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Spam from Taiwan
TristanGrimaux writes "According to a recent study done by CipherTrust, two thirds of the world's spam is sent by Taiwan servers. The US follows with 24% and in a distant third is China with only 3% of the servers who actually sends the spam." The article cites easy access to broadband and lack of crackdown on offenders as the main contributing factors.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Availability of relatively cheaper computing power with good bandwidth?
Some legal stuff?
Availability of some skill set?
http://www.atomicsoftwaresolutions.com/honeybot.ph p
With this software emulating an open SOCKS proxy, I've been able to detect several scans of port 1080, and then attempts to send e-mail to different servers around the world (i.e. Israel).
I don't remember if I got requests from Taiwan, but I did get them from South Korean IPs.
Instead of figuring out where most of the spam comes from, they should figure out which geographic location churns out the most humorous spam. It could be a world wide competition.
As for following the money...I let the SEC do that. About once a week, I get a spam message pushing one stock or another. I forward them to enforcement (at) sec.gov. The message gets looked over by a lawyer.
I don't know that it does anything about the spam, but hopefully whoever paid for the message gets paid back.
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Heh, these days, everywhere except North America has cheap broadband. All the other governments see it as an important investment.
They're part of China sort of (but not exactly) the way the South was part of the U.S. between 1861 and 1865, except the war to resolve the issue hasn't happened yet. Pray that it doesn't...
Generally, bash is superior to python in those environments where python is not installed.
France
*Total Population: 60,876,136
*Internet Users: 26,214,174
China
*Total Population: 1,313,973,713
*Internet Users: 111,000,000
I think, that number speaks for itself.
*ref. from CIA World Fact Book
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
And they don't need to. With their billion+ population, one fifth of the world can be reached without passing the invisible borders!
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
Taiwan makes more than 66% of the notebooks on which we read that spam, so they're actually overperforming on the content:reader ratio. I wish they'd get more into eBooks.
--
make install -not war
Impossible! Go USA! Go USA! We can win the spam race!
Philosophy.
Taiwan and China are actually both China. Taiwan is the Republic of China. While what most people(unless you happen to be from Taiwan) call China is of course the Democratic Peoples Republic of China. The DPRC does consider Taiwan a rouge province, while Taiwan doesn't consider that to be the case. As the other reply said, lets hope the war to resolve this doesn't happen any time soon.
Happy Noodle Boy says "F###ing doughnut! Mock me? You fried cyclops!!"
Australia doesn't have cheap broadband. It's a rip-off here, just like in the US of A.
More like follow the offshore bank accounts, Grand Cayman Islands, etc.
I lived there. Internet access is expensive as it was a government protected monopoly. Check the rates. Cable and Wireless is the company. To visit, see www.candw.ky.
When they first put in internet, they got 2 satelite T1 links for the whole island. Little Cayman and Cayman Brac still did not have internet. They charged $0.25/minute for access on dial up.
Needless to say I didn't get internet until I returned to the states.
They have since gotten a Fiber Optic cable to Jamaca and they now offer DSL. They are running a promotion for $25/month for the first year. That is CI $ not USD. The price is close to US $30/month. Restrictions such as can't compete with the phone company by using VOIP is the norm.
The plan appears to be capped at 256K unless you upgrade to a faster plan. For example the 1024 plan is CI $74. The 512 plan is $59.
Cayman Islands is a nice place to go for diving and sun, but not for internet based business.
The truth shall set you free!
Availability of relatively cheaper computing power with good bandwidth?
Some legal stuff?
Availability of some skill set?
All of the above, and more. Taiwan is a great place to outsource technology intensive operations. Perhaps spammers have discovered this. In a nutshell, spamming is just another technology driven business.
Maybe it's so great that even China outsources their spam generation there too. Hence their low spam generation figures.
---- It won't be as bad as you fear or as good as you hope, but it will take twice as long as you plan.
Well, we have shades of red and red here. :)
... but the ROC does!
Does the People's Republic of China collect taxes in Taiwan? No, the Republic of China does.
Does the PRC actually try to enforce its criminal laws in Taiwan? No, but the ROC enforces its laws.
Does the PRC define the commerce regulations, health regulations, education standards, voting laws, aviation regulations, etc. within the borders of Taiwan? No -- but the ROC does.
Does the PRC have military bases on Taiwan? No
What the U.N., U.S. and Europe say in polite diplo-speak is one thing. The working reality (and the *money* reality) is that Taiwan is a separate country, perhaps not in name, but in operational fact.
Generally, bash is superior to python in those environments where python is not installed.
You don't do the business itself from the Caymans, just your under-the-radar finances.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
I believe the main issue is that broadband here is pretty much monopolized by Hinet. If you have a phone (landline), chances are you have a Hinet e-mail address. For some reason Hinet never, ever, authenticates their e-mail servers allowing them to be used from anywhere for any purpose. As a result a lot of companies (like AOL possibly) have just banned the whole entire Hinet domain, which often results in e-mails going outside of Taiwan never getting to their intended recipient. Hinet is a mess, I don't why they're so bloody awful at maintaining their servers responsibly, but its providing to be a huge problem both worldwide and for Taiwanese people themselves.
CipherTrust operates a service called "Trusted Source" - it allows anybody to input an IP address, searching CipherTrust's DB to see if any spam has come from that IP recently. Aside from being generally useless, here are some of the funnier results:
0 255.0.0.0 - "Spam"1 224.0.0.1 - "Unverified"
http://www.trustedsource.org/query.php?q=255.0.0.
http://www.trustedsource.org/query.php?q=0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 - "Spam"
http://www.trustedsource.org/query.php?q=224.0.0.
Since they have most of my favorite subnet masks listed as a "Spam" source, I'm not sure that I trust any "research" that comes from these guys.. YMMV.
Ok, I know you're trying to be clever with your "Content Restriction, Annulment and Protection" acronym, but it doesn't make any sense. Why not just "Consumer Rights Annulment Provision"? Much less ambiguous, and much more direct.
That said... Yes. The Cayman Islands and a couple other small nations serve as fiduciary havens, not infrastructure.
--JoeProgram Intellivision!
By the way... Most spammers who sent you letters to visit their web pages want's you to click their Google adSense ads. So, help them! Keep clicking Google banner untill your arm get tired and guess what happened. Google will close their account in one second because Google systems will decide that advertiser trying to cheat. It is impossible to open account again! SPAMMER DEAD!
If a mailer manages to supply those crippled IP's then the mail is definitely fake, and most likely spam (or virus). Don't confuse a legitimate subnet mask with a fake IP.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
Let the SEC do it.
The SEC. Ha. A worthless three letter agency, if you ask me.
The SEC's lawyers wanted my help on stock tout junk faxes. I told them I had the information they wanted and I could get the rest and testify- but only if they were going to put the junk faxers out of business. They had no intention of doing anything. They are just going through the motions, drawing government salaries. I declined to help them.
Like the FCC, another worthless three letter agency.
They fined Fax.com $5.4 million for sending out junk faxes. The FCC's lawyers wanted my help too, if I had bothered with them the fine would have been $240 million. I have files full of those junk faxes.
The FCC did nothing whatsoever to collect. NOTHING
If you or I owed the government money I can assure you they would be collecting from us.
.
Prince Desmond Okotiebor Etete himself MUST account for at least 10% of all spam...
Somedays I almost wish that some of this Taiwanese spam showed up in a character set I could read so at least I could have a good laugh at it, or at least learn how they are trying to extract money from illicit private bank accounts!
"Dear Sir or Madam,
This email may to you as a surprise, but I am Mr. Chen Liao, son of former Taiwanese president Lin Liao, who was murdered by ninjas, and I need your help recovering $25 million Taiwanese Dollars..."
>does consider Taiwan a rouge province
So Taiwan is actually Red China?
(I apologize. I transpose keys too. But that one was just irresistible.)
I run my own mail server for my private email that I only use with friends.
Lately, I have been getting spam about stock investments, and I notice that
it was pretty consistent so I started investigating what was going on with
my server. I started marking down ip addresses of the offending servers
and blocking them if I felt they were not legitimate mail servers or if it
was from a country that I know I will not get email from on my personal email
account.
I have been blocking a new server every day for 2 months.
Here is the scarey part. I still get the same email spam every day, but
only once.
My hunch is telling me that the purveyor of this message is using some
sophisticated means of harnassing zombie machines to send messages, and is
only sending a few messages at a time so that automated blackhole lists
never catch on fast enough. (such as spamhaus)
I have noticed that these machines are almost always located in Asia,
Latin America, or Eastern Europe...
It got so bad, I just started block entire class A's from countries I know
I am not going to email to or from.
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After WW2 and the end of the Japanese occupation, a civil war was fought between the Communists under Mao and the KMT under Chiang Kai-shek. The KMT were effectively defeated by 1949, and Chiang evacuated to Taiwan. For much of the Cold War, "Free China" (ROC) was the only government of China recognised by most states and international organisations. However, as part of the 'detente' in the 1970s, most countries switched their recognition to Communist China (PRC). The ROC is obviously a state in all but name, but the situation is maintained to avoid nuclear war. The PRC has said that if the ROC declares independence then they will invade, while the US has stated that it will defend Taiwan, and has meanwhile provided large amounts of military aid. So, basically, it's a mess.
I'm not really sure how to deal with that, but let us focus as one method of spam. The method would be sending to a variety of e-mail addresses. Those kind of dictionary attacks or whatever they are killed. If e-mail providers were to make some dummy addresses which if hit, could block the e-mail server and/or IP address(es) for a given period of time, wouldn't that work?
(Fine, mod me down if you think this is off topic.)
ROC used to rule the whole China, mainland and Taiwan combined. They lost the civil war in 1949 and retreated to Taiwan. Neither PRC nor ROC see each other as a ligitimate government of China. At least both constitutions claim largely overlapping territories. It's a stalemale over half a century.
How people are so casual about the facts is beyond me.
People who dislike China tend to mention Tiananmen Square a lot, but they always forget the Tank Man is also a Chinese.
Spam, Made In Taiwan ?
Why doesn't that supprise me ?
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Except it's hardly ever the company itself that is doing the promotions... it's third-party people that target them and convince others, via spam, to invest in the company, which drives the prices up, which allows them to unload their own stock at a profit.
All while being 100% unrelated to the company.
$0.02 (CDN)
Send spam to Chinese people. These people should not be deprived of any knowledge about their government. For the first time spam could be used for good purpose.
Spam: Any activity on internet to gain popularity without paying to advertising companies like Google.
Ok, so how come all the spam blockers don't just block the entire Taiwanese IP range?
:)
Anyone care to disclose the ranges?
Legally, the civil war in the 40s has not finished yet. Neither side of the war has been eliminated. No treaty or cease-fire agreement was signed. Both sides just prefer not to fight for now.
This situation is very complicated. Indeed, it's getting more complicated as more political powers want to get involved in it. I think the best way to resolve it is to leave it to the Chinese people of both sides to sit down and talk. Any open foreign involvement and provocation from the Taiwan Independence side will risk a full-blown war in the region.
People who dislike China tend to mention Tiananmen Square a lot, but they always forget the Tank Man is also a Chinese.
The article is not about senders of spam but of servers that control them. There is a huge difference.
Welcome to 1999 !! Taiwan is SPECIAL, but it's still CHINA !!
No, that's Hong Kong that became part of China. Taiwan is that island off the coast that the Communists never captured in the civil war. For various political reasons it is rarely referred to as being a different country, but for all practical purposes it's a totally seperate country.
It's true! My fiance is from Taiwan, and she's always telling me that I need to 1NCREA5E MY P3RF0R|\/|ANCE 1N BEDD!!!!!
Huh? It doesn't take much to be able to buy stock online... hell, my MOTHER can do it with her online banking.
And who the hell would buy ANYTHING from spam? Oh yeah... lots of idiots. Same goes for Nigerian scams, etc.
It's just a different product, with next to no money trail because you're only benefitting from the idiots pushing the price up.
And as to the stock scam, just what money do you follow? People are making legit purchases, of a legit stock. The only bitch is that someone OTHER than the company is marketing it to push the price up so that they can sell at a profit.
$0.02 (CDN)