Slashdot Mirror
Spam Flood Unabated After Bust
AcidAUS writes "Last week's bust of the largest spam operation in the world has had no measurable impact on global spam volumes. The spam gang, known by authorities and security experts as HerbalKing, was responsible for one-third of all spam, the non-profit antispam research group Spamhaus said." The article speculates that the operators of HerbalKing simply passed on to associates the keys to the automated, 35,000-strong botnet, and the spam flow didn't miss a beat.
They anticipated they might someday be busted.
They could have designed the botnet with a dead man's switch... if they were busted, start feeding their partners' spam at double vigor, and have the bots create as much noise and general chaos as possible.
You're so wrong, and that's funny.
The problem with spam isn't the less than 40 seconds it takes for the firewall to come up on a WinTel box.
It's the idiot behind the keyboard. Always has been, always will be.
Nobody seems to realize (or face the facts thereof) that spam became more and more profitable, as more and more (soccer moms, idiot dads, stupid kids with no idea about what they are clicking on, hell a slashdotter here stated he has missed the no and hit yes trying to get the box to go away) people where given access to computers and high speed connections.
Bottom line, the luser is the problem, not the machine, not the operating system (god knows, Linux doesn't have a single virii or worm or anything for it, does it),.... It's the ID10T's.
To look at it any other way is just fooling yourself and being a fanboi.
--Toll_Free
If anyone is surprised by this news, they need to think about what they think they know about spam.
Sure not many people like to see the unsolicited ads for herbal viagra and pirated copies of photoshop. But why do the spammers send them out in the first place? It isn't because they hate us, and it isn't just because they can send out billions of them at next-to-no cost to themselves.
They send them out because they make money doing it. Which means that someone, somewhere, is paying for spam as a service. Which means that even if 100 spammers were instantaneously taken offline and thrown into pound-me-in-the-ass prison, 100 new spammers would emerge to fill there places and likely send out even more spam.
If we want to stop spam, we need to remove the economic incentive. And throwing spammers in jail does not accomplish that. So naturally the spam epidemic was largely unchanged by these arrests.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
i don't think the government is spending half the money they spend on the War on Drugs on fighting spam. you can't even compare the two.
if we lived in a true democracy--one that gave citizens direct voice in public policy--replacing congress with regular national referendums for passing legislation, the spam problem would be solved in under a year.
everyone hates spam because it negatively affects our daily lives. few people profit from spam and at great societal costs. so if a referendum was held to divert tax funding away from the War on Some Drugs, the War on Iraq, the War on Terrorism, etc. and put these resources into combating spam, our prisons would no longer be filled with harmless drug users (and illegally detained arabs) and instead of filled with spammers, malware writers, and other real societal parasites. most people would probably vote to ban spam outright--that means companies that hire spammers & malware creators would be punished just as harshly. this would immediately cut off the financial incentive to spam. spammers don't send spam because they enjoy it; they do it for money. cut off the cash flow, and there'd be no reason to send spam.
the other solution is to change our culture of consumerism. spam is a direct result of unbridled capitalism. financial greed and selfishness have become virtues in our society. spammers are the embodiment of the "entrepreneurial" spirit. we're trained to seize any and all opportunity to make money. our society glamorizes the rich, marginalizes the poor, and our entire society and political system is skewed in favor of the wealthy. and it's this pro-business political culture that allowed spam and malware to grow into a such a prevalent institution. politicians were so used to putting business interests above public interest that spam was just an given.
but it'll take a long time to change our culture of capitalist greed & materialistic consumerism. our children need to be taught that personal integrity is more important than wealth, and to not equivocate money with happiness/success. most importantly, we need to value people based on their moral character and contribution to society, not their bank balance. instilling these positive values in kids will ensure that they don't grow up to be spammers. but that's hard in a society where money and socioeconomic status are everything. you can't even get a good education, decent health care, or justice if you don't have money. so this is an uphill battle.