Slashdot Mirror
China Getting 'Serious' About Spam?
Ritz_Just_Ritz writes "Apparently, the Chinese MII (Ministry of Information) is going to crack down on Spam from within China. This will include training for 1000 mail administrators and recruitment of 20,000 'anti-spam volunteers.'"
no need to click the link kids that it pretty much. anyway thank god... now about korea?
Did someone say cake?
I'm going to take a stab in the dark and wager that SPAM simply means "e-mailing the way the government doesn't want you to" in Chinese. Whether that be based on the content or motive of your e-mails. The government seems to be implementing laws that have no clear definition in order to devise a method by which they can jail/fine/deter anyone they want. And it will most likely be met with synchronous thundering applause of one billion people clapping robotically togethor.
Americans lose their freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism. Now the Chinese will lose their freedoms in the name of fighting SPAM. *sigh* Canada keeps looking warmer and warmer.
My work here is dung.
Ministry of Information Industry (MII), Internet Society of China (ISC) and China Communications Standards Association (CCSA) launched a national anti-spam campaign on June 21, reports Nanfang Daily. An insider at ISC said MII has set up a hotline at 01-12321 for spam-related tip-offs and is preparing to send out one million anti-spam notices. The report said that professional training will be offered for 1,000 email administrators and that 20,000 anti-spam volunteers will be recruited. "is preparing to send out one million anti-spam notices" - Oh the irony.
-- I Dont Deserve A Sig I Have Bad Karma
Where can I sign up? I wanna read people's mail!
Are these 'anti-spam volunteers' real volunteers, or are they volunteering-to-get-out-of-bayonette-testing volunteers?
Just curious.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
when the get 'serious' about spam coming _outside_ of China!
About 50% of my spam has url's resolving back to China or Korea.
With all the censoring China does, it sounds to me like it's just an excuse to hire 20000 people to read through everyone's email and make sure they're not discussing something they "shouldn't" be talking about.
is preparing to send out one million anti-spam notices
I find it informing that our politicians are willing to sanction trade with Sweden because *our* (i.e. Not Their) laws say they are infringing on our IP. But we haven't heard anything of the sort in relation to China and Nigeria over spam (a much bigger problem).
Regardless of whether or not we have a copy of a blank check signed by the RIAA to [insert politician here], this passive aggression our leaders are so fond of is very telling.
Current estimates by Trend Micro show China responsible for over 14 billion spams per day.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Not in skill or particularity..just one in a million.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
You can't solve all your problems with a great wall. Spam has been a problem for a long time, and it's one of those easily overcompensating balancing acts. Some services are overfiltering, and it's no surprise. There are all sorts of clever ways to try and sort things out, trying to recognize certain words or phrases or check to see if you know certain people, but in the end, there are always exceptions. What about that girl you met last night that really does work for the Mega Ab Destroyer 8000 Co? When it comes down to it, a fairly light filter that you check yourself, complemented with a whole lot of your own personal judgement tends to work. People need information about spamming techniques and what to watch out for, not just hard filtering.
There is no big secret here. In line with your typical Chinese legal remedy, first time spammers will be impaled through the back with a bayonette, and shot through the heart at point blank range. Second time offenders are actually rather rare in China.
Say what you will about the United States, but at least you can't say that we spend extreme percentages on our military while we have major internal problems. China wouldn't have anywhere near the problems it does today with crime and pollution if it didn't devote so many resources to its military. I get tired of the excuses for their priorities "oh they're afraid of the United States!" Bullshit. We can't even get riled up over Afghanistan, a country that aided and abetted the 9-11 terrorists and protected their ring leader. China would have to do something monstrous like conquer one of the "asian tigers" or Japan to get enough passion to actually fight them. You know what this just proves once again? Big government doesn't give a fuck about the common person unless they're revolting or about to. China's spam problems are only the tip of the iceberg. How about stopping all of those hack attacks against government and industry first? Priorities, priorities.
Over at SpecialHam, the forum for bottom-feeder spammers, it seems to be business as usual today. No mention of any crackdown in China. Typical message: "Please give me ICQ UINs of poeple who make installations at trojaned computers. I need to install some software." There's some gloating over the collapse of BlueSecurity. Some new ways to spam Myspace. But no real concerns about enforcement today.
*Reads headline only*
-A while back we were told Taiwan held the world cup for spam (small statue of a devil holding an envelope).
-Now China wants to crack down on spam.
-I see only one way they can do this, or am I terribly mistaken? (P.S Yes I am aware issue is cleared up in summary. Just laugh.)
How many years now have numerous email admins either blocked all email from China or score hits to blacklists such as Blackhole's China & Korea Combined very highly? BTW, China definitely has no right to complain about firewall/gateway censorship.
I thought this was going to be about the new FPS game "Serious Spam" in which the heroine tries to defeat democracy with her spam gun and filtered Google Water (beta).
But seriously, I hope this cuts down on the number of emails I get with all question marks in the subject line. If China is succesful with this program, perhaps other countries will follow suite. (I'm looking at you, Taiwan! *shakes fist*)
peace out.
Is there heaven? Is there Hell? Is that a Tuna Melt I smell?-Primus
will spammers get the death penalty? Think I just found the ultimate ethical delimma for the average slashdotter. Is it good if China executes a spammer, but does so in it's new fleet of mobile lethal injection vans and harvests the organs for sale? When cheering the execution of spammers, which at least half the readership here has been waiting for, can you be sure your celebration is for a real spammer or a political dissident?
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
You know, I'm supprised with all the censoring and filtering they do, they just don't mandate all email be sent through government controlled servers and block port 25 on the "great firewall". That way they could say it's in the name of spam (or security, or whatever) and still read what they want. (I know, I know, stop giving them ideas)
------
"And may your days be long upon the earth."
So, will most of the analysis be done by Information Retrieval or Information Dispersal?
Either way, Central Services will probably end up doing all the dirty work.
My only suggestion: make sure they've filled out a 27b/6 form before you let them lay a finger your server. But then, I'm a bit of a stickler for paperwork.
as each inbound connect attempt (to my ssh port, which I have tightly controlled via tcpwrappers, you morans!) is logged, so is an ipfw (freebsd) firewall entry to block either /24 or - fuck it - /16 from their netblock. IF its from .cn or .tw or .kr (etc). I discover (as they float to my log) and block. full block, not just email.
fark them. there's zero accountability there and I doubt things will change. I run a very small site and so there is no NEED to allow spam^Hemail from those geo's.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
May I point out that, although totalitarian regimes _do_ violate human rights and mis-use laws against dissidents, sometimes they actually have to solve an actual problem? E.g., even Stalin's USSR and Mao's China at their darkest hour, while they did have a some of the most brutal suppression of dissidents, they also had laws to deal with plain old crimes like theft, embezzlement, murder, etc. They also had plenty of civil laws too, like for example, divorces, inheritance, child support, etc.
I.e., it seems to me pretty stupid to assume that any law in China is somehow _guaranteed_ be 100% for oppression purposes, and only disguised in a more propaganda-friendly guise. Maybe someone there genuinely got fed up with spam. Maybe a bunch of bosses in the PRC just had one day too many of finding their inboxes full of "H3rb@1 \/i@gr@" emails. Or maybe it was the "Thousands of 18 year old teens waiting for you!!!" mails. China's conservative leadership tends to take a very grim view of pornography, plus they have _much_ higher age of consent.
Are those volunteers paid to either read other people's emails and to point fingers at demand? How do you know that? How do you know it's not just people paid to register email addresses and use them all over the place, and see what spam lands in those inboxes? Or maybe run honeypots to see who's actually commanding the army of spam-bots with Joe-job faked sender addresses? Or whatever? For the size of China 1000 admins and 20,000 volunteers is a spit in the ocean, if their goal was to read all emails. But to run a honeypot net or to get reliable reports of who's been spamming their inboxes, it may be just enough.
Basically the D&D mentality that some people are by definition evil, hence they can only ever give evil laws, is so fucking stupid that it's not even funny. _Noone_ defines themselves as evil, sworn enemy of all goodness, and able to only ever do evil stuff, like in retarded D&D-type settings and cheap fantasy flicks. The Real Life isn't divided neatly like that.
In RL even the most horrible dictator may really think they're only doing just what's good for their country (even if for everyone else it doesn't really count as good), and not just acting out of some Sith-like determination to extinguish all goodness. RL "evil" is more about not caring about collateral damage done than being some sworn destroyer of all that's still good and pure. And sometimes, even if by accident, their notion of "good" may actually be good.
That's all I'm saying here too. Just assuming "The Chinese government is evil, hence any Chinese law _must_ be 100% for the sole purpose of crushing freedoms and harming people" is just bullshit. We just don't know that. Assuming you can "translate" like that, is just some self-righteous bullshit, nothing more.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Ho W Wo uld y0u L1k e 2 make B I G $$$
Si gn UP n0w and B1 of 1000 34rning BIG $$$ gov J0B
als0 R3crui7ing 20000!!! voleeteer to FIGHT SP4M!
OK I can't be the first to think that this might be their way to find "volenteers" to do this. Oh the Irony!
See the stats here.
Hi,
Click here: http://www.senderbase.org/
You will notice "top senders by domain". There are some telecoms "shouldn't be" there. They are the spam infested ISPs who doesn't have a clue about managing their services. Sadly it includes my backbone too.
I seriously suspect China spam is sort of foreign policy. As a spamcop (free,paid)/) user for years I have right to suspect so. Also if ISPs, large ISPs end this "politically correct" crap and enable country wide user selectable blocking lists you will see how they buy those Ironport, eSafe etc. devices by paying 1% of their revenue.
What about commercial communications? Well you will tell your business partner to find a better managed ISP.