FTC Recommends ISPs Disconnect Spam Zombies

Mike Markley writes "CNN is carrying a story about the the FTC's plans and concerns around spam zombies. They say they will be identifying such zombie hosts and notifying ISPs, and are recommending that the ISPs disconnect indicated users. There's also a recommendation likely to raise the ire of the geekier sorts: that ISPs only permit users to send mail through their own servers (presumably by blocking port 25 outbound)." From the article: "Law enforcers in 25 other countries, from Bulgaria to Peru, are also participating in the campaign, the FTC said. Absent from the list of cooperating countries was China, where experts say rapid growth and a relative lack of technical sophistication have led to a large number of zombie computers."

Comments

Re:Go ahead, block 25

[dgatwood]

The right answer is pretty simple, actually. Start out with port 25 blocked. When the user calls to complain, unblock it on a per-user basis. People who need port 25 unblocked know enough to request it, and there's no valid excuse for denying it. People who run Win-zombies don't have any valid reason to ask for it to be unblocked and generally don't know enough to ask for it anyway, as most of them think that "port" means the ethernet jack on their DSL router/modem....

Problem solved, and everybody wins.

Re:25? Already blocked.

[barc0001]

Here's Bob. Bob is your boss at a small to mid sized company. He's not what you'd call "technical". You're the company's "tech" guy. You also do other things, but when the computers don't work, you're the go-to guy. Your company isn't that large, or that technical itself, so you host your mail with your company's ISP, PhoneCo. When Bob goes home, however, his ISP at home is CableCo. Bob is perpetually calling you either at home, or into his office because he "damn well can't send that email!" Invariably, the reason is because his account is configured to the wrong SMTP server, depending on where he his located.

Wouldn't it be nice if you could just set up his account to use the company's ISP for SMTP all the time? You used to be able to do that, until the spineless CableCo decided they were just going to blanket-block port 25, no exceptions, instead of doing traffic analysis and chopping off the offenders. But that would take work, and effort, and nobody wants to do that, so just block 25 and call it a day!

Note: Some elements of this story might be based on real experiences, which may explain the negative bias towards blanket policies of any type as bandaids.

Re:Blocking port 25 seems reasonable

[The FooMiester]

Hardcore geek here, with a UID that's far lower than yours.

Don't block my outbound port 25.

Don't block my outbound ANYTHING.

Block me off completely when my machine hurts the internet by spamming/flooding/whathaveyou.

I'm so sick of this "Let's surrender our internet because of Microsoft" bullshit. I'm sick enough of it to burn karma by posting this crap that's going to get modded into oblivion.

Not all of us know someone with a well connected server. Not all of us want to post mail from somewhere other than our box. I know that my box is working and isn't logging what I'm sending somewhere else. I know that the government isn't reading my email logs. I know that my server is MY SERVER and that's THAT.

If you don't like it, go back to AOL. Then you can have your little closed interface, able to email all of your little friends who use the same closed interface, and get charged for what I can get for free. All I have to pay for is my connection, whereas you'll have to pay for every "value-added" service you use.