Slashdot Mirror
BlueSecurity Database Compromised?
Stray1 writes ""You are recieving this email because you are a member of BlueSecurity...." An email from unknown detractors has taken the Bluesecurity anti spam lists and decided to take matters into their own hands. I recieved this Email from an anonymous, and garbled host, which went on to say in not so fantastic english that I, as a Blusecurity member, would recieve this and many more (about 20 -30) spam messages a day until I left the blue security community. Blue Security, (www.bluesecurity.com)a website and community designed to lessen your Spam Email, is down for the moment. Is this what we have come to? Spam,(erm 'high volume email') companys holding your address hostage until you comply? "...We mightve had your email addresses before in our lists, but now, we are targetting YOU, because YOU are a bluesecurity user". I have to say, up until this point, my spam was down by about 70% to 80%."
Blue Security to systematically flood a known spammer's website with opt-out messages; much to the headache of the spammer.
And by flood I taeke it you mean spam
When will the world learn, violence begets violence and spam begets spam. Lets find a real solution to the problem rahter then a vigalante justice.
If they're able to do so, what will stop them from *not* spamming you in the future anyway? Their ethics, integrity or your stupidity?
Yes, Let's kill the spammers.
All the best with it.
She's built like a steak house, but she handles like a bistro....
So what do we do -- surrender, because some spammer compromises this one system? Blue Frog has its own problems, but their idea is sound, if a bit "above the law." Let Blue Frog users forward the emails to them and let the company go after the spammers (aren't they violating CAN-SPAM or the law against harrassing emails?).
Look, Wyatt Earp was a lawman looking to see justice done and occassionally he had to step outside the law. Call it vigilantism if you like, but the fact is, these spammers have been operating under the assumption that they are untouchable, and can do this all day long with no repercussions. It's time for users around the globe to go on the offensive, give them a taste fo their own medicine. Shut down their ISPs if they won't stop the spam. Jam up their systems. Let them know we're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore. The court system can rule against them, but so many of them are overseas that I seriously doubt they can be touched. So hit 'em where it hurts, right in the servers.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Do they even realize the sheer irony in accusing others of sending mass emails?
The Gmail spam filter is filtering nearly every one of these spams, only a couple out of 60+ yesturday got into my inbox. .... and every one of that bastard's spams advertising a website went right to bluesecurity to hurt his business. He's just shooting himself in the foot.
... I think that about covers the points that were lost when slashdot decided to post this boring version of the story, instead of what I submitted yesturday afternoon :)
Contrary to what the author wrote, there's closer to 475,000 members, not just a few 10's of thousands, enough that several major spammers have already agreed to not spam members due to the huge financial hits they were taking with the bluefrog choking off their websites.
What a joke, what dumbass would really believe that the spammers will not spam you if you leave blue security? Who here will admit to believing the criminals?
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
The only thing that most of these "please remove me" BS forms do is confirm that the email address is a valid one, and can be resold to more spammers. If anything filling those out actually causes more harm than good.
If you're confused, read the article again; it's mentioned.
Thanks Tips, but all four links in the article seem to be unreachable.
My sig is too lon
If BlueSecurity wasn't hurting Spammers they would ignore it. If they are fighting back it must mean that BlueSecurity is actually doing damage to them.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
Problem is, that to waste their time, you have to waste your time. I sometimes do respond to junk (paper) mail by sending random junk in the envelope. Sometimes I actually write a letter demanding they remove me from their lists. No matter what I do, it doesn't end. Capital One still sends me junk mail despite multiple letters between us -- me demanding them to stop, them reassuring me they will honor my request. Junk mail is even worse because it is more anonymous -- it is easy to forge headers and mask where a mail truly came from. Yes, there are ways to track it down, but it isn't always easy. Filling out information on a web site in the email doesn't do much, since odds are it doesn't go to the same person. Even then, it takes time to screw with the spammers, electronic or paper, and I don't want to waste my time.
Sometimes I do get bored and do screw with them. Such as using my brand new photo printer to print stuff and put it in those return envelopes. After visiting certain not-work-safe sites for photos.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
I noticed a calpoly.edu address in the header, so I sent a copy of the message to abuse@calpoly.edu.
Well if it's in the header then that must be where it came from. Congratulations on your superlative detective work.
I'm sure that the abuse admin at calpoly.edu will also soon be writing to you to let you know how much he appreciates your skills.
Whenever anyone says "violence never solves anything" I always remember the part in Starship Troopers where the History and Moral Philosophy teacher says "Perhaps you could tell that to the Carthagians..."
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Blue frog is open source...
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
You are absolutely right. The problem is highly asymmetrical : the spammer needs spambots and webservers worth a few thousand $, and can flood the Internet with crap. If every recipient is to spend a few minutes to do a mDOS (manual denial of service), it sums up to tens of millions of lost minutes, or millions of $ in lost productivity.
:) this is the best shot I've seen at drastically reducing spam. Laws aren't as helpful as they could be - especially against spam from other countries. And it takes a long time to catch and convict a single spammer. Do you *really* want your tax dollars used that way? (we don't even need to get into how gosh-darn *wonderful* CAN-SPAM is...) Filters help, but that's not stopping the spam, it's just preventing you from seeing it. Killing spammers might have an effect but seems a bit severe. (although there are days... :) Baysian filters help - but a business can't lose a mail to false positives, so they need to check the spam anyway. Challenge-response is ugly and annoying. And I sure don't want to go down the pay-for-email road! RBLs are too dangerous - throwing out the good with the bad. (one listed the entire Comcast.net domain, for example) Greylisting isn't a bad idea, but it does use extra computing power, and delays some email. Seems to me that being a thorn in the side of a spammer has a decent chance of working. They're not stupid, not even necessarily lazy. They're just taking advantage of the way things work. (excepting those who use trojans etc to take over other's machines - they're evil!) Once they reach the point where it's easier to accept and comply, and recognize they're not losing any revenue (because those emails won't become customers anyway) they'll clean their lists - and spam will go down. It won't disappear, but hopefully be significantly reduced.
We need an automated descentralized P2P network to attack the spammers and the spam-friendly ISPs.
It takes me less than 5 minutes to forward the 5000-7000 emails in my catchall account each day. I use Thunderbird with the Blue Frog plugin, and forward about 400 messages at a time - I could do it all in a minute if I could attach all the messages at once but that ends up to be too large a message...
Doing it manually would take *far* longer - I've enough time sinks as it is!
According to my Blue Security statistics, my Blue Frog has sent 11,152 "opt-out" requests in the past 7 days. (which also points out that every spam doesn't generate an opt-out) Blue Security's idea is to be enough of a thorn that it's easier to not send to the Blue Frog list than to fight it. (one of the spammer tools has recently added a "clean emails of Blue Security registered names" button - making it trivially easy to remove the registered names. This implies that Blue Security is having an effect.
Right now there are 471,000 names in the list - surely not all are really active, and not all are sending opt-out messages, but it seems spammers are sitting up and noticing now. According to Blue Security's blog, in the past month several spammers have negotiated with them and agreed to clean their lists. If I remember right they generate something like 8% or so of spam volume. Not a *lot* but I'd expect more in the coming months. Spammers are in it to make money - once they get over the initial irritation, it'll just be easier to clean their lists than to try to fight back. Which also makes sense - the list is people who won't buy from them in the first place, so in the end it's a waste of time to send spam to them.
In my opinion (everyone's got em!
- Al Weiner -