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Spam's U.S. Roots

Posted by michael on from the part-of-the-problem-not-part-of-the-solution dept.

ahab_2001 writes "Notwithstanding how tired my finger is getting from deleting all of those unsolicited messages from China and Korea, Information Week reports that a study of filtered messages by the spam-blocking firm CipherTrust revealed that some 86% of spam originates in the U.S. Apparently, a very limited set of IPs with high-bandwidth connections is dishing out the bulk of the spam, according to this study."

5 of 332 comments (clear)

  1. T-Systems connects Scott Richter's net by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    According to this, notorious spammer Scott Richter has his own netblock (69.6.0.0-69.6.79.255), which until recently was connected to the internet through Taiwan based ISP Chunghwa Telecom. After they gave up on him, Germany based T-Systems took over. If you have any problems with spam from this netblock, their security team would like to hear about it. They have announced that they will terminate the contract if Richter violates it.

  2. I need your help by Saint+Aardvark · · Score: 5, Informative
    Weirdly enough, I just wrote about something like this in my journal. In a nutshell, I've been contacted by a list seller asking if the files on my site mean I know how to get in touch with The Bulk Club (you remember The Bulk Club, right?)

    I'm looking for suggestions on what to do next. In the meantime, whatever you do, do not run this command:

    while [ true ] ; do wget http://www.emailsupply.net/sample.txt -O /dev/null ; done
    That's a 4MB sample of the lists the gentleman has for sale, and surely the Slashdot effect runs the risk of using up all his bandwidth. Don't do it, I beg you!
    --
    Carousel is a lie!
  3. Re:Crush by geminidomino · · Score: 5, Informative

    AOL v. Cyberpromotions established that servers are private property.

    Rowan v. U.S. Post Office Dept., 397 U.S. 728 established that forcing advertising upon unwilling recipients is NOT protected speech.

    Spammers can *invoke* the first amendment all they like. (HINT: They also claim they are legitimate, ethical buisnesses). Rule #1: Spammers lie.

  4. Re:not by gorbachev · · Score: 5, Informative

    Spamcop reports on SENDING IP addresses.

    The study was reporting on who actually sent the spam.

    It is widely known US based spammers use open proxies, zombies, open relays and paid foreign spammers abroad to hide their tracks.

    So both studies are correct. It's just that they're reporting different things.

    --
    In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
  5. Re:Limited set of IP's? by tokennrg · · Score: 5, Informative

    Spamhaus will certainly help you out with a list of IP's to block. They'll also tell you what country spams the most and what ISP a majority of the spam comes from, just check the stats at the bottom of the homepage. Spamhaus is also one of the few DNS Blacklists around that you can actually work with.

    Normally they list IP addresses that spam comes from , unlike some lists like the five-ten group that lists all but 1 IP address (127.0.0.1). Spamhaus will also remove IP's that no longer spew spam and so legitimate businesses don't get blocked erroneously.

    Spamhaus also has a nifty thing called The ROKSO List which lists know repeat offenders and spam gangs so ISP's can keep from signing them up for service in the first place.