Spammers on the Run

ericald writes "An interesting update from Blue Security, the group that introduces the Blue Frog initiative to fight spam, claims that during the past few days at least one spammer had frequently deleted domains he owned as a result of their system. In another update in their blog they report they have already recruited over 21,000 users. It's about time spammers start feeling the heat! I'm just surprised they show results so soon."

Comments

Re:Spammers fate

[SFalcon]

When the spammers can afford to pay $7m to Microsoft, I don't think they need to worry about being hired by anyone.

Re:Spammers fate

[Dunbal]

Employers certainly will rethink hiring someone with such tainted credentials.

      I know we're living in the era where corporations and employers believe they have the right to do anything they want. But while refusing to employ someone on hearsay is within an employer's rights, there's a chance of shooting yourself in the foot and actually hiring the guy who was smart enough to cover his tracks, rather than the silly, average person whose box was "owned" and spammed without thier knowledge.

      Oh but we all know that search engines are infalliable and are the best way to screen a potential employee, right? Come on. If I can steal your identity and borrow money in your name, how hard can it be to spam in your name? Frankly this would not be an employer worth working for.

Re:Realistic View?

[Rev.LoveJoy]

I think by and large most corporations are taking this tack in dealing with spam sent to their MTAs. If you do not do business with that country, ban their IP block. This is an inexpensive 100% solution to spam from overseas.

Public ISPs, universities and government centers do not (and can not) take this route. So these orgs must take another path towards dealing with international spam.

Filtering works. Greylisting works. These technologies help a great deal against the zombie armies everyone said would be unstoppable spam sources.

I am glad you have a solution which works for you (and to some extent, I agree with your soultion), but I would hate for the balkanization of the Internet to come about due to the misbehavior of a few rotten apples. I think there must be a better way.

Cheers,
-- RLJ

Re:Anti-Blue Frog

[RealAlaskan]

Personally I think the "worst kind" of vigilante approach would be getting the spammers home addresses and savagely beating them... or killing them.

Isn't that spelled ``best''?

Seriously, the grandparent post refered to this as a DDOS. If the spammer sends me an email, he's certainly got no right to complain if he gets one back. If he gets enough back to shut down his website, well, he shouldn't have sent so much spam, should he? My understanding is that Blue Frog tries to send an unsubscribe message for every spammed address (their website is slashdotted)? If so, the spammers have already announced their willingness to get that message, and it is obviously legal.