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.""
550 - Thank you for your support of the steganographic communications payment protocol.
550 - Your continued support of Falun Dafa [Falun Gong] in the face of continued oppression from the butchers of Beijing is appreciated.
550 - The following token shall constitute both a receipt for your payment and a public key with which you may send your next message to your allies in the resistance.
550 - KEYBLOCK 6x5 F81IZ FOLG3 VOLSX CIOP3 F7JJ2 EYMNX
Now, is it my fault if my crontab edits the last line of that message to a different series of random characters every 30 seconds? Is it my fault if the owner of the spam-relaying machine is... dealt with... in the name of protecting his fellow citizens from mysticism and supersition?
Hmm, I suppose it is.
But hey, there's a critical shortage of corneal and kidney transplants. And a critical oversupply of server administrators who support spammers. I'm just the invisible hand of the market, smoothing out the discrepancies.