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New Spam Site Found Every Three Seconds

Stony Stevenson writes "New figures suggest that 92.3 percent of all email sent globally during the first three months of 2008 was spam. The data from Sophos also indicated that 23,300 new spam-related web pages were created every day during the period, or one about every three seconds. For the first time Turkey's contribution to the global spam problem puts it in the top three offending countries. Compromised computers in Turkey are now responsible for relaying 5.9 percent of the world's junk email, compared to 3.8 percent in the final quarter of 2007."

48 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. ntpdate time.spam.net? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I love it. I can sync my computer to it.

  2. Ranking is unimportant by EmbeddedJanitor · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Yet again we see ranking used in a silly way. It's the numbers that are important.

    Third placed Turkey and tenth placed UK are wthin a +- 6% band, probably close to the margin of error in the analysis.

    --
    Engineering is the art of compromise.
  3. I dont get it... by repapetilto · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I never get spam, I have my school email address I use for trusted sites and people while everything else goes to a yahoo account. The yahoo account is filled with spam, but since I only have to check the newest mail whenever I use it its not a big deal. Am I missing something here?

    1. Re:I dont get it... by chromatic · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Am I missing something here?

      Yes; it takes plenty of processor time, electricity, memory, bandwidth, and administrator time to make sure that you don't get spam. Also, not everyone uses e-mail the same way you do. Some of us actually want to hear from people we don't know.

    2. Re:I dont get it... by Architect_sasyr · · Score: 2, Informative

      Just because you don't give out your email address doesn't mean someone else can't get it. Website compromises, those idiots who let facebook/myspace/whateverCrapSite log in to their email account to get more address', worm attacks. Hell I got bored and signed my boss up for a whole bunch of porn sites with his home account (he thought he was safe mwahaha).

      Also for some reason I am more likely to get spam on my hotmail/gmail accounts than I am on my work account, and I don't hand those emails out to anybody I don't trust (i.e. only my family has them and they're all secure enough for my liking). Go figure.

      --
      Me failed English...
      FreeBSD over Linux. If my comments seem odd, this may explain...
    3. Re:I dont get it... by kylehase · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Even if you only give your private address to your friends, you must have smart friends who NEVER:
      • Included you on a To: or CC: list of recipients,
      • Used your email address to search for you on social sites,
      • Sent you e-cards/e-invites
      That's pretty amazing. I'm sure most of the spam in my "friends only" or "business only" email accounts were not leaked by me but by a trusted party who didn't know better.
      --
      You want fun, go home and buy a monkey!
    4. Re:I dont get it... by jimicus · · Score: 2, Insightful

      while everything else goes to a yahoo account. The yahoo account is filled with spam...

      Then you do get spam. You've just chosen to deal with it by making sure it all goes to a particular address.

      As soon as you sign up to a public mailing list, post on usenet or put your email address on something not terribly well known for privacy (eg. Facebook), you'll find that - lo! - you get spam.

      Either that or your school's email admin staff have finally discovered the Holy Grail of anti-spam solutions. Perhaps they'd care to share it with us?

    5. Re:I dont get it... by jimicus · · Score: 4, Interesting

      i think all these anti-spam ideas miss the big picture: if no one bought products from spam, they wouldnt do it. we should be going after the idiots who reply to spam.

      IIRC there was someone who tried an experiment some time ago. They tried to buy some of the v1|4|g|r|4 that they'd seen advertised in spam.

      They couldn't find a single spam which actually led to someone genuinely trying to sell something. I think they concluded that spam had mostly become a pyramid scheme, with a handful of people at the top trying (with some success) to persuade everyone below that they could make lots of money from spam - all they needed to do was buy this mailing list software and that list of email addresses...

    6. Re:I dont get it... by Stellian · · Score: 3, Funny

      ...you must have smart friends who NEVER: Your smart friends must also never store your email address anywhere on their harddrive (for example, the browser cache), so that it can't be picked up by the spam sending bot that infected thier machine and does a global scan for "someone@somewhere". Or, only have friends that never get infected. Between the two, you can either:
      - have only geek friend
      - have no friends
      Take you pick - I don't know what's worst.
    7. Re:I dont get it... by niktemadur · · Score: 3, Interesting

      * Included you on a To: or CC: list of recipients,
      * Used your email address to search for you on social sites,
      * Sent you e-cards/e-invites


      There is an astonishing number of people who've had email accounts for years now, and still do the very first and worst thing you mention in your no-no list. I guess it's the most convenient (read: lazy) way to re-send the same lame joke to fifty people. The CEO of the company I work for keeps doing this in my business account!
      Or those blasted chain emails. I can imagine that many of those were created by spammers harvesting addresses, exploiting peoples' superstitions in machiavellian fashion.

      Back in the days of dialup, when the "Dalai Lama wisdom tidbits, send this to twenty people you know" type pps files were already bugging me beyond belief, some bitch that somebody knew that somebody knew that I knew had the nerve to send out a gigantic list of CC: recipients to hundreds of people, with no message whatsoever, just the headline "Let's see what happens". Needless to say, she was bombarded with hate mail, but it was too late. In a few months' time, I was getting about a hundred and fifty spam mails a day, so I created a new address, notified my inbox contacts and asked them to never, ever put me on a CC: list.

      It worked for a while, then I started getting spam again, and I couldn't figure out why. Then it hit me: "Damn, I used my address to register in Amazon (also buying stuff through its' independent affiliate sellers), Paypal, eBay and the like". Could that be an additional reason?

      --
      Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty
    8. Re:I dont get it... by nxsty · · Score: 2, Funny

      Am I missing something here? Yes. You are missing some very valuable offers from people who are eager to help you with your erection problems.
    9. Re:I dont get it... by 1u3hr · · Score: 3, Informative
      IIRC there was someone who tried an experiment some time ago. They tried to buy some of the v1|4|g|r|4 that they'd seen advertised in spam. They couldn't find a single spam which actually led to someone genuinely trying to sell something.

      Try it yourself. I just did, went to my trash folder and opened the first mail. Took me to sale-drug.com, which certainly looks like they have stuff for sale (or at least, they'll take my money). No need to take anyone's word for this, we all have plenty of spam.

      After a few months with most of the spam being stock scams, it's back to good old penis enlargers, generic viagra and cialis. It's all so fucking repulsive and insulting.

  4. Re:I hate spam... by zappepcs · · Score: 5, Funny

    If spam gives you a pain in the balls, you are eating it wrong.

  5. Wooohooo!!! Go Turkey! by swillden · · Score: 2, Funny

    Movin' UP!

    --
    Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
  6. A video from the Spam Dept by AsmCoder8088 · · Score: 2, Informative
    In case you are wondering, here is a related video courtesy of Monty Python:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anwy2MPT5RE

    Enjoy!

    1. Re:A video from the Spam Dept by i.of.the.storm · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I love how youtube thinks most of the comments on that video are spam.

      --
      All your base are belong to Wii.
  7. Wait a minute by relikx · · Score: 5, Funny

    I thought Turkey was a Muslim country, isn't spam some sort of shoulder meat? Oh right, they're secular.

    1. Re:Wait a minute by EdIII · · Score: 5, Interesting

      isn't spam some sort of shoulder meat ?


      I think you may have answered your own question there :) LOL

      Officially, S.P.A.M originally stood for "Shoulder of Pork And haM". However, it most often referred to as "Something Posing As Meat" and "Spare Parts Animal Meat."

      There are also, completely unsubstantiated of course, rumors that old man Hormel himself thought he was going to hell for his part in creating it...

    2. Re:Wait a minute by p0tat03 · · Score: 3, Funny

      Funny, I would have thought that turkeys would say "bok bok b'gawk!"

  8. Won't sombody think of the children? by cynicsreport · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ..... something really should be done....

    Yes, sir! something should be done about spam!
    And, while we're at it, someone should really do something about domain squatting.
    Oh year, and what about phishing? Why isn't anyone doing anything about that!?
    Seriously, guys; get on it. I'll be watching the third season of Seinfeld DVD.
    --
    - Demosthenes
    cynicsreport.com
    1. Re:Won't sombody think of the children? by 1u3hr · · Score: 4, Interesting
      My idea is that if x% of the traffic coming out of a country is abusive then those controlling..., then 100% of that traffic will just be bit-bucketted at the gateways

      If you block a country because it is relaying spam, it will be switched to go via another country before the week is out. Meanwhile millions of innocent people will find themselves cut off.

      Specifically, if required, then the U.S. of A. should be subject to these same rules.

      You bet. Clean up your own act first. I'm not holding my breath. Easier to blame nasty foreigners.

      Did you RTFA:

      The US continues to relay far more spam than any other country,
      And see the ROKSO list, note the nationalities.

      I live in Hong Kong. About 80% of the spam I get is from the US. And yet I find my emails often bounced from US addresses because of similar enlightened attitudes.

      Most of the world's spam ORIGINATES in the USA, is PAID FOR by USA companies. Your government does nothing to stop it. (What is it, two or three prosecutions in the last 5 years?) American companies lobby to prevent any effective measures to stop spam. Bit bucket Florida and you might make a dent in it for a while. But attack the source, not the routing.

    2. Re:Won't sombody think of the children? by oni · · Score: 2, Informative

      Looks like you could use some enlightenment yourself. here's their top 10 list. According to them, the worst spammer is Russian. Number 2 is in the Ukraine. You have to go all the way down to number 10 before you see anyone in the US.

  9. Sturgeon's Law by CastrTroy · · Score: 2, Informative

    Which once again proves Sturgeon's Law which states that 90% of everything is crap. Or 92.3% in this case. Luckily for me gMail is pretty good at filtering the crap, son I only see about 1 spam for every 10 real emails. However, if I look in my junk folder, and compare that to the number of valid emails I receive, I would say that 99% of it is spam.

    --

    Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
  10. A Rate Comparision by pyrrhonist · · Score: 4, Funny
    Just to give some idea of the scale, this is more than twice the rate at which the human male thinks about sex.

    I didn't think it was possible.

    --
    Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
  11. Was anyone surprised here? by damn_registrars · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I know that my email (especially in my older accounts) certainly matches the rate of spam in excess of 90% by volume.

    And the part about a new spam site created every 3 seconds shouldn't surprise anyone either. As much as people despise spam, there is still money to be made in it. Thats why people continue to send spam, of course. Thats also why people continue to buy new domain names to sell discount "drugs" and "software".

    This just tells us what many of us already knew. The spam problem will continue to get worse until we actually apply a economic solution to this economic problem.

    --
    Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
    1. Re:Was anyone surprised here? by Weedlekin · · Score: 2, Informative

      "For most people it wouldn't matter, but spammers would get charged massively"

      Except of course for those who use botnets controlled by compromised servers to send spam, which is most of them nowadays.

      --
      I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
  12. Re:Facebook by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    You think it's bad now, wait until the spammers can faceboogle you.

  13. ASSP is the answer by Lershac · · Score: 4, Informative

    ASSP

    30 minutes to install on an exchange server... filters out all the spam.

    I run it on all my clients, and they average about 95% of all mail intercepted as spam with a zero false positive rate.
    http://assp.sourceforge.net/

    --
    Chuck
    1. Re:ASSP is the answer by Lershac · · Score: 3, Funny

      well if we have exchanged email in the past, he is on the whitelist and I will definitely get his awesome product!

      Or I can blacklist his ass.

      --
      Chuck
    2. Re:ASSP is the answer by Technician · · Score: 2, Interesting

      30 minutes to install on an exchange server... filters out all the spam.

      I too can install a filter that filters out all the spam.. Send it to dev null. A good filter should have a low false positive rate along with removing most spam. Many filters that remove most (or all) spam also have a high false positive rate.

      My ISP seems to lose about 50% of my business mail. Some comes marked spam and some doesn't even arrive.. Either that or my requests for quotes are ignored by my vendors.

      I've been trying to get quotes and questions answered on some American DJ and Elation DMX consoles. Email is a 100% loss. I have to use the phone.

      I did manage to get an answer on some Chauvet stuff. That has been the exception, not the rule.

      --
      The truth shall set you free!
    3. Re:ASSP is the answer by gujo-odori · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You're proud of 95% efficacy? I work for one of the well-known anti-spam companies, and if our efficacy *fell* to 95% that would be considered an emergency. Our overall efficacy is >99% and the spam categories I manage are closing in on five nines.

  14. summary is misleading by martin-boundary · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Phrases such as "Turkey's contribution to spam" are highly misleading. Turkey doesn't actually contribute significantly to spam. How many Turkish language spam messages have you got recently in your mailbox? How many spam messages advertizing a Turkish company's products? None? Then Turkey's contribution to spam is negligible.

    What everyone gets in their mailbox are mainly American spam messages intended mainly for Americans, sent via hijacked Windows computers around the world. There's also a significant fraction of messages intended for a handful of other rich countries, but the only third world country seriously contributing their own spam is probably Nigeria.

    1. Re:summary is misleading by seyyah · · Score: 2, Informative

      Phrases such as "Turkey's contribution to spam" are highly misleading. Turkey doesn't actually contribute significantly to spam. How many Turkish language spam messages have you got recently in your mailbox? How many spam messages advertizing a Turkish company's products? None? Then Turkey's contribution to spam is negligible.
      I disagree. There needs to be a means of getting all these Turks to get their computers infected. I can tell you that there are many many web-sites targeting Turkish internet users for all sorts of attacks. Plus, downloading music using clients saturated with spyware is common and I'd be shocked if many of these were not also trojans.

      So, yeah I think Turkey is totally contributing to the spam problem.
  15. Different kinds of numbers by gmuslera · · Score: 2, Informative
    Tnat a country have more or less computers that send spam could be related the amount of new people with internet connection there, specially if there is no big culture around security.

    But the 1st number, the amount new web pages related to spam, needs to be explained a bit more. The original Sophos report at least explain that are the related to the web links included with the mails, but not sure if that implies more spam realted domains, more spam related servers or if the big numbers are more related to different ways to write urls in the same servers,

  16. ASSP by game+kid · · Score: 2, Funny

    Sorry, I don't trust a product that evokes "ass pee" with spam protection. :P

    --
    You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
  17. One day... by Fluffeh · · Score: 2, Interesting

    First it was their entry into Eurovision, now they are getting up there in the Spam stakes... what next Turkey? What next?

    --
    Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
  18. Never give up! by gruvmeister · · Score: 2

    "Turkey's appearance in the top three makes for an interesting realignment so early in the year," said Carole Theriault, senior security consultant at Sophos.

    "But this does not mean that other countries can give up the fight."
    That's right, it's still early in the year, no one is down and out quite yet. Plenty of chances for any up-and-comer to catch up and make an appearance on the leaderboard - who knows what the second quarter may hold!
  19. Re: Browser Share in Turkey? by Technician · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I was wondering if anyone had any numbers on the market share of IE vs other browsers in Turkey. A few quick google searches were hesitant to reveal anything.

    More interesting is the ratio of infected computers. It isn't stated. But take the population of the US and the Population of Turkey and do a comparison. The other interesting number is the number in Russia. Russia has a large population, but how many of them even own a computer or have internet? Something tells me they have a very high proportion of infected machines. This is most likely due to Microsoft and their WGA program keeping most of those machines unpatched and vulnerable as the population in general can't spend several months wages for a genuine copy.

    It's bad enough that anything ending in .ru is simply discarded. For me this is a 100% filter that doesn't have any false positives. Nigeria is second on the list.

    Everything else left then goes to spam filters. This lightens the load.

    --
    The truth shall set you free!
  20. Re:open season by calebt3 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Your post advocates a

    ( ) technical ( ) legislative ( ) 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
    ( ) 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
    ( ) 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
    (*) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business

    Specifically, your plan fails to account for

    (*) Laws expressly prohibiting it
    ( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
    ( ) Open relays in foreign countries
    ( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
    ( ) Asshats
    ( ) Jurisdictional problems
    ( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
    ( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
    ( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
    ( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
    ( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
    ( ) 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
    ( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
    ( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
    ( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
    ( ) Outlook

    and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

    ( ) 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
    ( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
    ( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
    ( ) Sending email should be free
    ( ) 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
    (*) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough

    Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

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

  21. The ratio is completely wrong for that. by khasim · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This just tells us what many of us already knew. The spam problem will continue to get worse until we actually apply a economic solution to this economic problem.
    Yes, in theory.

    The reality is that a single sale of "herbal \/1agr4" can mean a profit for the spammer. The cost of spamming is that low for them.

    In order to make it economically unsound for the spammers, you'd have to make it economically annoying for the rest of humanity. More annoying than simply putting up with the spam.

    UNLESS we get rid of the stupid CAN-SPAM law and allow each state to institute its own anti-spam laws and allow citizens in those states to sue the spammers for violating those laws.

    Yeah, this will hurt "legitimate" fucking "email marketing" companies ... but in my experience those do not exist. Any legitimate company would view the 50 different legal requirements as a cost of doing business. The same as it is with insurance companies.
    1. Re:The ratio is completely wrong for that. by swillden · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The reality is that a single sale of "herbal \/1agr4" can mean a profit for the spammer. The cost of spamming is that low for them.

      No, the reality is that spammers don't care if the product they're pumping sells at all. Spammers sell spam, it's the fool that's buying the spam that wants to sell "herbal \/1agr4". Sure, spammers would like it if someone would buy the stuff, but when the current fool finally realizes he's not making any money there's always another sucker with a get rich quick scheme and a little cash to buy the spammer's services.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
  22. While American spam offers girth and inches... by jddj · · Score: 3, Informative

    Turkish Spam KISS YOU! IT KISS YOU!!! It loving sex with all the womens of the world!

  23. Re:I hate spam... by PitaBred · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I personally advocate "don't be a douche" vigilantism. If too many people complain about you being a jackass, you get your picture in the local paper/news website as the Jerk of the Week.

  24. Why by rawg · · Score: 2, Funny

    I just don't understand why this can't be fixed. Why does ISP's let this happen? Why do people let this happen?

    This is just so utterly ridiculous to me that it actually makes me sick to think about it. The shear amount of waste being dealt is just insane. And it's not just Email, it's regular postal mail too. The US Mail System is so clogged up with junk that it amazes me that my paycheck gets to me each month. Every single day my mail box is full of, basically, junk that goes straight into the fire.

    --
    The above is not worth reading.
  25. Simple but no one will do it by zymano · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Find IP and shut it down.

    This is the problem with decentralized control.

    Isp's are part to blame.

  26. Do the numbers mean anything? by ocbwilg · · Score: 2, Insightful

    First, let me say that I hate spam. I understand that in most cases it's annoying. I also understand that in most cases it's sent via illegal access to unwitting people's computers, and that there is no doubt a real cost associated with the amount of bandwidth that it consumes. I understand that in most cases the products that it advertises are scams.

    But I have to wonder, how does that statistic that 92.3% of all email sent is spam relate to the rate of junk mail sent via snail mail? I don't know about you, but I'd say that 90% or more of the mail that comes to my home is junk mail, so I'm not sure that the spam statistic is all that surprising. This may just be the expected signal/noise ratio.

  27. Tarpits by Brian+Kendig · · Score: 2, Informative

    Is anyone out there running a tarpit?

    I have the ability to turn my mail server into a tarpit, but it won't do much good unless there are a lot of other tarpits out there too.

  28. One man could fix this... by sootman · · Score: 2, Funny

    ...at least as far as compromised computers are concerned. Bill Gates claimed in 2004 that spam would be solved by 2006. He could go a long way towards making that happen by offering XP SP2 (upgrade) free to anyone who wants it, that would work on any computer running Win95 or newer, legal/legit or not. Sure, he's officially retired, but I bet people in Redmond still listen to him. Hell, he's got enough money, he could literally buy every single copy needed and M$ wouldn't even lose a penny. (Except for lost Vista sales.)

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