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The Spam Conference 2005

Posted by timothy on from the it-seeps-in-the-pores-it-does dept.

dos_dude writes "This year's Spam Conference is over. As usual, the MIT provides low and high bandwidth webcasts. The talks featured a full spectrum of anything possible. From absurd to sound, from boring to entertaining, and from dead-horse-beating to brand-new. Highlights: John Graham-Cumming presented the results of the survey he did with the help of many Slashdot readers, Jon Praed gave the details of the trial against spammer Jeremy Jaynes and friends, Brian McWilliams posed the question what will happen when all spam is finally filtered, and Matthew Prince plugged Project Honeypot in a very entertaining way. Shameless but useful plug: here's the final schedule with links to the webcasts."

8 of 156 comments (clear)

  1. John Graham-Cumming? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    How do they get their anti-spam software from filtering off all the mail from someone with such a name?

  2. Re:spam will never be gone by northcat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The only way for spam to go is for the society and current business practices to change. Really, don't you see similarities between spam and today's businesses and marketing?

  3. Re:spam will never be gone by SharpFang · · Score: 4, Informative

    The only way for spam to finally be filtered and gone would be for the government to make it a felony to send spam

    Government of what? Of the Planet Earth?
    Excuse me, but you, Americans, aren't the only nation in the world who sends spam.

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  4. Kind of sad... by linolium · · Score: 5, Insightful

    SPAM: Stupid Pointless Annoying Messages

    Does anyone else agree with me that it is kind of sad that it has gotten to this point, where we need a conference just to battle these messages?
    Especially when it's only a small core group of individuals which accounts for most of the spam...

    Will there always be people that abuse systems in any possible way?

  5. The biggest spam-enabler... by Puma_Concolor · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Is when ISPs keep sigining pink contracts. We can filter untill we are blue in the face, but as long as spammers still have unfettered access to 'bullet-proof' hosting we will never win this war. What we need is for ISPs to actually ENFORCE thier AUP/TOS and the problem is solved. Of course the big problem is GREED and MONEY, and ISPs love to rake in spammer money without ANY reguard to consequences to the rest of the net community.

  6. At a certain point... by Glowing+Fish · · Score: 4, Funny

    At a certain point, we will spend more time reading about anti-Spam measures than we will be reading about Spam.

    Since there is a Slashdot article about Spam every day, and I usually spend about 5-10 minutes deleting spam, we might have already reached this point.

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    Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
  7. Spam is on the way out by Animats · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Spam, as an advertising vehicle, is dying out. If it's an obvious ad, it gets filtered out, and if it's a fake, it's a CAN-SPAM act violation. Either way, it's useless to an even vaguely legitimate business. There's still plenty of spam being sent, but the amount being read by anybody is down.

    Spam for fraud schemes is growing. But even there, some kinds of frauds are dying out. We don't see many stock pump-and-dump spams any more. This is partly due to action by the SEC, but it's mostly due to lack of investor ignorance. Spamming about a stock doesn't affect stock prices much any more.

    Fraud schemes are a law enforcement problem, and we're seeing more action there, because the "phishing" thing has grown to be such a big problem.

    Between lawsuits by Microsoft and AOL, enforcement by the SEC, banks watching for phishing schemes, and, finally, some activity by the FBI and FTC, being a spammer is becoming more hazardous. We've seen a few spammers go to jail, which should have some deterrent effect.

  8. Internet Mail 2000 by fossa · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Just today I ran across Internet Mail 2000, a concept apparently initially conceived by Dan Bernstein. I haven't read all or even most of the information on that page, finding it somewhat difficult to wrap my head around. The big difference from it and SMTP is that it is a pull rather than push protocol. For Alice to send a message to Bob, Alice puts the message on an IM2000 server (replaces the originating SMTP server) which sends Bob a note "hey, I've got a message for you". Bob's email client then downloads the message from the server.

    The big advantage here is that the note is small, and Bob need not download the message at all if he believes it is spam, reducing the spam bandwidth usage. Also, the sender must make an effort to have a permanent server so the receiver may even get the message. Not really a burden for legit mails that already need a permanent server somewhere for receiving mails (right?). Forgeries are also prevented, because the note necessarily contains correct information about how to find the message.

    Aside from the usual reply to anti-spam solutions (this one requires mass participation and won't happen, yadda yadda), and the lame name (shouldn't they change that to IM3000 now?), have others looked at this? What are your opinions on it?