Email Servers Will Choke, Says Spamhaus

Rub3X writes, "The legal battle between antispam organization Spamhaus and e360 Insight is heating up. Spamhaus has a user base of around 650 million, and its lists block some fifty billion spam emails per day, according to the project's CEO Steve Linford. Spamhaus CIO Richard Cox says the immediate issue is that if the domain is suspended, the torrent of bulk mail hitting the world's mail servers would cause many of them to fail. More than 90% of of all email is now spam, Cox says, and he doubts that servers worldwide would be able to handle a ten-fold increase in traffic." Others estimate Spamhaus's blocking efficacy as closer to 75%; by this metric spam would increase four-fold, not ten-fold, if Spamhaus went unavailable. The article paraphrases CIO Cox as saying that the service will continue "even if there is a short-term degradation."

Comments

I say let the spam come

[pembo13]

It would be interesting if all email server admins suddenly opened the flood gates for a day or two. Maybe then the general population will gain a better appreciate of the scale of the matter.

I still think they 3360 guys just look and smell like spammers. That spamhaus aggrees just adds to this conclusion. Here's what seems to amount to the spam histroy of the "plantiff".

Re:I say let the spam come

[misleb]

It would be interesting if all email server admins suddenly opened the flood gates for a day or two. Maybe then the general population will gain a better appreciate of the scale of the matter.

I think most internet users still remember what it was like before spam filtering became common. Wait a few more years. Then users will take the filtering for granted.

-matthew

Re:I say let the spam come

[Jekler]

Most users probably don't remember the rate of spam before filtering was common for a number of reasons:

1. The rise in internet usage since the year 2000 indicates, at best, only 1/3rd of the internet population could remember the rate of spam before filtering was common.
2. The rise of email usage indicates a large population of the people who were connected pre-filtering weren't using email.
3. The current volume of spam per person is at least triple what it was pre-filtering.

Most of us who were using the internet before spam filtering became so common have not seen what today's volume of spam would look like unfiltered. Assuming spam per person has tripled, anyone who was getting 20 spam per day pre-filtering would be looking at 60 spam per day now.

It would be a much deserved wake up call if spam filter companies were to shut down operations for a few days. It's obvious that the bodies overseeing this case think of Spamhaus as little more than a novelty. I think Spamhaus needs to send a crystal clear message, and perhaps the most effective way to do that would be to show the world how green the other side of the fence really is.

Re:I say let the spam come

[dheltzel]

I'm surprised Spamhaus doesn't just "simulate" what life would be like without them

It's easy to explain why they don't do this. They know that only clueless email admins rely only on an RBL for Spam control. Only the "Spamhaus faithful" would get clobbered with the extra Spam and they would have to switch to a different method or lose their jobs. This would be a sure way to kill off your customer base by proving empiracally why a single point of failure in Spam detection is a bad idea.

I've seen as much bad behavior from the RBL maintainers as I have from the spammers, so I only use an RBL as a final check to hold email that is on an RBL but otherwise passes through the filter. The (very few) held emails are almost always legitimate. The only reason I even bother to hold them is to keep an eye on what's going on and kill the final few Spam emails. The system I use for my employer has an almost perfect rate of rejection. Most of our users get fewer than 10 Spam messages a year! I get a lot of questions from co-workers about how to deal with Spam in their personal accounts because we do such a great job of dealing with it in their work accounts.

I know the Spamhous fanboys will take offense at this post. My only comment is that you are free to use an RBL as your only Spam control if you wish, just as I am free to use what I consider to be better methods. Good luck to you if Spamhous ever goes dark for any reason -- you're gonna need it.

Re:I say let the spam come

[williambbertram]

Of course they are spammers. If tiny gray guys in overcoats, fake moustaches, and dark sunglasses ask permission (in a squeaky voice) to shut down the mouse trap factory, what do you think is going on?

Two lists needed

[Ed Avis]

Maybe some legal problems could be avoided by having two lists. One, a list of spammers. The second list is people who are not spammers (cough) who have threatened or engaged in legal action to be removed from the first list. In other words a list of plaintiffs in court cases. Mail server admins could choose whether to use one list or both for blocking mail.

Re:Someone please tell me they have an alternative

[crazyvas]

Dude,
I am so ready to walk away from cars. I just need someone to point me to a workable replacement.
I am so ready to walk away from television. I just need someone to point me to a workable replacement.
I am so ready to walk away from radio. I just need someone to point me to a workable replacement.
I am so ready to walk away from life. I just need someone to point me to a workable replacement.
I am so ready to walk away from my legs. I just need someone to point me to a workable replacement.

Re:Someone please tell me they have an alternative

[RMH101]

Your company advocates a

(x) technical ( ) legislative (x) market-based ( ) vigilante

approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)

( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
(x) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
() The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
(x) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
(x) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business

Specifically, your plan fails to account for

( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
(x) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
(x) Asshats
(x) Jurisdictional problems
(x) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
(x) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
(x) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
(x) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
(x) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with Microsoft
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with Yahoo
(x) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
(x) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
(x) Outlook

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

(x) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
(x) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
(x) Sending email should be free
(x) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
(x) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough

Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

(x) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid company for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!

Re:Someone please tell me they have an alternative

[rbarreira]

I am so ready to walk away from cars. I just need someone to point me to a workable replacement.

Here.

I am so ready to walk away from television. I just need someone to point me to a workable replacement.

Here.

I am so ready to walk away from radio. I just need someone to point me to a workable replacement.

Here.

I am so ready to walk away from life. I just need someone to point me to a workable replacement.

Here.

I am so ready to walk away from my legs. I just need someone to point me to a workable replacement.

You can't walk away from your legs. Not with the same legs, at least.

Spamhaus have their problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the comments I've read so far seem to be in favour of Spamhaus, and while I agree that they do some good work, they are not all good. Specifically, they seem over keen to blacklist address ranges without providing any proof, and very reluctant to unblock these.

I work for an ISP providing dedicated server hosting & colocation. Recently a couple of our customers contacted us saying that they had appeared on the Spamhaus blacklist, and were consequently having trouble sending e-mails. They claimed that they had not involved in any spamming activities, and that this listing was therefore incorrect. We found out that Spamhaus had blacklisted a range of our IP addresses (specifically a /27 subnet), and their explanation was that we were hosting someone from their ROKSO list.

While it was indeed true that we were hosting a server for this person, Spamhaus had a) blocked an address range larger than the IP addresses involved with this spammer, and b) would not offer any proof that the spammer had been using the server we host for him to involve in any spamming activities. When we contacted them, they refused to unblock this range unless we suspended the account of this spammer (again without providing any proof of activities conducted from our network that would breach our TOS), even though they acknowledged that the range they were blocking involved innocent customers. For us to suspend him at the request of Spamhaus would have been US breaking our contract with him, as there was no indication that he had violated our AUP (which DOES prohibit involvement with spam).

When we refused to break our contract with our customer at the request of a third party (perfectly acceptable position imho!), Spamhaus said that if they blocked any of our customers in future, they would blacklist our entire network (which is a considerable amount of addresses). This is unacceptable in my view, they are essentially trying to hold us to ransom without providing any proof of activities. When talking with some other ISPs, we heard of similar stories. In one case, the ISP concerned suspended the spammer's account and contacted Spamhaus to have their blacklist removed, and were told that "due to under-staffing, Spamhaus would not be able to remove the blacklist entry for a couple of days. however, if they would like to make a donation to spamhaus, they would remove the entry much sooner".

To reiterate my earlier point, Spamhaus does provide a valuable service, there's not much doubt of this. But they way in which they are organised leaves a lot to be desired!

Re:Someone please tell me they have an alternative

[slackarse]

You can't walk away from your legs. Not with the same legs, at least.

Here.

Re:Use the UK server name!

[Digital Vomit]

...it's not subject to US law

It's sad how this statement is becoming more and more associated with freedom nowadays.

Quantum mechanics.

[Anonymous Coward]

When you have finite number of messages in the inbox, percentage of spam could only take some specific values and 99.9999% is not one among them.

Spam percentage of a 474 message inbox could only be 100%, 99.78903%, 99.57805%, 99.367089%, 99.156118% ....

Thought it would be funny, but it is not, but I am not going to waste all that typing calculation I did, so will hide behind anonymity ;-)