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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."

6 of 332 comments (clear)

  1. Crush by Davak · · Score: 5, Insightful

    a very limited set of IPs with high-bandwidth connections is dishing out the bulk of the spam

    Crush those sites. Turn them off. Then repeat the study.

    We should treat spam like a disease... and perform meaningful research on it.

    Davak

    1. Re:Crush by halowolf · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Well its obvious what the rest of the world should do! We should add the entire American IP address range to the great blacklist and move along! :)

      Its not like other countries havn't been blockaded...

  2. Limited set of IP's? by tpwch · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Great, give me a list and I'll block them on my mail server.

    --
    Posted by a Debian GNU/Linux user
  3. I'm confused by pedestrian+crossing · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why doesn't spam come under the same scrutiny and attempts to shut it down as P2P?

    If it is mostly as centralized as this study indicates, it should be easy.

    OK, I know the answer (nobody's precious "IP" is threatened by spam), but if there are going to be attempts to regulate the Internet, it seems like this is a far more productive place to start.

    --
    A house divided against itself cannot stand.
    1. Re:I'm confused by lunatik42 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Spam doesn't come under the same fire as P2P because it *promotes* consumerism and the "entertainment" industry, whereas file sharing circumvents the mass market etc. completely. Ergo, most of the war on spam is fought by the people - no one on top of the dogpile wants to regulate advertising. Besides, there are anti-spam filters being sold all over the place. That's another way to capitalize on the phenomenon.

  4. Nice Advertisement.. by inkdesign · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What CipherTrust REALLY means is 86% of their potential clients reside in the US.