In Italy the ISPs get a cut of the phone bill too, and there are basically no dial-up fees for PSTN or ISDN connectivity (for *DSL the billing scheme is different).
But nonetheless, the ISPs know who you are: they know your phone number, and be sure they will log it, so they know for every minute who was connected to which pop using which ip-address at which given time. A simple lookup in the phonebook will reveal your full name and home-address
There's simply no way, you could be anonymous. (Unless the ISP "accidentally" deletes its logfiles)
I worked for an italian ISP, and we not only logged our users connections (mainly for billing disputes), but also our upstream connectivity to our backbone providers (response time, throughput, bandwith utilization,...) - even backbones go down once in a while, and when you pay thousands of dollars a day for your connectivity, you definately want to log that!
There exist GBytes of logs from webservers, access-routers, mailservers and connectivity-monitoring dating back to 1994. They don't take up much space as they compress very well (about 100:3). And searching data in those files is a matter of a few minutes (zgrep is our friend here).
And here, with 280M people... ...because America is so huge, we're faced with some interesting problems that Europe doesn't typically consider.
And you didn't consider, the European Union has about 367 million inhabitants.
Since 1995, the 15-member Union has become the world's first economic power.
:-)
Re:you may say im a dreamer but im not the only on
on
Still No Federal Spam Law
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
It's both. Actually it's valid for all of the European Union:
You are no allowed to collect personal data (including e-mail adresses) without prior written consent by the person itself
You are not allowed to sell personal data (e.g. CDs containig millions of adresses)
You are not allowed to send UCE to people you have no business relation with, or which do not have explicitly requested for it (opt-in)
And yes, it works. There are virtually no spammers in Europe. Well, there are some who try once in a while, but at least they get sued and put out of business real fast.
You may argue, you got a lot of spam from EU countries, but did you look at those originating IPs? It's 99% open relays/proxies, which unfortuntely cannot be eliminated by law, beeing the result of amins' ignorance/stupidity.
Spam usually originates in the USA and is targeted to US-citizens. Europeans have no way to benefit from all these penis-enlargements, cheap viagra, breast-increasements,...
There exist EU-directives for privacy protection (art 13 may 2002). Italy (other EU-countries should have similar laws enacted) has the law 675/96 (decreto di legge), for which the authority explicitly states, that the mere presence of an e-mail address on some webpage does NOT constitute permission to use it for sending unsolicited e-mails, whatever the purpose (even if not comercial!).
Spamming is illegal in Italy, and fined with up to 5000 Euro per incident!
The problem is USA: I cannot repeat it often enough: although about half of spam comes from open relays in Korea or China, most of it really originates in USA and is intended for USA citizens (which seem to be bankrupt, overweight an have a small penis). Other countries (like all of the EU!) already have laws which prohibit spamming - and we know they work.
Now, if only the USA would get through a similar law, the rest of the world would get rid of 90% of all spam!
BTW: I don't get hardly any spam from Europe (I get about 60 a day!), and if I get some, I am entitled to cash 250 Euros from the spammer... it works!
This law would protect the world from Aussie spam more than it would protect Australia from the worlds spam!
Very correct!
Now, if only the USA would get through a similar law, the rest of the world would get rid of 90% of all spam!
I cannot repeat it often enough: although about 50% of spam went through open relays in Korea or China, most of it really originated in USA and is intended for citizens of the USA. Other countries (like all of the EU!) already have laws which prohibit spamming.
Wake up USA: the rest of the world is waiting you to do your duty! Don't declare war on Iraq or Syria - who cares? Declare war to spam, and the world will be a better place.
There exist EU-directives for privacy protection (art 13 may 2002). Italy (all EU-countries should have similar laws enacted) has the law 675/96 (decreto di legge), for which the authority explicitly states, that the mere presence of an e-mail address on some webpage does NOT constitute permission to use it for sending unsolicited e-mails, whatever the purpose (even if not comercial!).
Spamming is illegal in Italy, and fined with up to 5000 Euro per incident!
If you think, it's a matter of culture, well, the USA apparently is culturally underdeveloped.
It's strange: anti-spam laws exist in other countries, and we know they work. So why are people still talking about spam-filters (too much collateral damage!) or changing the SMTP-protocol (impractical!)? Maybe, because they are too patriotic to admit, some country outside of USA already has the solution... Unfortunately as long as the USA doesn't have similar laws, which protect the individual, we Europeans will continue to get spam from the other side of the pond!
Europe has strong privacy laws, which prohibit unauthorised use of personal data (the e-mail address is considered a personal data).
In Europe a company is not allowed to send you commercial e-mail (uce, spam, call it as you like) whitout your prior written consent (basically they have to demonstrate, you opted in). It works:
Of the 300 spam-mails I get a week, only 1 or 2 are originating from Europe. And if I will, I can forward it to the "Garante", which will ask them to pay me 250 Euro for damages. It works even if I am in Italy and the spammer is from Germany! Hundreds of people have already collected, and spammers are usually put out of business quite fast.
Unfortunately 50% of spam is coming through open relays in Korea and China (in english from US companies as well as in unreadable korean). The other half is mostly from US-companies selling me products meant for US-people (US-people are usually overweight, have a short penis and are in financial trouble).
If we could close those open relays in Asia and get a decent anti-spam law in USA, we will get rid of 90% of spam - assured!
Whoever tells you, laws are not a solution, ignores the european reality.
If Microsoft is going to endeavor to get rid of unwanted spam from outsiders. I applaud them. It might not impress the anti-MS crowd, but I'm ok with that. I don't pay for the service, and they are trying to do something to make it better. In a fashion that costs them money
Wrong: it saves them money!
spam gets sent to the hotmail account: that costs bandwidth
spam gets stored on hotmail servers: that costs harddisk space
spam gets read by the user: that costs bandwidth
operating servers, routers etc. for the increased traffic due to spam costs electricity and manpower
The biggest costs running an ISP are electricity, bandwidth, manpower and hardware (usually in that order).
All in all: spam has a big impact on costs running a service like Hotmail, and Microsoft will in the end save a lot of money by fighting spam. To keep Hotmail free, Microsoft will have to reduce its operating costs - and that's what Microsoft is doing.
There are 3 types of people: those who can count, and those who cannot...
jokes aside:
8.000 of 1.900.000 hits is something like 0,42%, not 0,0004%
But you shouldn't really look at relative numers! In absolute numbers, you will be sending broken HTML to as many as 8.000 hits or 500 visitors (considered, 116000 unique IPs is equivalent to 16 hits/IP).
You really want to piss off those 500 visitors a day?!?
In Italy you are entitled to 250,- Euro from the spammer if the spammer is unable to show written evidence that you allowed him to use your personal data (the e-mail address is part of it) for sending you an e-mail.
As 750.000 people requested to be taken off the list, I can assume the following:
The damages to pay back to the complainants amount to 197.500.000,- Euros.
MonsterHut sent over 500 million messages, fraudulently claiming that they were opt-in, and ignored at least 750,000 requests by consumers to be taken off their lists...
That's roughly one complaint every 666 e-mails sent. Or 0,15% if you like.
1) The US contains a large quantity of pc's and internet connections (if not most internet connections anymore). A law in the US alone will reduce the flow of spam massively
Internet users are roughly distributed like this (according to NUA):
31% Europe
31% Asia/Pacific
30% North America
5% Latin America
1% Africa
1% Middle East
The EU already has strong privacy laws which makes spamming essentially illegal, and I hardly get any spam from Europe (I'm Italian!) - so it's already proven that anti-spam legislature IS effective.
If USA would adopt anti-spam laws too, this will eliminate a good half of the remaining spam I get. Spam originates mainly from USA and gets routed thruogh open relays in South Korea and China.
I can afford to put all of APNIC (=Asia) in a kill-file, as I have no business with people or companies from Asia.
So if the USA passes a national law against spam, this will reduce the spam in my inbox of a good 90%, save a lot of bandwith worldwide and make the Internet a better place!!! (I get about 30 spams a day)
I live in the Dolomites (that's part the Italian Alps), and I assure you, that each mountain peak (~ 10,000 ft high) is covered by a cell. If you go climbing or hiking, you are advised to carry your cell-phone with you - one never knows.
Finland is not densely populated, but they have excellent cell-coverage an broadband too.
3 years ago I was on holiday in Maitius (that's an island in the Indian Ocean, near South Africa), and there's fill coverage for GSM too.
The Philippines are maybe number one in sending SMS over GSM-phones.
It's really only the USA, which is behind in adoption of GSM-phones and maybe broadband Internet.
A russian company (eg. Elcomsoft) is allowed to sell its products to any country (even the USA). Which rules apply in such a business relation are regulated by CISG (Convention on the International Sale of Goods) which is one of the rules by UNCITRAL (United Nations Commission on International Trade Law). Most UN-Nations adhered to these rules (Great Britain is a notable exception).
Elcomsoft has simply to state in its contract with the buyer, that "Russian law applies".
Spamming in the EU is illegal not due to ad-hoc laws, but indirectly prohibited by application of the privacy law (italian dpr 675/96, 185/99 and EU directives 95/46, 97/66 e 97/6 are applicable as well as the new EU privacy directive of 13th May 2002).
At least in Italy fighting spam goes like this (in short):
if I get spam, I write the spammer asking him, who is responsible for data-treatment in his company, where he got my e-mail address from, what other data he has collected about me, and if he can show me the written consent I gave him to use my personal data (cc this via snail-mail also to the "Garante")
the spammer is usually unable to respond or does at least not satisfy my request to show evidence I gave permission to use my data (he has 5 days time to respond)
then I mail the "Garante" (ministry for protection of the privacy law), and he will further investigate
as the spammer is unable to show that he has legally aquired my data, he must transfer to me 250 Euros as compensation for damages. The Garante on its part will further investigate and take other punitive measures on his part
if the spammer does not transfer me 250 Euros, I may denounce him...
For most people this iter is too time consuming (it may take a few months, till the Garante accepts a complaint), but many have already collected more than once.
If you want to know more, there are several pages (in italian) here: http://www.maxkava.com/spam/ (there's even a forum where people tell about their success stories in collecting damages from the spammers)
Spamming is illegal throughout the European Union - I don't get hardly any spam from Europe (I get about 60 a day!), and if I get some, I am entitled to cash 250 Euros from the spammer... it works!
Unfortunately some third-world countries like Korea, China, Brasil and USA (!!!) still allow spam or are reluctant to fight spammers, so spam is still a big problem to the whole world.
Until those countries don't wake up and outlaw spam, the problem will persist
PS: I recently have put most of APNIC in my sendmail access-list - it eliminates 60% of the spam, but spam from USA is still an issue.
Alternating 21 consonants and 7 vovels (aeiou + jy) and beginning randomly with either a consonant or a vovel in upper- or lowercase, you get: 1.867.795.524 combinations, that's quite a lot!
You really want to discover one of those passwords by brute-force guessing it?
For comparison: using all alfanumeric characters (A-Z,a-z,0-9), we obtain 218.340.105.584.896 combinations - wow!
The only way to stop the spam-problem is by decent laws. But until the US-Government doesn't understand that it's role should be to protect consumers not the spammers pockets, the only way we can make spammers and ISPs understand we do not toplerate their behaviour is by blocking their IP-addresses.
In the European Union we have effective anti-spam directives, and many countries have already put them into law. If you get any spam coming from Italy, you may successfully report the spammer to the Italian "Garante", and get a compensation of 250 Euros for damages. Spam from Italian firms has nearly come to a halt! And italian people getting spammed by italian firms have successfully earned 250 Euro for *each* received spam.
Hopefully the US-Government too will become serious soon!
Nissan Motors should register nissan.biz, nissanmorots.com or nissan.co.jp (they are Japanese after all).
Wyman (the Rolling Stone member) should register wyman.info, wyman.name or billwyman.com...
Nobody needs seriously more than *one* domain-name. Registering serveral variations of the same name under several TLDs helps only fill the pockets of Verisign and some lawyers.
Slashdot Mirror
But nonetheless, the ISPs know who you are: they know your phone number, and be sure they will log it, so they know for every minute who was connected to which pop using which ip-address at which given time. A simple lookup in the phonebook will reveal your full name and home-address
There's simply no way, you could be anonymous. (Unless the ISP "accidentally" deletes its logfiles)
I worked for an italian ISP, and we not only logged our users connections (mainly for billing disputes), but also our upstream connectivity to our backbone providers (response time, throughput, bandwith utilization, ...) - even backbones go down once in a while, and when you pay thousands of dollars a day for your connectivity, you definately want to log that!
There exist GBytes of logs from webservers, access-routers, mailservers and connectivity-monitoring dating back to 1994. They don't take up much space as they compress very well (about 100:3). And searching data in those files is a matter of a few minutes (zgrep is our friend here).
And you didn't consider, the European Union has about 367 million inhabitants.
Since 1995, the 15-member Union has become the world's first economic power.
- You are no allowed to collect personal data (including e-mail adresses) without prior written consent by the person itself
- You are not allowed to sell personal data (e.g. CDs containig millions of adresses)
- You are not allowed to send UCE to people you have no business relation with, or which do not have explicitly requested for it (opt-in)
And yes, it works. There are virtually no spammers in Europe. Well, there are some who try once in a while, but at least they get sued and put out of business real fast.You may argue, you got a lot of spam from EU countries, but did you look at those originating IPs? It's 99% open relays/proxies, which unfortuntely cannot be eliminated by law, beeing the result of amins' ignorance/stupidity.
Spam usually originates in the USA and is targeted to US-citizens. Europeans have no way to benefit from all these penis-enlargements, cheap viagra, breast-increasements, ...
Although EU-countries have working laws that protect ones privacy, there are no laws which protect from lazy sysadmins.
Spamming is illegal in Italy, and fined with up to 5000 Euro per incident!
The problem is USA: I cannot repeat it often enough: although about half of spam comes from open relays in Korea or China, most of it really originates in USA and is intended for USA citizens (which seem to be bankrupt, overweight an have a small penis). Other countries (like all of the EU!) already have laws which prohibit spamming - and we know they work.
Now, if only the USA would get through a similar law, the rest of the world would get rid of 90% of all spam!
BTW: I don't get hardly any spam from Europe (I get about 60 a day!), and if I get some, I am entitled to cash 250 Euros from the spammer... it works!
ms
Very correct!
Now, if only the USA would get through a similar law, the rest of the world would get rid of 90% of all spam!
I cannot repeat it often enough: although about 50% of spam went through open relays in Korea or China, most of it really originated in USA and is intended for citizens of the USA. Other countries (like all of the EU!) already have laws which prohibit spamming.
Wake up USA: the rest of the world is waiting you to do your duty! Don't declare war on Iraq or Syria - who cares? Declare war to spam, and the world will be a better place.
- Yes, virtually all of spam originates in USA
- one out of two gets routed via some open relay in Asia, to hide the real origin
- and quite all is targeted towards US-citizens (which seem to be bankrupt, overweight an have a small penis)
MyThere exist EU-directives for privacy protection (art 13 may 2002). Italy (all EU-countries should have similar laws enacted) has the law 675/96 (decreto di legge), for which the authority explicitly states, that the mere presence of an e-mail address on some webpage does NOT constitute permission to use it for sending unsolicited e-mails, whatever the purpose (even if not comercial!).
Spamming is illegal in Italy, and fined with up to 5000 Euro per incident!
If you think, it's a matter of culture, well, the USA apparently is culturally underdeveloped.
It's strange: anti-spam laws exist in other countries, and we know they work. So why are people still talking about spam-filters (too much collateral damage!) or changing the SMTP-protocol (impractical!)? Maybe, because they are too patriotic to admit, some country outside of USA already has the solution... Unfortunately as long as the USA doesn't have similar laws, which protect the individual, we Europeans will continue to get spam from the other side of the pond!
ms
In Europe a company is not allowed to send you commercial e-mail (uce, spam, call it as you like) whitout your prior written consent (basically they have to demonstrate, you opted in). It works:
Of the 300 spam-mails I get a week, only 1 or 2 are originating from Europe. And if I will, I can forward it to the "Garante", which will ask them to pay me 250 Euro for damages. It works even if I am in Italy and the spammer is from Germany! Hundreds of people have already collected, and spammers are usually put out of business quite fast.
Unfortunately 50% of spam is coming through open relays in Korea and China (in english from US companies as well as in unreadable korean). The other half is mostly from US-companies selling me products meant for US-people (US-people are usually overweight, have a short penis and are in financial trouble).
If we could close those open relays in Asia and get a decent anti-spam law in USA, we will get rid of 90% of spam - assured!
Whoever tells you, laws are not a solution, ignores the european reality.
My 2c
ms
Wrong: it saves them money!
- spam gets sent to the hotmail account: that costs bandwidth
- spam gets stored on hotmail servers: that costs harddisk space
- spam gets read by the user: that costs bandwidth
- operating servers, routers etc. for the increased traffic due to spam costs electricity and manpower
The biggest costs running an ISP are electricity, bandwidth, manpower and hardware (usually in that order).All in all: spam has a big impact on costs running a service like Hotmail, and Microsoft will in the end save a lot of money by fighting spam. To keep Hotmail free, Microsoft will have to reduce its operating costs - and that's what Microsoft is doing.
My 2c
ms
First there was Unix... Now there's AIX, AU/X, BSD, BSDI, Dynix, EP/IX, FTX, Hurricane, HP-UX, Irix, Linux, Mach, Minix, NextStep, Open Desktop, OSF/1, OSX, PC/IX, Plan 9, Polyx, Posix, QNX, Risc/OS, Risc/ix, SCO Unix, Sinix, Solaris, Sprite, SunOS, SVRx, Topaz, Tunis, Ultrix, Unicos, V, v10, Xenix, ..."
jokes aside:
8.000 of 1.900.000 hits is something like 0,42%, not 0,0004%
But you shouldn't really look at relative numers! In absolute numbers, you will be sending broken HTML to as many as 8.000 hits or 500 visitors (considered, 116000 unique IPs is equivalent to 16 hits/IP).
You really want to piss off those 500 visitors a day?!?
As 750.000 people requested to be taken off the list, I can assume the following:
The damages to pay back to the complainants amount to 197.500.000,- Euros.
I thank you for the money!
:-)
That's roughly one complaint every 666 e-mails sent. Or 0,15% if you like.
- 31% Europe
- 31% Asia/Pacific
- 30% North America
- 5% Latin America
- 1% Africa
- 1% Middle East
The EU already has strong privacy laws which makes spamming essentially illegal, and I hardly get any spam from Europe (I'm Italian!) - so it's already proven that anti-spam legislature IS effective.If USA would adopt anti-spam laws too, this will eliminate a good half of the remaining spam I get. Spam originates mainly from USA and gets routed thruogh open relays in South Korea and China.
I can afford to put all of APNIC (=Asia) in a kill-file, as I have no business with people or companies from Asia.
So if the USA passes a national law against spam, this will reduce the spam in my inbox of a good 90%, save a lot of bandwith worldwide and make the Internet a better place!!! (I get about 30 spams a day)
My 2c
ms
Sorry, that should read "Mauritius", not "Maitius" - I hit the submit-button instead of preview.
Finland is not densely populated, but they have excellent cell-coverage an broadband too.
3 years ago I was on holiday in Maitius (that's an island in the Indian Ocean, near South Africa), and there's fill coverage for GSM too.
The Philippines are maybe number one in sending SMS over GSM-phones.
It's really only the USA, which is behind in adoption of GSM-phones and maybe broadband Internet.
ms
A russian company (eg. Elcomsoft) is allowed to sell its products to any country (even the USA). Which rules apply in such a business relation are regulated by CISG (Convention on the International Sale of Goods) which is one of the rules by UNCITRAL (United Nations Commission on International Trade Law). Most UN-Nations adhered to these rules (Great Britain is a notable exception).
Elcomsoft has simply to state in its contract with the buyer, that "Russian law applies".
ms
At least in Italy fighting spam goes like this (in short):
- if I get spam, I write the spammer asking him, who is responsible for data-treatment in his company, where he got my e-mail address from, what other data he has collected about me, and if he can show me the written consent I gave him to use my personal data (cc this via snail-mail also to the "Garante")
- the spammer is usually unable to respond or does at least not satisfy my request to show evidence I gave permission to use my data (he has 5 days time to respond)
- then I mail the "Garante" (ministry for protection of the privacy law), and he will further investigate
- as the spammer is unable to show that he has legally aquired my data, he must transfer to me 250 Euros as compensation for damages. The Garante on its part will further investigate and take other punitive measures on his part
- if the spammer does not transfer me 250 Euros, I may denounce him...
For most people this iter is too time consuming (it may take a few months, till the Garante accepts a complaint), but many have already collected more than once.If you want to know more, there are several pages (in italian) here: http://www.maxkava.com/spam/ (there's even a forum where people tell about their success stories in collecting damages from the spammers)
ms
Spamming is illegal throughout the European Union - I don't get hardly any spam from Europe (I get about 60 a day!), and if I get some, I am entitled to cash 250 Euros from the spammer... it works!
Unfortunately some third-world countries like Korea, China, Brasil and USA (!!!) still allow spam or are reluctant to fight spammers, so spam is still a big problem to the whole world.
Until those countries don't wake up and outlaw spam, the problem will persist
PS: I recently have put most of APNIC in my sendmail access-list - it eliminates 60% of the spam, but spam from USA is still an issue.
Greetings,
ms --
You really want to discover one of those passwords by brute-force guessing it?
For comparison: using all alfanumeric characters (A-Z,a-z,0-9), we obtain 218.340.105.584.896 combinations - wow!
ms
--
It's nice to see Micro$oft relying on OpenSource.
(If you dont want to believe me, have a look at Netcraft)
ms
No!
The only way to stop the spam-problem is by decent laws. But until the US-Government doesn't understand that it's role should be to protect consumers not the spammers pockets, the only way we can make spammers and ISPs understand we do not toplerate their behaviour is by blocking their IP-addresses.
In the European Union we have effective anti-spam directives, and many countries have already put them into law. If you get any spam coming from Italy, you may successfully report the spammer to the Italian "Garante", and get a compensation of 250 Euros for damages. Spam from Italian firms has nearly come to a halt! And italian people getting spammed by italian firms have successfully earned 250 Euro for *each* received spam.
Hopefully the US-Government too will become serious soon!
ms
Thats what the new TLDs were meant for:
Nissan Motors should register nissan.biz, nissanmorots.com or nissan.co.jp (they are Japanese after all).
Wyman (the Rolling Stone member) should register wyman.info, wyman.name or billwyman.com...
Nobody needs seriously more than *one* domain-name. Registering serveral variations of the same name under several TLDs helps only fill the pockets of Verisign and some lawyers.
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