Dutch Fine Spammers, AOL Reports Drop in Spam

teun writes "This morning the Dutch Telecom Authority, responsible for enforcing the anti-spam law in the Netherlands, announced their first two fines for Dutch spammers: 25,000 and 42,500 euros. These fines are based on the anti-spam law that became effective in May this year. Spamvrij.nl is very pleased with these results." gollum123 writes "According to AOL, its subscribers are getting less spam this year. There has been a reduction in both the number of daily email messages to AOL (from 2.1 to 1.6 billion) and in the number of customer complaints about spam." And finally, Saeed al-Sahaf writes "We hear so much about China being the source of spam. But a new study shows China and South Korea as distant second to the United States as the source of spam. Sophos, a leading anti-virus maker has released some findings, which claim that the good old US accounts for almost 42% of spam mails sent out this year, and they chalk it up to lack of security on most desktop computers."

Comments

Less subscribers?

[AtariAmarok]

""According to AOL, its subscribers are getting less spam this year. "

Less subscribers = less spam! AOL has found a way to reduce it, for sure: reduce the number of customers through overpricing and degradation of services. This results in fewer inboxes: Viola! Less Spam!

Sounds good...

[Sheetrock]

Does anybody know what 25,000 and 42,500 euros works out to in real cash? They can face millions of dollars and jail time here in the U.S., and I seem to recall a fax spammer getting a $5 million fine not too far back.

As long as they can rake in more cash than they pay out, fines are useless.

Zombies

[confusion]

If you match up the extremely determined spammers, millions of really incompentent cable modem/dsl users and the roughly 234987234745 ways to get malware onto a computer, it is no wonder that the US is #1.

What's more surpsing is that ISP's have not done more to stop being the source of spam (ala blocking port 25 outbound).

Jerry
http://www.syslog.org/

Re:Zombies

[stratjakt]

What's more surpsing is that ISP's have not done more to stop being the source of spam (ala blocking port 25 outbound).

No, it's not surprising at all. If my ISP started blocking destination ports arbitrarily I'd drop them in a heartbeat.

Re:OBVIOUS.

[fimbulvetr]

Personally, I don't see any harm in AOL forcing you to adhere to standards.
In fact, I love it. Most internet problems stem from people not adhereing to standards, such as using ip adresses as MX records, not using a fqdn on an ehlo, or not listening to (550|450).

Despite AOL sucking donkey balls, they have contributed to making the internet a better place in some ways.

Re:Explain something to me, please.

[AnotherBlackHat]

Why is it that when governments enforce copyright laws, people piss and moan about the other more important things they should be focusing on, but then cheer when the government focuses on something as trivial as spam?

When it's easier to imagine yourself as the victim than the villian, then the law seems just.
When it's not, it doesn't.

Most get spam and don't make it.
Very few make CDs, many copy them.

-- Should you believe authority without question?

Re:Thanks America...

[SallyShears]

The article shows the location of the computers which send spam to legit mail servers.

In this day where most spam is sent from zombied PCs, of course the US leads... Lots of computers here, lots of always-on broadband connections... and what's the ability of our users compared to the rest of the world? US computer owners include a lot who only know how to plug in and turn on.

The number two country is Korea... Again, lots of computers and even higher penetration by broadband.

Where are the web servers for the spamvertized sites? From the spam I see here, the bulletproof hosting seems to be in China and eastern Europe.

Where are the merchants who advertize with spammers? And, where are the spammers themselves? I'll bet the US leads in this as well.

-- Sally