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International Spam Ring Shut Down
smooth wombat writes "An international spam ring with ties to Australia, New Zealand, China, India, and the US is in the process of being shut down. Finances of members in the US are being frozen using the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 while the FBI is pursuing criminal charges. The group sent spam advertising male enhancement herbs and other items using a botnet estimated at 35,000 computers, and able to send 10 billion emails per day. The Federal Trade Commission monitored the group's finances and found that they had cleared $400,000 in Visa charges in one month alone."
$200,000 fines are being aimed at three of the offenders here in New Zealand:
http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/news/8D970CCB86C6155ACC2574E200636699
The Mothership
Have they really accomplished much here? If we RTFA (I know, we don't do that here on slashdot), there is a lot of hype and not a lot of clear progress. It looks like about half of the article is information that spamhaus already likely has. And if the botnet was ordered shutdown by an IL court, I'm not sure what use that would likely be.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Well, the process involves some doggerel and typing...
But the real point is to escape briefly the election season.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
People will always be stupid/desperate/gullible. The same "demand side" argument could be made for drugs/copyright violation (wow, what a can of worms). If you want to fight it, you have to do it as a whole: cut off both the supply and demand sides, and saying "if only they would just stop" is missing half the point.
The only difference between the aforementioned 3 issues is zeal of enforcement, and you should direct your resources to those who would ratchet up enforcement or encourage leniency in regards to these issues. IE: A significant majority of people don't want spam and choose to stamp it out (though right to send it might be a point of contention); our resources are bent to vilify enforcement and glorify drug use in pop culture, while simultaneously giving millions per year to enforcement agencies (talk about a schizophrenic country); similarly, a copyright czar was recently authorized as people see violation as a problem (not a very big one, and not as big as spam since it has taken THIS long to enact.
By swaying the opinion of those around you through persuasive talking/blogging/civil disobedience (see XKCD's latest entitled "Steal This Comic", you can change the nature of the fight from a purely demand side (arresting drug users or allowing song downloaders to be sued) to an effective approach.
why would a company pay spammers to send out emails if it doesn't make them money?
You're forgetting Rule #1: spammers lie.
The company believes that the spammer has been very successful in the past with their double-opt-in targeted marketing campaigns and the spammer's other clients have been very satisfied, because that's what the spammer tells them. They don't find out the truth until after the spammer has been paid.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Er... buying a house 3 times your yearly income is gullible? The average house price in New Zealand is about 11 times the average income. (400k vs 35k)
mediocrity rules, man
Yes, in the short term this might cut spam rates a little bit, but others will step in to fill the gap. The only way to stop spam is to educate people not to buy from it and the industry has been trying that for years.
Like all security problems meatware is the biggest fail point. People are just plain dumb a lot of the time, especially when they think they can get rich quick or get a bigger penis or set of breasts.
its not what they are selling its the numbers. they send 10 billion (10,000,000,000) e-mails a day. say you have a 1/1000 of the people reply and half of them acutaly buy what ever it is they are selling that still leaves half a million sale and you sell your crap for about 5 dollars thats ...um ... (insert dr.evil voice here)250 million dollars.
Its not my fault, someone put a wall in my way.
Only if you are a military junta. Most of the rest of the world still calls it Burma.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Um.. there's nothing wrong with buying a house that's 3x your yearly income.
The main problem is using the house itself as collatoral for the loan. It makes houses appear to be worth more, which then allows bigger loans to be secured, and so on...until the whole thing comes tumbling back down.
But you should be able to pay off a mortgage of 3x your current yearly income in twenty or thirty years, with nothing more than work, sweat, tears, and work.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Myanmar is the preferred usage, Burmese is acceptable, and to remind readers it was once called Burma when appropriate.
I will refrain from the obvious Times-bashing jokes.
See also: http://www.slate.com/id/2191002/
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.