Slashdot Mirror
UK ISPs to Shut Down Spamvertised Websites
JebuZ writes "The Register is currently reporting that UK ISPs are targeting ecommerce websites run by spammers in a new 'get tough' policy on junk mail. ISPs belonging to the London Internet Exchange (LINX) have voted through a code of practice which gives them the mandate to shut down websites promoted through spam, even if junk mail messages are sent through a third-party or over a different network. The move is intended to remove the financial incentive to send spam." There's also a BBC story.
... until people start spamming using their competition's address to facilitate them getting thrown off their host?
SDOS
Spam Denial Of Service?
Okay, that acronymn is pretty crappy. What can YOU come up with?
The Web Hosting company I work for has been doing this for years. You spam, you lose. Simple. From our AUP:
# UBE ("spam"): sending unsolicited bulk e-mail, using UBE, even if not sent from American Internet, to advertise (spamvertise) your site, providing any service to spammers such as mailboxes or Web sites.
Is this just now catching on? Shocking.
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
1. Start up competitor to /.
/.
/. shut down.
2. Send out spam promoting
3. See
4. Profit!!!!
what will just happen is that these fine folks (cough) will just move elsewhere. It's not like they haven't done it already.
Since there is apparently less than 100 people worldwide responsble for sending out the spam, just find them and shoot say, half of them as a warning to others.
Based on the phrase "given authority", I gather that law enforcement will investigate the situation before forcibly shutting down the site. Failing to do so could result in a counter-suit claiming that law enforcement did not do their job.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
...as they're likely to have the same kind of site hosted in multiple places to avoid this problem. :( At best, it will drive up the costs of maintaining said sites, but those costs aren't that high to begin with.
Furthermore, this does nothing to the spammers whose hosters are in collusion with them, and who are profiting themselves.
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I suppose it all depends on how much investigation ISPs are required and/or willing to do.
gives them the mandate to shut down websites promoted through spam
So in theory:
Spam is a pain and we all know it, but shutting down websites advertised in spam is not a good way to stop people from spamming.
What it is good for is making sure that your competitor's web presence gets taken offline.
Fighting with spammers is not going to work ever, as long as they can make even a single penny of profit from their sleazy operations. If their income source is forced to dry, their flow of spam will follow the trend.
IMHO, the companies, who sell their products through the spamvertized channels should be put into the same tight squeeze. I want to see Pfizer sweat for those Viagra ads I receive day in and day out in hundreds.
__________
The more I know people, the more I love animals
My company had one of its accounts suspended briefly last year when one of our clueless clients hired a US company to send e-mails for them to "1 million opt-in UK addresses".
BTW: how gullible can you get? A single opt-in list with about 5% of the Internet-connected population on it? Wow.
This is the solution to all of our troubles. Spam as a DOS attack.
I think this is a pretty stupid way to regulate spam. I had a freind that simply set up a dialer to dial the 800 number in the spam 24 hours a day. This seems like a better disincentive to me.
Hmmm. Sounds like a really, really good idea now doesn't it?
-- MG
...for sending me all of those "increase your storage" emails every week?
In theory it sounds nice. However, there are several problems here. First, the offending web site may be hosted by an ISP that doesn't give a damn. It may be overseas. It may be in Russia, or North Korea for that matter. If it is in a non-british jurisdiction all they can do is block access to it. There is no way to take it down. The link may be a referral. As others have already noted, the linked address may be that of someone the spammer doesn't like, resulting in the shutdown or blocking of an innocent web site. With so many potential problems, I doubt whether this initiative has a chance of succeeding.
----- One learns to itch where one can scratch.
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As long as they investigate correctly to make sure that the web site in question isn't being framed by someone else, this is excellent.
I'm fairly tired of sites, particularly 'meds and pharms' sellers in Canada. Quite a few seem to have an associate program where 'associates' get paid for the referalls they send. Of course spamming is an ideal way to get these referalls.
Sites using these spam privateers deserve to be shut down.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
Could we do that in the United States, too?
But what about repeat offenders? Those that open up a new website and advertize by spam on that site, too? Setting up a webpage isn't too hard these days, and one could always send one's servers offshore. This needs to be an international policy.
Haec merda tauri est. Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
That allows the people who have been spammed to identify and track the spammer.
Fight Spammers!
You seem to forget that even though a spammer may use that to shut down another spammer, at the end of the day it's still one less spammer in the world.
I consider that a good thing(TM).
Other than the obvious abuse possibilities, this is a good way to remove the incentive to spam people. Until I started getting too much junk mail to keep up with, I would go to the website that was advertised (stripping out the personal identifier junk-text string) and e-mail the webmaster saying that I would never buy their product because of their advertising techniques and that I would actively warn people away from them. I doubt that they took me seriously, but it was nice to rant anyways, and yes I did follow through in my threat for many of those advertisers.
Also, if the spammers are getting a [very low percentage] click-through number, I wonder how many of those are people who have never gotten spam before. The number of people on the internet is growing so quickly, I'd imagine that many of the click-throughs are actually people who have never seen a "bulk unsolicited e-mail" before.
- "Nobody came out that night, not one was ever seen. But Old Man Stauf is waiting there, crazy sick and mean!"
DEAR SIR,
:(
i want assure you this no spam i found you email by search web i son very important buznes man who in some politcal truble now rite and need you help get money out bank
in case you no believe you go see please his site SCO
PLEASE TO HEAR YOU RESPONSE.
N!GTXBALU GNTEMBI
darn filter won't let me submit in all caps
Please note the article is refering to a code of practice not a law. There will without doubt be different ways in which ISPs might and will implement it. If a competitor is spamming "on your behalf" then you're going to get a warning from your ISP saying that they're considering yanking your plug... you'll then get to address that and show circumstance.
Then if the chaps framing you are in the UK there's legal action you might take against them.
This is a good thing. It's not a draconian law, it's a business consortium agreeing that they they to focus on an issue and deciding common policy on how to address it.
Code of practice, not law.
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I've noticed that many of the people who bitch the most about spam are also the first one to produce simplistic and pedantic retorts to steps people make to do something about it. "But somebody might not get their email for a day."
Spam Whiners: Shit or get off the pot.
Either somebody does *something*, however imperfect or flawed, or they do nothing. The whining and the complaining and the doing of nothing adds up to exactly nothing but noise.
I want actions taken, and I want them taken *now*. Collateral damage? Unavoidable -- any solution strong enough to work is going to cause collateral damage. This isn't a kernel bugfix, the patch doesn't have to be formally proved at an academic conference, it has to be implemented and adjusted as needed for maximum effectiveness.
If you're not making mistakes, you're not making anything, and not doing anything about spam has been how effective?
This tumor is so rooted in the Internet, that there is no way to cut it all out without removing some healthy tissue. There is probably no perfect solution to this problem, but it HAS to be addressed.
I truly can't see people resorting to trying to advertise competitor's web sites via SPAM to get them shut down. They'd open themselves up to way too much liability if that actually happened.
IMHO: This solution does a pretty decent job of targetting the tumor without removing much healthy tissue. Again, no solution will perfectly home in on just spammers... innocents will always get caught up in the effort to remove this problem. The trick is to just come up with items and balance it's positive effects against its negative effects.
-- "A chicken is an egg's way of making another egg."
"Collateral damage is just fine--Until I'm the one being damaged."
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
No, theregister reported yesterday (morning for the US)! Slashdot is just getting lazy (er).
Either somebody does *something*, however imperfect or flawed, or they do nothing. The whining and the complaining and the doing of nothing adds up to exactly nothing but noise.
It wasn't a whine nor a complaint. And it can have very serious reprocussions. How happy would you be if your legitimate, non-spamming online business was blacklisted because someone else forged fake spam?
I want actions taken, and I want them taken *now*. Collateral damage? Unavoidable -- any solution strong enough to work is going to cause collateral damage.
Wonderful attitude. "Fuck the innocent as long as I'm happy (and it doesn't happen to me)"
This system could be useful, but considering there was no detailed mention of how they're going to deal with this potential problem its a valid question.
Yesterday I got one with the title "Got beer? Homeless."
It was one of those "g 3t Y u0R h1gh sc h0 0l d1 p10 m a !!1" ones. You know, those things are starting to get harder to read even though I read l33tsp34k at a college level!
The harder spam becomes to send the better it is. There is no instant cure, stop watching Oprah you american. The real world requires you to work had on multiple fronts to solve a problem. This is just one tiny drop on the hot plate. But together with all the other little drops it is making a difference.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The first line is more important than your headline.
Killing the patient is the wrong way to stop a diesease.
> It's good, but there's some potential for abuse.
Good reason to forget the whole idea.
Same for the Internet.
-- "Is that so?"
That's all.
This should have been: the existence of joe jobs is no reason not to penalize actual spammers.
They are closing of their own paying customers. You can bet they are going to check, this is not the bubble anymore when ISP's ruled.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
You missed the best part, you limey bastards!!
Any measures in place to prevent that?
.uk page, I dont know if spammers are just smart enough to keep geography in mind, or what..
What (if any) recourse does a site accused of spam-vertising have? Do the ISPs just refer to the vague "we can do whatever we want with your account and redefine what's acceptable as we see fit" language in the FAP to drop sites?
I've never seen spam redirect me to a
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
About ten of the first replies to this topic all come up with the genius suggestion of spamvertising the competition, revealing they have not read the article (which admittedly does not addresss how to stop it), and got modded Insightful 2-5.
What is this, some sort of circle jerk?
When I submit my daily dose of spam to Spamcop, I can see that 90% of all websites referred to by spam mails are hosted in China and Brazil, and I don't think either country will do a similar move anytime soon.
It is already common practice for spammers to use bullet-proof hosts (which is even mentioned in TFA).
So I don't think this move will change anything as far as spam goes, but the potential for abuse (see some of the previous comments) will increase, given that most sites hosted by UK ISPS are legitimate.
So you shut down a spammer's porn site. They move it to a new host (outside the UK), and continue to spam. If they can kill or gain control of the domain name along with shutting down the site, perhaps this could work.
I hope it does.
I hope they punish more than just email spam, too. Usenet, IRC, and instant messengers need help, too.
great, now I just have to send SPAM for my competitor to this provider (with fake ads so that it is not a very intersting product), i blur the trace to me and the competitor loses market shares
might that happen ?
The world belongs to those who get up early. - I'm far from being the king of Earth then
What happens when spammers do a "fake" spam run to try to get a (non-spamming) competitor's website removed?
Sorry, I've never been good at writing headlines.
- "Nobody came out that night, not one was ever seen. But Old Man Stauf is waiting there, crazy sick and mean!"
The LINX Best Current Practice on Unsolicited Bulk E-mail ("the spam BCP") is carefully written so as to avoid being a way to create denial of service attacks.
LINX does not adjudicate complaints; our ISPs members do. You can complain to an ISP for tolerating spamvertised web sites just like you can complain to them for tolerating someone sending spam. If they follow Best Practice they will cut off the web site if, only if, and not before they satisfy themselves that the spam was sent by or with the consent of the web site owner.
Of course, it is possible that they could get it wrong; miscarriages of justice do occur in every area of life. This is not a reason not to have any rules at all. It is up to the ISP to take care when considering a complaint so as not to cut their customers off without good reason. Naturally, some will consider this an unnecessary delay - and even evidence that the ISP is not serious about cancelling the account. Well, it's not possible to please everybody all the time; you've just got to craft the best policy you can and run with it.
Malcolm Hutty
LINX Regulation Officer.
The ISO 4217 currency code for the UK is GBP and always has been. It is based on the ISO 3166-1 country code followed by an initial for the currency, and since the code for the United Kingdom is GB, it's GBP.
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Forged Unsolicited Commercial Email DOS
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How about requireing any business email to be signed by the company signature (which I think should be done anyways)? This would certainly eliminate joe jobs, and if the signatures are registered/checked somewhere, it would help agains spammers.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
I have mentioned this before at Slashdot and I'm always ridiculed for it. However, I greatly reduced my spam intake from well over 2,000 spams a day to well under 100 by simply blocking any email that contains a link to a server that I've put in my "that is a spam-advertised IP address" file. It isn't difficult to do. In fact, I make what I've written freely available on my website.
Every time I mention this, someone says, "Oh my God! You're going to block some good little Mom&Pop store because they share a server with a spammer!" If that is what you are thinking, you didn't read my previous paragraph. I block any email WITH A LINK TO A SERVER that is in my block list. I DO NOT block any email originating from a server in the block list.
As this article explains, the incentive is to remove the profit margin from spam. I think my method works better than kicking them off the server if my method was used by a majority of the Internet users. The reason is that my method hopes the spammers keep the same IP addresses. If you kick them off the server, they change IP addresses and I have to block the new one.
The previous comment is purposely vague and generalized, but all of the facts are completely true.
Get cought sending spam 3 times and receive a mandatory 25 year vacation in your state's club med :-)
...is people acting like it's a bad thing.
Anti-spammers have always maintained that ISPs should kill the websites of known spammers. That's what a number of the blacklists out there are about -- they list ISPs that don't kick off websites that have been advertised through spamming, even if the spam was sent from a different ISP.
This is a good thing. Spammers should lose their Internet access, period. They should also lose their lives, but ISPs aren't really in the position to do that kind of thing.
So much whining about a very good practice. Any ISP that allows spammers on their network should be shunned, and their management shot.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
Suppose SCO decides to hire 3rd parties to conduct a massive spamming campain FOR IBM web sites.
Only on /. can you post within 5 minutes of the story breaking, 3 minutes within the first comment, and have your karma pummelled into the ground as 'redundant'.
Use the points for the power of good, not for evil!
This is at least a good start, but what about the spyware / malware sites? Will those be next? Or will there be a hosts file blacklist generated to block them out from company domains?
Most of these spammers profit from people purchasing their product - whether thats some viagra tablets or whatever, the gullible fools who buy from them are using credit cards.
So, the credit card companies need to act. Once any spam has been detected it gets reported to the credit card companies and they block the rogue merchants.
They don't really specify what will be considered spamvertised web sites in the article, but consider the possibility of hiring a spammer to shutdown a website for you by advertising their site through spam :)
Also, how can they determine the difference between warranted and unwarranted emails so easily? Just because people didn't uncheck the "Send me offers.." box doesn't mean they didn't accept it. Turning off access to a website is a pretty big deal..
Certain drug companies (for Viagra, analgesics, anxiolytics, etc...) also benefit indirectly from all the spam. Those companies should also be liable unless they adopt policies which prevent their customers/clients from spamvertizing and from selling to spamvertizing websites with appropriate penalties.
If USA ISP's try to do this, it may be seen as collusion and anti-competitive behavior.
Since the problem with spam is it's low barrier to entry (any s'kiddie sans morals can be a spammer), what good will it do to kill off one competitor? As soon as you nail one two or three more will pop up. Meanwhile you've just set in motion as nasty little email war that's bad for every spammer.
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Wait till you start your new and shiny ecommerce company, get the website up, customers coming and money flowing. Then watch it got struck down because some competitor spammed on your behalf.
And then come back and we'll talk about Collaterial Damage.
3.243F6A8885A308D313
Wow, wake me when I give a fuck, would you? Thanks.
Quick! Everyone send spams promoting microsoft products!
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The story is a dupe, the topic is boring, the facts weren't checked. WE GET IT!!
Collateral damage? Unavoidable -- any solution strong enough to work is going to cause collateral damage...
No, collateral damage is not unavoidable, nor is it necessary for a solution to SPAM.
The problem with SPAM isn't technical, but social; people like the simplicity of email more than they hate the nuisance of SPAM. There already exist several proposed, effective solutions to the SPAM problem; many of which could be implemented without *any* collateral damage, as they add on to existing systems. But, people don't care.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
now can someone please help me figure out how to educate the public to quit buying items offered in spam?
Is it 5:30 yet?
This is no different than requiring spam messages having "ADV:" in their Subject: line. It doesn't stop spammers from sending out spam which doesn't comply. And it surely doesn't stop schemes like Nigeria 419ers.
I think it should be called the London InterNet User eXchange. That would make for a much better acronym... Oh wait...
Maybe I'm too stupid, but I do not understand why all this crap is going unfiltered through mailservers as long as the recipient exists. Most of the spam/virus crap can be filtered out by well known and effective mechanisms like Reverse lookup, Open Relay Databases, Spamassasin, Virus filters ...
My mailserver gets rid of hundreds of them per day. I'm not a professional IT-Admin, I'm just running my own server for business and private usage and host some friends. Some of this things make it through from time to time, but the ratio is less than 1:1000. Look also on public mailing lists where the spam rate is impressingly low.
Things which are not available are not annoying and cannot do any damage.
Sure ISP's might argue that this costs to much, is violating freedom of information or whatever.
Costs: I'm sure that most users would be willing to pay a +$1 fee, if the spam/virus mail plague is removed or at least significantly reduced.
Freedom of Information: Default setting should be spam/virus filter on. If somebody want's to get it, he must enable that feature by clicking the "I want to be spammed and infected button. I confirm that I'm responsible for the resulting damage myself. I acknowledge that I'm aware of the fact that this makes me a part of the spam/virus problem and therefor I will be prosecuted in case of damage of uninvolved parties."
Mailservers are the optimal place to fight this plague IMHO. I'm positive that most of the big email virus attacks could have been defeated this way before they even reached the critical distribution count.
Spammers will stop spamming when it stops being profitable. If every time they spam, they get sued and have to pay money to attorneys and plaintiffs, they will stop -- BECAUSE it destroys their business model.
Fight Spammers!
How long...until people start spamming using their competition's address to facilitate them getting thrown off their host?
About an hour after the first site thrown off.
Not because the competition did it.
The spammers will start doing unsolicited, plausible-looking, freebies for large, rich corporations with significant internet components to their business model. This costs the spammers virtually nothing.
The ISPs will then be unable to enforce this policy. If they kick off the big guys when they were innocent, they're in for a big suit. If they kick off only little guys, they're in for a different big suit - over discrimination AND improper termination. If they try to sort out real spam from disinformation spam and only kick out the spammers real customers they're in for suits claiming they're wrong - even when they're right.
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Perhaps people should start suing their ISPs for failing to do at least minimal filtering.
There's all these statistics about how much internet traffic is consumed by spam... you'd think that ISPs, for a minimal investment in some decent filtering software, would be able to reclaim that supposed two-thirds of their bandwidth.
I will not instigate revolution...
I will not instigate revolution...
I will not instigate revolution...
I will not instigate revolution...
I pity the foo that isn't metasyntactic
Let's say I'm a spammer. Let's say that for every spam I'm getting paid to send out, I send out another advertising a site that isn't paying me and (for that matter) wants nothing to do with me.
Now, how can the ISPs shut down the sites that pay me without also harming hundreds of legitimate sites in the process? Consequently, in order to avoid doing harm to innocents, they'll (presumably) eventually end up canning their plans to cut of service to my customers.
Sure, I'm doubling my costs -- but those are negligible anyhow. Have a solution? (As a non-spammer, I certainly *hope* so).
The Spammers will keep on doing this as long as there's a buck to be made. They'll stop when you dry up the well.
Their market is all the 'drug'stores and wet-dream merchants who want to use this technology to shill their crap.
Fine them BIG time, leaving the collection of the fines to the local authorities, and I can garantee you that Spam will become just sh*t in a can again.
Don't worry about the corruption of the authorities somewhere (off-shore havens for porno crap and drug 'factories',) because, the more corrupt they are, the more its is in their personal interest to execute the prosecution of the law.
We get Spam, we go to court, we get a summary judgement, and let the local authorities collect.
In some jurisdictions, Spammers' CUSTOMERS will need armed escorts to the out-house.
Say "Bye bye" to Spam for good.
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The average user will pay for the 'spam blocking' service, and then complain that they still get tons of spam in their Yahoo! mailbox every day...
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I think you missed the point there.
If I am a spammer and I train my robot to send out 1% of the spamload as appearing to genuinely advertise each random UK site then I can very quickly make this initiative unworkable.
The point would not be to hide an innocent URL within an otherwise normal spam, but to make a spam specifically intended to result in complaints against the innocent site.
Having a foot in the anti-spam business myself, I'd say this is pretty much guaranteed to happen as soon as the first shutdown causes a spammer any real inconvenience.
This Like That - fun with words!
The backbone of the internet is advertising. Yahoo mail does a great job at seperating out my spam. The google toolbar blocks most of the popups that result when I accidentaly (or idly) click onto a spammer's site. We already have many technological tools that allow us to combat spam, we don't need to regulate the internet with paper legislation.
Thoughsometimes it is annoying, spammers have a right to spam. I use a lot of free services online, and for those "free" services I trade my personal information for valuable commodities. Somehow, I traded my email address to someone who supplied that to spammers in the first place. So we didn't write up a formal contract, but I agree to view information in return for trading my information. My ISP really doesn't need to have anything to do with it.
Is it ethical to say "your business model is annoying, so we are going to squash it?"
How much control should we give a gaggle of ISPs?
I guess they'll have to shut down the BBC then?
I just got spam from www.whitehouse.gov,
and from NBC, FOX, ABC, CBS, and the Disney channel! . . . see where this leads to, forget the 1st Amendment (not that Europe even hopes to have the rights USA has...)
Stupid idea.
Now, my friend's boss is putting a lot of pressure on him to send these emails. My friend asked me for help but I flatly refused regardless of price. He really doesn't want to do it, but his boss is leaning on him, and his wife's opinion is that since he's getting paid for it, he should just do the work (my retort being that if his boss wanted to pay him to star in gay porn, then would he still be expected to do so?).
I've explained at great length that this is immoral, probably illegal, and a really stupid idea all around. He agrees, but his boss really wants that check from the client and I don't know the boss well enough to confront him directly.
Any suggestions on what I can do to put an early end to my friend's career as a spammer? I love the guy like a brother and don't want to see him rendered unemployable and hated by his family and friends, but I also don't want him to lose his job.
My best idea so far is to get him to convince his boss to start with a very small batch of spam (say, 1000 addresses) and to have my friend report back after a few minutes that the batch has been sent (but without actually doing it). Then, about five minutes later, call the client and scream, curse, and scream some more at them for filling my inbox with their crap. Get about 10 other people to do the same thing, perhaps even in person at the company (a restaurant), until the client keels over dead in their panic to call of the "advertising campaign". Note that my friend is the only technical person at his company, so the odds of anyone other than him being able to determine whether those 1000 test emails were actually sent is roughly zero, and if there were any question, I'm probably the person that his boss would call to seek confirmation ("Yep, looks like he sent 'em at 11:30. What? The client went out of business at 11:45? What a coincidence!").
To repeat: "my friend" is not me, so don't bother lecturing me on the evils of spamming. I just want to help him stay an honest man.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Just send spam on their behalf.
I'm not sure you know, but I think, just maybe, perhaps, the ISPs in the UK ARE NOT THAT STUPID. They're talking about shutting down sites that are obviously peddling illegal items via spam.
Spam from RedHat (or any large company) would not be very convincing, and I seriously doubt it's the sort of site that the ISPs are thinking of targeting. The ISPs know who is behind most of the spam, and it's fairly easy to pinpoint the most egregious sites (one selling v1Agru is never legit) and close them down.
Leave off the conspiracy theories till you see it happening, then start complaining. Yes this is a stopgap measure, but it's better than nothing for now.
The British aren't quite as hung up on 'Freedom' as you lot are; I'm sure they'll manage just fine without that particular freedom, just as they manage fine without the freedom to carry a gun in public, or the freedom to smoke on trains. I'd welcome blocking *illegal*, *nusiance* sites.
Individual freedom is relative to other people's.
Tell him to get a new job, you owe it to him.
Doubtless you don't feel that's possible. So just get them to send 1000 with a link for complaints going to your boss's (oh, sorry his boss's) inbox.
Aren't there worse things in the world than spam?
Yes, Nazi Germany is worse than spam. What's your point?
I could name specific examples, but that isn't my point: my point is, calling for the deaths of people who do nothing more than create a nuisance for everyone is quite childish. Whether joking or not. It's just stupid.
Calling for spammers' deaths is definitely over the top, but email has become an important communication medium for millions, and spam is threatening to destroy it. There have been occurrences of people losing email because the ISP's mail servers crashed due to being overwhelmed with spam.
As for the original story, I recall that many US hosts started shutting down spamvertised websites around 1998-1999, and I wonder why other "first-world" hosts are only now doing this.
Yes, there's the danger of sites being taken down as the result of "joe jobs" (spamvertising a site the spammer hates, to get it brought down, joes.com was an early victim of such an attack), but the admins and joe-jobbed sites can work that out, either beween each other or in the courts.
Tag lost or not installed.
Bzzt, wrong, but we do have some lovely parting gifts.
Spam is wrong because it hijacks a useful service I pay for (that is, email) and subverts it into something only useful for the minority who abuse it. In other words, it is a theft of my resources, made even worse by the blatant subversion of my will my stolen resources are put to.
Is it ethical to say "your computer is mine, and I'm going to use it to annoy you"?
Technical solutions are a pragmatic "best try" effort at best, and worthless gewgaws at worst. But they also do something more sinister: They legitimize the idea that anything we create and we pay for can be used by others without our permission in ways detrimental to our own use of that property.
Anyway, if you think filtering is a solution, come back and talk with me when your servers are grinding under the effort of hundreds of thousands of junk messages and you're still expected to provide an acceptable level of service to the people who actually pay your salary.
How can you use my intestines as a gift? -Actual Hong Kong subtitle.
This has already been happening for years, google for joe job. I've not heard of "I'll spam for your competitor to their detriment" advertised as a spamming service, but many spammers have sent spams for other entities, and/or forging antispammers' email addresses in the From: field of spams, as revenge for being turned in/losing hotmail accounts or Geocities sites and such.
Consider this spam for Presidential candidate John Kerry, where the text and links were taken straight from johnkerry.com:
http://it.slashdot.org/~antispam_ben/journal/
It's not really a spam "for" or "against" John Kerry (I must be losing my touch, it took me a few hours to determine this), but it was the spammer phishing for "donations" to the Kerry campaign: the donate link goes to a page that looks like it belongs to johnkerry.com, but accepts donations and sends them to the spammer.
So it's really no different from the Ebay and Citibank phishing spams. THIS is what "unsolicited email" has come to.
Tag lost or not installed.
How happy would you be if your legitimate, non-spamming online business was blacklisted because someone else forged fake spam?
Whose dog did you kick? Maybe you deserve it.
The likelihood that a good, honest business getting nailed by forged spam is extremely small unless you really feel paranoid that your product or service is so infinitely better than anything else out there that you've really taken the proverbial rug out from under the industry's feet.
No one bemoans losing their personal e-mail address because they were targeted by a spammer using e-mail rewriting. People just bemoan getting spam. It hasn't been a large problem with e-mail addresses. Why should it be a problem with web addresses?
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
Go ask anyone who's been Joe Jobbed (I haven't, but there are those who have and are not happy about it).
Or think in terms of eBay/PayPal. There's a lot of fraud on eBay/PayPal. PayPal has been especially "tough" when it comes to dealing with it. According to you this is a good thing. Of course, innocent folks who have had hundreds or thousands of dollars of dollars frozen with little to no recourse / no help from PayPal aren't so happy.
No one bemoans losing their personal e-mail address because they were targeted by a spammer using e-mail rewriting.
RIIIIIIIGGHHHTT! Because getting everyone you know to use a new account is such fun.
er, except that everyone knows ADV but no-one else would know your signature.
let me guess, you don't use credit cards because that's no different from telling the shop "I'm John Smith" and having someone else's account billed?
You didn't get my point.
If every spammer would comply with the request and sign the spam messages, then we had a way to check if a spam message is really originating from a certain website.
If every spammer would put "ADV:" at the begin of the Subject: line, then building a spam filter would be easy.
But, alas. Spammers don't put "ADV:" in their messages very often, and many of them will refrain from signing their spam messages.
Do everyone a favor and kill yourself.
Go ask anyone who's been Joe Jobbed (I haven't, but there are those who have
If it was a prevalent concern then it would be mentioned in the media. Everyone talks about their inbox. Few people talk about having an e-mail address shut down. Aggressive attacks against profitable business will be dealt with quickly and severely. Aggressive attacks against questionable businesses will be used as a political weapon or a shake down by the ISPs. I don't think you're guilty if your ISP comes to you with a million incidents of a spam e-mail and your website sells stuffed teddy bears.
There's a lot of fraud on eBay/PayPal
Tiddlywinks. Any fraud against a business entity will result in another 16-year old on the bench because he wrote a nasty java script. It's good PR. Where were his parents?
Because getting everyone you know to use a new account is such fun
Stories are thin about people who have lost an e-mail address more times than they've relocated. It's not fun and it's also not a problem because it doesn't happen.
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
Only spam I see is what people show in stories like these.
So I was wrong. Lets just hope then that since these ISP's will be kicking paying customers from their networks that they will make certain that they got the right person. I can see it being a problem for "shady" but non-spamming companies that have spamming rivals, think porn sites. But non-spamming porn companies are good customers and ISP's need those.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Ahhh... I get it. Trolled. My hat's off to ya.
Ask anyone who's angered a Usenet troll, spammer, or script kiddie. The threats, attacks, and joe jobs against your legitimate business can add up to a hell of a lot of work and legal expense to deal with.
95% ?
.biz or .info web site?
You mean you have actually seen a legit
I haven't.
An engineer who ran for Congress. http://herbrobinson.us
http://www.mamastudio.biz/
No more 'spammy' email that could be construed as containing email addresses, URLs, file attachments, HTML, quoted printable content, numbers, $'s and %'s.
That way, spamvertised websites can be totally ignored...
Bryan Taylor
iamcf13@hotpop.com
SpamByte code: 7
(see http://www.cf13.com/game-over-spammers.htm )
http://www.cf13.com/press-release.htm
All email containing unwanted content will be summarily deleted or reported as spam.