and cursing the UN's decision to put an end to their evil ways.

Not. I don't think the UN will do anything more
than waste billions of dollars on projects that are not needed. Why not spend the money on AID
research or prevention?

Re:Thank goodness

[Pharmboy]

If 85% of email is spam i say we just give up on email... Move on and make a new form a communication.

I have been theorizing about a method of communication where you write your message on paper, put it in a paper cover and someone delivers it for you. If enough people were to use this method, you get the price down to like 37 cents or so per message. ;)

Re:Thank goodness

[hazem]

Even worse, the US, Russia, and China have permanent seats on that council. More lives have been destroyed and more economic damage has been done by those three than probably all the other terrorist nations/groups/people combined.

Unfortunately...

[canadian_widget]

...the UN won't be able to do anything about spam. As hard as they try, the war against spam will not be won with legislation. As more legislation comes around, the spammers move to countries where nobody cares about the legislation and it all starts again.

The war against spam will be won by smart filters!!

Re:Unfortunately...

[DarkEdgeX]

The war against spam will be won by a new mail protocol. Filtering is good and all, but it doesn't catch everything no matter how well trained the filter is. SMTP needs to be replaced with something better, and Spam is just the thing to kick people into working on the problem.

Re:Unfortunately...

[ozmanjusri]

No, the spammers won't (all) move to other countries, simply because they need to be active where the money is.

If you make it illegal for them to operate in most of the wealthy countries which buy their services, and prosecute organisations which commission spam in those conuntries, you will be reducing the money available to them and reduce the incentive to spam.

oh yea

[Pharmboy]

Oh jesus h. christ, NOW I feel better that the UN is involved. I am sure the spammers are cowering in fear right now. I am sure after a year of debate, the security council will pass a resolution (9-6) that says spam is bad, but only after concessions are made regarding human rights to enough countries to get the full 9 votes....

If I know the UN...

[retro128]

...They'll pass a resolution against spam and that's the last we'll hear of it.

Re:If I know the UN...

[t1m0r4n]

...They'll pass a resolution against spam and that's the last we'll hear of it.

Not quite. First there will be at least one innocent person who has his life ruined because of some far reaching interpretation of the policy. However, blatant spam with procede uninterupted.

bleh.

[the gnat]

Intergovernmental cooperation in regulating the Internet is a recipe for disaster. An effective set of world-wide anti-spam policies will simply be a precedent that the US Congress can point to when pushing even more invasive laws like the DMCA. Or, to be fair, the rest of the world can use it as a precedent for pushing their ridiculous censorship rules.

I'm not a hardcore libertarian, but I just don't think we need a new set of laws to deal with every little annoyance, and I'd rather see the Internet be as unregulated as possible. Instead of pushing our leaders to pass more unenforcable laws that will expand government regulatory power, let's go after ISPs (and entire national networks, if need be) that tolerate spammers. If the Internet can't be self-regulating, it's ultimately doomed to failure or Balkanization.

Re:bleh.

[grumbel]

How do you go after ISPs if spamming is still perfectly legal?

Re:bleh.

[kindbud]

Instead of pushing our leaders to pass more unenforcable laws that will expand government regulatory power, let's go after ISPs (and entire national networks, if need be) that tolerate spammers.

Go after ISP's using what? New laws? No laws? Vigilante teams? Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Just what do you mean by "go after" if it does not involve passing new laws to prosecute violating ISPs with? You do realize that no law prohibits an ISP having a spammer as a customer, don't you?

So how shall we "go after" ISP's with no new laws?

Finally...

[thelenm]

Finally!! An organization with a backbone, a clear vision, and a strong determination to do something about the problem... er, what? The UN? Crap.

Spammers Rejoice!

[Tackhead]

> The United Nations is aiming to bring a "modern day epidemic" of junk e-mail under control within the next two years by standardizing legislation around the world to make it easier to prosecute spammers, a leading expert said Tuesday.

...and the initial makeup of the UNCOS (U.N. Commission On Spam) are the ambassadors from the Independent Federation of Cyberpromo (S. Wallace), the People's Republic of Optinrealbig (S. Richter), the Neoconfederacy of Telodigm (A. Ralsky), the Principality of Ratsmouth, South Florida (E. Marin) and the Democratic Republic of Horse-Fuckers from Yellowsun (You Don't Wanna Know).

Re:Spammers Rejoice!

[red floyd]

You forgot the Nigerian representative, who's chairing the commission.

Spam Vs. S/Mime

[MacDork]

Imagine if everyone used encryption. Would spam not then be a relatively small problem? If Bob spams Alice, then he gets his key revoked when Alice forwards it to his certificate authority. Now his key can be blacklisted by email clients. Carol receives Bob's message after Alice had it revoked, and as a result her email client sends the message straight to her junk mail box. Unsigned mail is not broken by this scheme, and a small charge for a signed certificate should be enough to prevent Bob from generating an endless numbers of keys at no cost. Again, assuming the majority is using encryption, unsigned mail is probably spam, but filtered to an unsigned mail box. No worse than what we have today. Revoked keys could be sent directly to the junk mail box, and all validly signed mail is whitelisted. This is by no means a new theory, and would require very little work to implement for a company like Microsoft or Apple. Would anyone care to explain why this is not in use? Would a dollar per certificate not be worth secure email and a relatively spam free existence?

Re:Spam Vs. S/Mime

[ThisNukes4u]

The problem with paying for the certificate is that then all e-mail certificates are controlled by a central authority. Also, there is no way that the encryption scheme used for the encryption could be open, as if it was, then why pay for the certificate? Good plan, but I don't see how it would work.

10 bucks says ...

[phoxix]

A) The UN doesn't get it (they never do)

B) The spammers themselves will be on this panel (ie: Sudan being on the Human Rights board)

C) The few non-spammers on this panel will have no idea what spam is. They'll be more interested in joining the mindless anti-Isreal propaganda the UN loves to engage in (Somehow anti-Isreali spam will be allowed by the UN, just watch it)

D) This panel will report to another panel, which in turn will report to some other panel, and thereby getting nothing done (their website has an amusing pic about just this)

E) Even if this panel wanted to get something done, there would be much infighting and mindless bickering between a bunch of guys who continue to treat the UN as the mindless boys-club it has grown to be

Sunny Dubey

WAIT A MINUTE

[A_GREER]

...If spamming is a criminal act, then only criminals will spam!!!

UN Resolution on Spam is coming...

[XavierItzmann]

Spammers of the world, begin to shake on your boots!



Actually, you can start shaking once we hit anti-spam resolution #18. No need to shake before then.

UN involvment

[manabadman]

I didn't realize that the UN was involved in this kind of thing. It is good though. I wonder if they will have a stronger influence than they have had with other issues (like war).

Now there is additional unified governmental support. Here is another article that talks about governmental cooperation to fight spam. This is in addition to cooperation we read about between Microsoft, Yahoo! and others. It'll be interesting to see how the spammers counter. They are a particularly strong bunch. Like cockroaches I suppose.

"Now the problem is rapidly spreading to cell phones. Nine of every 10 spam messages in Japan are now directed to mobile phones as text messages, Horton said."

Thats the scary part. How do we stop spam on phones? They easiest way would probably involve filtering by our service providers. But do we trust them to do that? And would they do that? I don't know about USA or Japan, but here in Jamaica, the majority of unsolicited text messages that I get actually comes from my cellphone providers (I have phones from two telcos).

J2ME, SMS enabled versions of spamassasin?

It's an

[Muttonhead]

engineered U.N. power grab?

Re:Meseems...

[QuantumRiff]

because the spammers that send 15 million emails to people in country 1 are not breaking the law in country 2. And Country 2 refuses to do anything about it. The ITU (the UN Group) wants to standardize legislation, making it much more difficult to hide in other countries and continue to break the laws of other nations.

Only way to stop spam...

[Yaa 101]

Is to punish the ones that hire spammers and spammers themself.
Everybody can read who's advert it is and where the owner of the advert resides.

*sigh*

[Jugalator]

Everyone seem to take aim against spam nowadays, but it doesn't seem like their guns are working.

Re:*sigh*

[PlusFiveTroll]

Thats because there not using 'real' guns. Put a little .45ACP in the worlds top 10 spammers, and I do believe you'll see a change start to occur.

This is not good news...

[HaeMaker]

Email savvy people can't come up with a palatable solution. Most non-tech savvy have solutions that throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I imagine the great minds who make up the UN will support the idea that generates the most money for the lobbists of thier supporting country. So it looks like we are going to get a sender-pays-Microsoft or sender-pays-Verisign antispam solution.

Before the ignorant flame fest begins

[mabu]

.. take some time and know what you're talking about. Don't dismiss the United Nations because a bunch of right wing idiots on TV like to make it their whipping boy. The UN does a lot of good all around the world. And if anything, the US is more responsible for crippling the UN's effectiveness than anyone else.

Re:Before the ignorant flame fest begins

[N1KO]

I dismiss the UN because a single country is able to cripple its effectiveness.

Re:Before the ignorant flame fest begins

[somekindofuniguy]

OK then, I'll bite: East Timor. Now a peaceful nation, rebuilding well with ANZAC forces withdrawing in stages. No US presence or funding at all.
I'll even go two: The Solomon Islands - still underway, but again an ANZAC initiative, with no US involvement.

Re:Before the ignorant flame fest begins

[ageoffri]

Yet that 25% of the UN's budget is still larger then any other single nation. 25% being the largest contributor should be pretty impressive to even the most dense liberal out there.

Re:Before the ignorant flame fest begins

[Kadmos]

I don't think the parent poster could have been any more insightful. The UN is only as effective as it's individual parts let it be. If the security coucil would stop crushing the vast amount of proposals (points to the USA representative) perhaps they would get the big issues dealth with.

From my own observations when the issues are small enough to escape the attention of the 5 veto members (before they can veto it), then the UN is actually able to get in there and get some work done. Case in point: East Timor

Of course the unpaid bill that's crippling the UN owed by the USA doesn't help much either.

Re:Before the ignorant flame fest begins

[ageoffri]

Of course how can anyone complain about the US paying it's dues to the UN when the members of the UN can't even manage to follow the law and avoid parking tickets. Of course once a parking ticket is issued you might think that it would be paid, but no the UN memebers think they are above the law.

The Spammers will just move offshore

[servognome]

Spammers will just move to places like this or setup a boat that can connect wirelessly from international waters.

Re:Meseems...

[letxa2000]

Great, just what we want... an international organization imposing its views of what is and isn't considered permissible to send via email.

The goals are great, but quite frankly I'm very concerned about where this could take us. It's scary enough when the U.S. Congress tries to make things better by deciding what can and can't be sent via email--having this decided by an international organization just makes me shudder. Today it's just spam, but what happens when that international organization decides that discussion of terrorist planning can't be conducted via email... and what happens when the definition of "terrorist" starts expanding.

I'm all for getting rid of spam, but we need to watch this very carefully.

Right on target

[murderlegendre]

standardizing legislation around the world to make it easier to prosecute spammers

Must have been asleep, but I didn't realize that it was within the power of the UN to 'standardize legislation' in any given juristiction upon the planet.

Bitter sarcasm: This should come as a great relief to the countless vitims of murder, genocide, torture, displacement, starvation, disease, opression and the myriad other insults, which more than half of humanity fears on a regular basis.

What was the mission of the UN? Ladies and gentlemen, get a real job..

Standardizing legislation

[darin3200]

"by standardizing legislation around the world to make it easier to prosecute spammers."
But doesn't a large portion of spam come from compromised Windows machines with broadband? Although lots of spam comes from Russian and Chinese servers I don't see how the UN's approach will be able to handle desktop computers in the US. If Grandma gets a worm that turn her computer into a spam machine are we going to prosecute her in The Hague?

Hard-hitting issues...

[JohnsonWax]

I'm so glad that the UN is willing to tackle spam rather than some softball issue like the rampant spread of HIV through low-income nations. Maybe Symantec, Microsoft, and Cisco can work on tackling a small thing like that...

Now we know nothing will ever be done about spam

[Danae's Dad]

The main reason that spam is proliferating and will continue to do so is simple: it is a commercial activity, hence sacrosanct.

Governments today can make effective law against all sorts of things, but the sacred cow that they must never interfere with is people's and corporations' right to make profit. As soon as they mess with that, they can wave their economy bye bye as all the powerful corporate players jump ship.

Long-established commercial activity such as farming, mining, agriculture, retail, insurance, medical practice, etc. have equally long-established, effective laws that protect us from the abuses of their worst practictioners. Those laws were made in the days before "free enterprise" ruled the roost. Today, though, new enterprises are free to neglect their social responsibilities, and they will get away scot free because governments no longer dare to make effective law to inhibit them. They will make new law, yes, but not effective law.

So now the U.N. is picking up the ball. That's not surprising, because all the lost causes get booted to the U.N. eventually anyway, which is why they have gotten a reputation for being ineffective and goody-goody.

It starts with SPAM...

[stubear]

...but it will end with censorship of many other things. France and Germany already do not allow the schwastika to be sold or displayed in their respective countries. How ling until they pressure the UN to ban this from the internet? What about China and anti-government speech? Letting the UN get involved will only make things worse. Much, much worse.

A more effective solution...

[lp-habu]

A more effective solution would be to authorize class-action lawsuits against any company which uses spam -- not sends it, uses it. At the same time, we could sharply restrict all other class-action lawsuits so the lawyers would be hungry and vicious. They could easily bankrupt any company that was foolish enough to allow spam to be sent in their name. Then when all the spammers were out of business, the trial lawyers would starve, and the world would be a better place.

Of course any solution -- even baying at the moon -- would be more effective than relying on the UN.

its great that the un wants to help...

[vmircea]

...but the UN tends to be generally ignored by lots of countries... especially the US, want an example?

Bush: Hey UN, can we go to Iraq?
UN: No
Bush: Duly noted *promptly invades*

Even if the UN passes this, the US (which originates a good amount of the world's spam, probably won't want to do this, for lots of reasons, one being that the US likes to be unilateral now, and lots of people in congress and the like don't really like the UN, but this might spur the US to do its own plan which actually does stuff

Good! Well, snap to it ...

[cascadingstylesheet]

... I expect a resolution any day now.

And if that doesn't work (dramatic pause) the strong statements. They may even condemn spam. Oooohh ....

Now, if they'd actually condemn spammers (to death), and bring in their enforcement arm (the US military), then we'd be talking ...

Two possabilitys

[Felinoid]

Two possable outcomes.

1. 13 years from now someone other than the UN will get feed up and actually address the problem pissing off the rest of the world who apparently started taking kick backs from spammers.

Slashdotters seam to think this is the outcome however it appears this only happens when the UN takes on it's ACTUAL mission of world peace and not more trivial matters.
(I know spam is a big deal but compaired to world hunger (ignore the obveous joke here) disease and war I'd say spam is kinda the same as a cop ignoring a murder to chase after a speeder)

2. Draconian laws that permit the UN to deside what is or isn't acceptable in e-mail.
With some lobbying and bribes spammers get to continue to operate BUT other things don't.
Spam hunter efforts, Linux dev e-mail lists, Slashdot (all of it), Rush Limbaugh, Howard Stern.

The merrits and diffrences between the cenesorship of Limbaugh and censorship of Stern aside the United Nations was founded to premote world peace (hunger and disease intersect this as nations will go to war over the resorces needed to resolve thies issues).

However as of late the United Nations has abandoned it's cause of world peace in favor of it's own form of world domnation.

Take a look at the issues the UN has taken on as of late:
IP law, Hate Speach and now Spam.
Each of thies issues can be used to craft laws that control what people can say.

IP law: Copyright law is itself a big buggabo. It's not so much the control of what is said but WHO may say it. Copyright law has already been used to control political speach.
The "I have a dream" speach should be public domain. It was a public speach and shapes public policy to this very day. However the famaly of the man who originally uttered those words now clame ownership over all his words making political debate on those issues cumbersom or in some cases impossable. IMAO that is the only value to a copyright on public speach.

Hate Speach: Today political organsiations clame all opposing ideology as "hate speach" (much as Microsoft clames Linux is unamerican) as a means of sillencing opponents.

Spam: Spam isn't very well defined and it's pritty easy to use the terminology to pick and chouse what is or isn't spam. This could easly be used to sillence political speach.
I also believe the UN is picking this one up becouse certen political parties are using spam for fundrasing. Obveously even lagit antiSpam laws would have some effect on the political front however thats not really anybodys fault but the spammer politicians themselfs.

Re:3.141

[MacDork]

If your certificate is locked in a keychain, and the keychain is configured appropriately, worms would have scarce little chance to send 10000 emails without grandma noticing. I have my signed certificate on my keychain, and it is configured to only allow Mail.app access to it. The only way a worm is sending mail with my key is to open Mail.app, and start sending messages in plain view of anyone sitting at the machine. I can also set it to ask for the keychain password before access and create yet another stumbling block for worms if necessary.

At the worst, grandma has to spend a buck to get a new certificate and maybe get a lecture about opening attachments in unsigned mail ;-) Being a good grandson though, you would probably install Mozilla for her, thus limiting the possibility of a worm taking advantage of her to begin with, no?

for the same reason

[zogger]

why should grandma lose her email "rights"if she gets rooted and zombiefied? for the same reason like someone who fails an emissions test from bad engine maintenace can't get their cars re registered until they fix the problem, because the state-we the people-*say so*, figuring less pollution is a mostly a good idea. Whether grandma knew her car was overly polluting or not. All spam is is internet pollution, enforced minimum "good netiquette" standads just might be a good idea, and nowadays, there's no reason to have a zombied machine except willful ignorance and a general uncaring attitude. everyone has heard of spam and viruses and wehatnot who's on the net now. Every-single-person. If MY machine got zombiefied it wouldn't bother me AT ALL to be temporarily blocked from email, because I certainly would want to know about it. happens to everyone, the potential anyway. It's just how you handle it. If I got one final email from the ISP saying, "well hombre, you are zombiefied, clean up your machine,then we'll let you back to using your email account", I would APPRECIATE the info if I didn't know about it. It's called "tough love", being forced into civilised behavior, whether you knew about the uncivilised behavior or not. Honest righteous people want to be clean and not be unwitting spammers or virus spewers, sometimes they just need to be told about it,at any age.

I like what we said in the 60's, it's still relevant today:

"you are part of the problem, or part of the solution"

why are webforms evil?

[zogger]

really, what's wrong with a webform? You go googling for some product you are interested in. If you don't want to finalise the transaction right then, and need more info, you find a supplier you like. You are gonna fill out a webform on an https webpage anyway if you go to straight buy the product right then and there, and you include your email so he can whitelist YOU. Or, you'd like to get more info before you make a purchase, so you type just as much stuff as you would in an email except it's in a box on the web page you are already at.. You are at a dead neutral in "effort". You hit enter, same as hitting send in an email. The vendor gets your email addy,sends you the info you requested. You have put the vendor on your whitelist obviously. What's the diff? Where is it? Because it's not *called* email with the very first contact?

sorry, try again

This will help

[rossz]

The UN outlawing spam will work as well as the UN law outlawing genocide.

Some solution ...

[orangeguru]

Why go after the spammers? We simply need laws to sue companies who sell their products via spamming services. If companies get sued a lot employing spammers - their business practice won't pay off anymore.

As long as people buy the crap that is advertised and as long as some company can make some decent profit from spamming it will continue.

Destroy the economical basis of spam - then most companies won't use it.

What can UN do? Threaten spammers with ?

[Lead Butthead]

What can UN do? Threaten spammers with weapons embargo? Economic sanction? In the matter of spam, I can't see what UN has to offer that can possibily be effective.

Re:Meseems...

[macdaddy]

There's a reason why you aren't seeing many suits from individuals. The federal government has seen fit to take the power to sue spammers given to us by our state legislatures. Instead of letting us defend ourselves they passed that ridiculous YOU-CAN-SPAM law. I was looking forward to using my state's anti-spam law. Unfortunately the YOU-CAN-SPAM law went into effect before I had a chance and it doesn't all me, the end user, the person being damaged, to seek legal action. Thanks Uncle Sammy for watching out for my interests. I really appreciate it.

Re:This was just on the James mailing list

[cr0sh]

I know porn when I see it.

Only within the context of your worldview.

One man's porn is another man's everyday activity. Did you know that there is just about a sexual fetish (and thus a porn market) for just about anything? A well known example are images (and video) of a woman wearing high heels stepping on wine glasses. No nudity, just the act alone.

Some people find this highly erotic, to them images of the act could be considered "pornographic". To the rest of society, it is just "odd". In a similar vein, you have the whole "furry" fetish...

The fact is, one can only tell what porn is based on their world view - in some cultures, the sight of a woman's breasts would arouse little or nothing. Other cultures drape curtains on their statues.

Re:Now we know nothing will ever be done about spa

[Fruit]

It's only a commercial activity in the sense that robbing old ladies is a commercial activity. I don't see any problem in restraining that.

Re:Resisting the UN

[dcam]

What exact UN Security Council resolution did "France, Russia, Germany and so on" break?

They broke a US Security Council resolution.

The one that says "We are always right".

UN usurping sovereign power?

[Warlok]

I think everyone's missing a key point here. With the cooperation and enforcement from member nations, the UN can and does usurp sovereign power in countries that don't comply. In this case, the UN will be drafting sample legislation for other countries to use - in short, UN delegates (non-elected by any country that I know of) will be drafting bills for other countries to turn into laws. This is standard operating procedure for the UN - draft sample laws to enforce their code of conduct (some call it the "One World Government"), use the weight of diplomacy, brow-beating, sanctions, embargos, and military muscle from other nations to get those laws passed, then stand around and see what a fine, brave, new world they've created. The UN has been doing this for years - normally, Americans only hear about the UN in terms of resolutions our military is dying to enforce.

What happens when a country is in non-compliance? After sanctions, embargos, and brow-beating don't work, the UN turns to it's muscle, basically the U.S. and European nations military, to drop the hammer. Do we really want to send UN "peacekeepers" into a foreign country to stop someone from sending you e-mail? Anyone here want their nation's military to be a) under command of another nation's general, b) shipped to some far away land, and c) used into battles to protect your right to not have to look at naked breasts when you don't want to? Hell, I don't even want my military in Iraq fighting for someone else's freedom.

Remember, folks, the UN is just a meeting place for nations to come together to talk through their differences. UN resolutions have no more weight of law than any other verbal or written contract, and since those contracts are between nations, I posit they carry less enforcement power than contracts between natural persons. The power they have is in PR - non-complying nations get some real bad press from major news organizations, which brings out the bleeding heart in all of us, I'm sure. If these agreements had any real power, Americans wouldn't be getting killed to free Iraq - and it's oil.