China and its Relation With Spam

smooth wombat writes "Asia Times has a nice article about why China is becoming the spam capital of the world. Steve Linford, of Spamhaus fame, is quoted several times in the article and offers some insight into how the Chinese ISPs operate. Steves quote at the end of the article pretty much sums up why China isn't doing anything to curb the hosting of spam website servers in the country: "They simply don't want to know - China Telecom doesn't care because they're government-owned and there is no pressure coming from the government. Meanwhile, our statistics on spam volumes and the number of spammers setting up in China are going up and up and up.""

Comments

It's a good thing I don't know anyone in China

[Anonymous Coward]

Since I'd never be able to get their email with their netblocks firewalled off on port 25.

The source?

[AndyBassTbn]

Because of this, it is now meaningless to say that spam itself originates in any given place - it is truly a cyber-product.

No, I think the source has remained unchanged - the pocketbooks of those willing to actually pay for the schwag sold via SPAM email. As long as people are willing to pay for herbal Viagra, cheap mortgages, etc. based on spam, so too will spam annoy the rest of us.

Re:The source?

[jxyama]

>As long as people are willing to pay for herbal Viagra, cheap mortgages, etc. based on spam, so too will spam annoy the rest of us.

not quite. spam will exist as long there are advertisers who believe there are people who are willing to pay for junk stuff based on spam. advertizing - all it takes is the belief that it's doing something, at least until the money runs dry.

no mail of value

[lophophore]

I get no mail of any value from China. I don't know anybody there. So I don't feel bad about automatically trashing all mail that originates in Chinese netblocks. It's amazing the effect that has had on what spam I actually see.

If everybody did this, it could become a real problem for the Chinese. (duh)

Re:no mail of value

[glesga_kiss]

I get no mail of any value from China. I don't know anybody there. So I don't feel bad about automatically trashing all mail that originates in Chinese netblocks.

What if you had a friend traveling over there, that had to get in touch with you? Or someones company switches hosting to a .cn company. Or a mail gets relayed through a .cn mail server as the regular one is down for maintainence?

I guess you'll never know. Oh, your mom called; you didn't reply to her mail about the free first-class tickets she was going to send you to visit her; so you missed out.

Re:no mail of value

[Croaker]

What if you had a friend traveling over there, that had to get in touch with you?

Likely, that friend would use an internet cafe to connect to his/her hotmail or whatever account, and shoot of the email. The email would originate from the hotmail (or whoever) mail server, not from a chinese netblock. Not a problem.

Or someones company switches hosting to a .cn company.

The result is no different than if a company switches to an ISP that is known to be spam-friendly... they will usually get bounces stating "Your mail was refused because your subnet is blocked for spamming," or something similar. In which case, the company had best rethink its choice of ISP.

Or a mail gets relayed through a .cn mail server as the regular one is down for maintainence?

How often is mail rerouted these days? Especially to a server in a different country, likely on a different continent? I can't recall ever seeing this. Usually mail is held until the mail server comes back up. The mailserver going down is one of those things guaranteed to get the IT people awoken in the middle of the night, so its downtime isn't going to be long anyhow.

Oh, your mom called; you didn't reply to her mail about the free first-class tickets she was going to send you to visit her; so you missed out.

Any idiot who relies entirely on email for transmission of important information pretty much gets what he/she deserves when there's a snafu and the email is lost. That's why really important things, such as the "DMCA take down notices" sent out by lawyers are always sent both via email and snail mail.

ASFAIK

[Dasch]

... The US is still the main exporter of SPAM...

Is there any reason accept mail from China?

[RealAlaskan]

Is there any reason not to ban all mail originating from (or relayed through) addresses in China? I supose that big universities have a lot of students who use email to keep in touch with family in China, but most ISPs could probably do this without any harm to their customers.

If you were willing to put some effort into it, you could combine it with a whitelist, which would allow your Chinese customers to get email from the old country.

Wait a minute ... effort, ISP ... those two don't go together. Ok, never mind about the whitelist.

The only way to go after spam

[hsmith]

is go after the companies that sell their products through spam. outlaw that as an advertising form, fine companies that advertise through them and you have your solution

Blocking Chinese IPs not always the solution

[hellfire]

Only two dozen posts in and I see half of them appear to suggest blocking email from China. This is a good individual solution on an ISP by ISP basis but not a good universal solution. Businesses have to deal with other businesses in China, and well there are plenty of families who legitimately want to email from China to the US and back.

Any solution that involves blocking everything from China won't work for everyone, and every solution that tries to selectively opt in or selectively block from China is a greater expense to set up.

Considering most of the spam originating from China is poured into the US, and the money's paid to the ISPs are money flowing from out of the US economy and into China's, I hardly think they will care any time soon.

Re:RBL

[Jucius Maximus]

"Asia Times has a nice article about why China is becoming the spam capital of the world."

Funny, I thought almost all spam originated in the US (even though it is sent via Chinese webservers.) This is confirmed in the article, btw.

Re:Why is this still an issue?

[glesga_kiss]

I simply ban China and most other Asian countries at my router.

--

Ignorance is not bliss, it's annoying.

So, what's up with your sig then? Change your mind?

Honestly, I can't believe people even consider this approach. There are over 200 countries in the world, and I only know folk about 15-20 of them. Should I block the rest? Might suit for a home network, but I can't think of a multinational company that would block one of the largest population masses in the world.

Besides, most span I get is from the US, in English, selling US products, in US currency, to US people. I'd say the problem was at your end.

Re:Why is this still an issue?

[Todesmetall]

AFAICS this won't help to reduce the amount of spam you receive, since most of it comes from trojaned PCs with a broadband connection, these seem to be located mainly in the US, Europe and Latin America.

Your block will only prevent you from visiting the spammers' websites hosted by Chinese ISPs.

Re:Why is this still an issue?

[mcleodnine]

While that will prevent SPAM that originates in China, you may want to re-think your strategy.

According to this report, most of the spam comes from North America, with thanks to Zombie PCs.

Re:RBL

[glesga_kiss]

ergo there's no reason for ANY connection from china to pass our firewall.

How does that make anybody racist?

I never said it was, just not a good solution. I did say there will be predicable racist anti-everyone-who-is-not-white anglo-saxon-prodestant ramblings on this thread because it's about China.

And sadly, I'm proven right. Take a look around...

It's the ONLY solution for now.

[bani]

It's called behavior modification.

Right now, chinese ISPs simply don't give a shit. Because spam isn't "their" problem. You're the victim, not them. So why should they give a shit?

The only way to make them give a shit, is to make it their problem. By blocking all email from china, you force them to come to terms with the problem.

If their customers can't email anyone outside of china, and their customers start raising hell about it, maybe then they will finally start dumping the criminals from their networks.

Wasn't all that long ago that chinanet ran a lying autoresponder for abuse@chinanet that responded to every complaint with:

"In your SPAM eMail,I can't find the IP or the IP is not by my control.Please give me the correct IP.Thank you."

No wonder china gets blocked?

Until china's abusive attitude changes, they will become more and more widely blocked. They are hellbent on turning their entire country into a LAN, who are we to argue with them?

Re:Why is this still an issue?

[Meostro]

Might suit for a home network, but I can't think of a multinational company that would block one of the largest population masses in the world.

How many multinational companies are there in the world versus the number of small businesses or national companies? I'd guess the number was quite small. If I sell left-handed widgets to the greater Topeka, KS area, why on earth would I ever want people from China, Brazil, or even Canada to send me e-mail?

Personally, I know people in exactly four countries, and I wouldn't lose any sleep over a default-deny rule for any ISP outside of those, primary domain contacts excepted (webmaster@, abuse@, etc.).

Also, if you R'dTFA, you would see that these are people from the US setting up business in China, because the US has started to crack down on spammers. China should do the same.

Re:Why is this still an issue?

[razmaspaz]

Ignorance is not bliss, it's annoying.

So, what's up with your sig then? Change your mind?

I don't think this ignorant at all. It is capitalism and the "Invisible Hand" at its best. I do not want to lump slashdot into a single minded entity, but I am amazed at the GENERAL feeling on Slashdot that Evil Corporations who choose to be bad citizens and pollute and act unethically should be boycotted and should not recieve patronage, but when someone proposes doing the same to a government which is being a bad Internet citizen, they are attacked. If China chooses to Abuse the Internet it will face consequences and will suffer from market forces blocking its access to information and commerce. Only righting this injustice will restore their rights in the Internet domain. Further proof taht the Internet will regulate itself. We should be so lucky!

Re:Double-sided Great Firewall

[X0563511]

He said everything. Essentially partition China out of the global internet. Might that make them stop and think?

There was an article a little while ago.

[khasim]

Comparing the attacks on various systems.

Win2K was cracked almost instantly.

Win2K + sp2 was not.

The Linux box was attacked about twice an hour.

Un-advertised boxes, located by simple scans.

yes, but ease isn't necessarily that much of an issue, if %90 of the market were Linux machines, no one would care to crack Windows workstations at all, if the majority of the machines were harder to crack, they'd try harder to crack the majority of machines.

Yes, I see your point. That is why every bank is robbed every day.

It isn't about trying, it's about succeeding.

A good security model means that they don't succeed.

These things are created solely to infect as many as possible, that's their whole motivation.

And if they don't infect the machines, so what?

you may eliminate a few spammers from the field, but the more dedicated and knowlegeable pushers of such trash could quite possibly increase their gains through the heavier difficulty and lack of competition.

Look at the statistics for Apache deployment vs IIS. Yet Apache systems are cracked less than IIS/Windows boxes.

The real world does not seem to reflect your claims.

I'm not assuming that at all, but show me a totally flawless operating system and gladly eat my words.

Nice try. No one said Linux was flawless.

But it doesn't have to be flawless to be better than Windows.

And better means fewer compromises.

To assume that they wouldn't adapt to different bugs and vulnerabilities is naive. Security can be improved, but so can cracking.

Again, you've just stated that there is no such thing as "Security".

No matter how much effort is put into Security, you believe that it will be cracked and that it will be cracked as often as insecure systems are.

Yet, strangely enough, every bank is not robbed every day even though they have lots of money in them and lots of people going into them.

All you see is Marketshare.

Marketshare != Security

Re:Why is this still an issue?

[razmaspaz]

While I can not begin to know the complexity of the situation you face in China and your inability ot affect your govenrment, I do know this. While 95% of the spam I get comes from the US, 99% of the traffic I get from China is Spam. I will block the 95% of SPAM coming from Florida, but I will also make an effort to drop Chinese traffic becuase I am 99% sure that it is SPAM. Whereas something from Florida, while potentially SPAM is maybe 1% likely to be SPAM.

This is going to sound horribly curelgiven my relative freedom and your relative lack thereof, but if you don't like the fact that your government won't play nice, get a new one!