France Launches Anti-Spam Platform

njondet writes "French-law.net reports that the French government has just launched 'Signal Spam', an anti-spam platform created in association with public entities and private companies, such as Microsoft. Internet users will be able to report spam messages by mailing them to this platform which will act as a centralised monitor of spamming activities. The platform will generate a blacklist and help initiate prosecutions against spammers."

Comments

Better as a Private Service?

[MankyD]

This is where the libertarian in me comes out and wonders if these things aren't better left to the private sector. On the other hand, perhaps having this information sent directly to authorities will result in more prosecutions (or more successful prosecutions) under laws similar to CAN-SPAM, (or maybe that's just wishful thinking.)

Re:Better as a Private Service?

[Kjella]

Given that SPAM is outlawed most places, and even if not then most of the offerings are illegal to import drugs, stock frauds, nigeria frauds, products with claimed medical effect without documentation, identity fraud, virus and trojans and so on then I see no problem with suspected illegal activity being reported to the authorities for investigation and possible prosecution. It's technically what I could do if I printed out my SPAMs and went to the local police station, except they'd never do anything about it.

Re:Better as a Private Service?

[gustafsd]

The way i read it this is the government providing private interests with a service that would take a serious amount of cooperation to succeed and so they are speeding up the process. Cooperation in favor of competition

I wonder how long before...

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how long before we see a massive DDOS attack against the infrastructure used to run this.

Yes this'll work

[Colin Smith]

Because.

1: We all know how quickly the law works... Talk about a bottleneck.
2: Most spammers operate outwith the control of any single government.
3: Many spammers operate through compromised proxy systems.

Still, at least they're being seen to be doing something and this is the important bit for the politicians.

It may help.

[khasim]

Depending upon how it is implemented and how they evolve it.

1: We all know how quickly the law works... Talk about a bottleneck.

But it seems to be the only way to actually get the spammers. Filtering doesn't affect them. Their bandwidth is essentially free.

2: Most spammers operate outwith the control of any single government.

Not really. Each individual spammer lives in a country and is governed by the laws of that country. No single set of laws govern ALL spammers, but you can target some of them.

3: Many spammers operate through compromised proxy systems.

The technology should just be one aspect of this.

The spammers usually don't send out crap on their own (unless it is to advertise their services). This is one of the classic "follow the money" issues.

The Register ran an article that I cannot find right now. It was about how Company A hired Company B to send out ads to certain addresses. Company B hired Company C to send the ads. Company C needed more names so it bought a list of email addresses off of eBay from Person D.

It's easy for a government to handle research like that. Companies respond a LOT quicker when the request for information comes from their government.

And companies don't like having the government digging through their paperwork.

Sure, you risk "Joe Jobs", but overall, it should get the legitimate companies to be a LOT more careful before they outsource their next "email advertising campaign".

And that means that some of the money in spamming will dry up.

Re:Centralized Service?

[Kjella]

Haven't we learned by now that centralized services don't exactly function as advertised?

Yes, it's terrible how the DNS root server farm is constantly hacked. Or how the google server farm gets hacked every day to redirect to the goatse guy. What? That doesn't happen? What's happnened in the past with a few is that they've managed to DDoS them out of business, or sue them out of business. The government can throw hardware and bandwidth at it. If people come to rely on it, call it "critical infrastructure". Prosecute anyone trying to hack it as cyberterrorists (sic). Let the spammers threaten to sue it, and laugh at them. And if they do it, pass special laws to protect it from liability. Link it up so whenever there's a penny stock scam, start a SEC (or whatever the French version is) investigation. If there's a drug scam, start a FDA (or similar) investigation.

I'm sure this scares the hell out of spammers - someone with more power than to simply blacklist the servers after the fact, which honestly is running around putting out fires instead of catching those starting them. And even if they turn out to be completely incompetent, nothing stops the current blacklists from running...

Re:more like ENABLE-SPAM Act ..

[Kjella]

It's one of those Acts that do the exact opposite of what the name means.

Or it does exactly what it says, if you read it like a verb. Hopefully a few spammers died of laughter thinking about it, how they got Congress to pass a "We CAN SPAM" act.

Re:Your post advocates a...

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, how can this be classified as a vigilante effort when the French government is advocating it?

Re:Reinventing the wheel?

[fiddlesticks]

Walmart fucked up. "Like, did you know that American pillowcases are a different size than German ones are?" he asked. Wal-Mart Germany ended up with a huge pile of pillowcases they couldn't sell to German customers."

I know that and I'm neither American nor German.

That said, this hasn't disappeared - the stores have been bought, and Walmart won't be doing some of this again:

'....management had threatened to close certain stores if staff did not agree to work to working longer hours than their contracts foresaw and did not permit video surveillance of their work.'

Ugh. Still, the poster above seemed to think that the jobs and shops run by Walmart would go away at the slightest hint of state intevention - and the link you posted shows that not to be the case - thanks

I wrote Signal Spam

[JohnGrahamCumming]

I wrote the code that is behind this web site. I'll try to answer questions without giving up confidential information if people are interested.

John.