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Microsoft Offers Tools to Spamming ISPs
Michael writes "Computer Business Review reports that 'Internet service providers curious to know how much spam they are sending Hotmail users will be able to get detailed reports on the topic, courtesy of a service Microsoft launched in beta yesterday.' Microsoft's new Smart Network Data Services, a part of the larger MSN Portmaster initiative, allows the owners of IP blocks to view reports on the volume of email being sent from their networks to Hotmail users, and see how much of that email is being flagged as spam."
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Excellent! I had no idea if my spam was getting caught by the spam filter or not. Now they are providing a great tool to measure my spam filter bypassing techniques!
Thanks Microsoft!
Fix windows and we will have less spam zombies. It's a bit late to close the barn door once the horse has bolted.
I like muppets.
And shame the ISPs into sorting the problems?
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Internet service providers curious to know how much spam they are sending Hotmail users, please raise your hands...
ummmm.. I dont see any.. Seriously, if ISP's were THAT concerned about the amount of spam their clients are generating, I wouldnt have to worry about spam, in the first place...
Nope, but their customers might want to know how effective the SPAM tactics are working.
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
Sure they will... It'll help them calibrate their spam-blocking techniques. If the volume goes up (or stays the same) and the hit count drops, then they'll know that something's working especially well.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
127.0.0.1 has been successfully added.
Please do not let scientific accuracy interfere with the intended humourous/interesting/insightful value of this comment
On your own network fairly easily with some perl scripts, MRTG, Cricket, Zabbix and similar. We used popfile for classification.
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Even better. If you are a spammer, this gives you the most useful data ever: how much of my spam is actually being recognized as spam? I'd want my spam messages to be so clever or so interesting that users don't readily figure out that it's spam.
Of course, I'm not a spammer, and few who stoop to such pathetic marketing tactics would think enough to craft a message that ( to a person ) in not easily recognizable as spam, so I guess you have a point.
Very little, i'd say. The thing is, a lot of the spam doesn't actually come from hotmail.
The bulk of it seems to come from virus infected spam zombie networks, carrying a fake from & return address specifying hotmail, or worse, some poor schmuck who has nothing whatsoever to do with the spam.
What's the solution? well, aside from lining up the spammers against a brick wall and shooting'em all, the SPF system seems to look promising, as do the well-run blocklists.
On the subject of blocklists, spamcop, spamhaus, and dsbl all seem quite good. I can't recommend sorbs at all, because they attempt to extort money from ISPs. If a server is blacklisted, say, because some end-user had a virus or security incident, they insist that the isp pay them money in order to get un-listed. For this reason their list is outdated and unreliable.
XW
"will the ISP's sending most of the spam care?"
They should care. If everyone was to reduce the amount of spam they are sending, then this will in turn reduce the amount of spam they are receiving and having to filter out. Creating less total spam and making each ISP's customers happier. These reports should also help in determining the zombies that they are currently serving and allow them to contact or 'pull the plug' on these customers.
If I am correct, Hotmail email addresses generate the most spam on the internet, or at least have in the past. Whether this is because they have such a large user base or the security flaws aforementioned is debatable, but irrespective of this fact, accountability should be encouraged at all levels of the spamming process, from creation to transmission.
Or maybe it's because spammers are forging the return addresses and they don't come from hotmail at all.
Wow, I better change from gmail, and get a BETTER e-mail account at hotmail.
I would get better spam protection right? lol
When you look at where these messages are coming from, though, and compare them to the IPs hotmail uses for outgoing smtp... I don't actually see any messages that really came from them--they are almost entirely forged addresses.
Not that I have any love of MS/Hotmail, just sayin'.
I suppose MS's first step is to provide warnings to ISPs about their spamming customers and zombies. The next and obvious question is, What Comes Next?
Will MS(Hotmail) begin blocking those ISP's?
Will MS send them a notice saying something like, "... after $DATE we will bill you $BIGBUX per thousand spams. By continuing to spam our customers you agree to pay."
Frankly, it sounds good to me. Let the BigGorillas set the tone and practice for spam.
I made this up. Might happen. Might not. YMMV
I realize that this may sound impossible to /. users, but maybe this tool could be useful to non-spammers. For example, perhaps a business that sends out newsletters to customers wishes to see how many of its customers are marking the newsletters as spam. If a lot of people mark the newsletters as spam, perhaps it is time to a) change the format of the newsletter, b) make it easier and more clear how to stop receiving the newsletters, or c) stop sending newsletters.
Great civilizations have lived and died on false theories. Don't mess up mine with a few facts.
I think that Microsoft may carry more weight than Spamhaus does with the ISPs. If Hotmail starts declining mail, users get pissed. If Hotmail cuts all connections, so that users from an entire ISP can't get on, users get rabid.
I don't know what Microsoft has in mind, if anything, but a gentle threat may just be their first salvo.
AOL has offered a feedback loop for years.
Information on how to activate it is available at http://postmaster.info.aol.com/fbl/index.html.
MSN/Hotmail's offering is quite a bit different, and I'm not yet prepared to offer an opinion on which interface/mechanism is more useful.
Right now, we find the AOL feedback loop quite useful, as do many others.
More feedback loops for large mail providers are documented in this Spamhaus FAQ entry
And the problem, as the GP post pointed out, is that folks will even mark those confirmation requests as spam...not much a legit list can do in that case, except talk to the ISP, but you have to know it's happening first.