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

Reinventing the wheel?

[Arkaic]

This seems like an unnecessary duplication of effort. There are already established providers of blacklists, such as spamcop. Why not work with them and help develop easier ways for users to report spam via their email client?

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.

more like ENABLE-SPAM Act ..

[rs232]

'having this information sent directly to authorities will result in more prosecutions .. under laws similar to CAN-SPAM'

CAN-SPAM doesn't ban SPAM, what it does do is legitimise the sending of unsolicited commercial e-mail and specifically forbids e-mail recipients from suing the spammers. It's one of those Acts that do the exact opposite of what the name means. As such it should really be called the ENABLE-SPAM Act of 2003.

was Re:Better as a Private Service?

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...

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.