Personally, I don't think Congress should be making an anti-spyware bill. It's stupid, and a waste of time and money. What they SHOULD be doing is coming up with a bill that forces companies to be more straightforward with their EULAs. Certain things should have to be hilited, and restated in non-legal terminology.
What congress should be doing is setting statutory civil penalties, like $5000 or actual damages whichever is more, for distributing software that deliberately or even negligently damages your computer. So you can sue them for your damages.
In the recent news 180solutions is complaining about CA and their PestPatrol product which removed the 180solutions spyware product, and Gator threatens to sue CA over removal of their spyware. See http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2005/040405-spyware.h tml The above article is well worth a read.
I feel the government should encourage broadband as much as possible, but I wouldn't want to invest in providing a commercial service for customers and have the government come in and with MY TAX MONEY compete with me.
It's just not right.
That said, municipal WIFI districts are not too bad an idea IMHO.
About Godaddy, you call them on the phone at 1 AM their time, they answer. They are helpful and immediately deal with whatever I called about.
Which is a much better service level than the other four registrars I have used, and they are the lowest price too. Their web interface works great too.
About that phone call thing: I often call a company I am considering doing business with, to see if I can get through. It's an important check on them before I jump in. And I often do it off hours as well. Just to test.
The ability to get someone on the phone can become especially important in the event of problems, like the OP wrote about.
And no, I don't have anything to do with Godaddy. I just like them better than the others I have used.
This article in Scientific American says
"The suffocating effect of spam sometimes seems likely to undermine, if not wreck, Internet communications as we have come to know them." Which seems to mean spam is getting to be MORE of a problem than in the past.
But yesterday in/. there was another article about how spam was LESS of a problem for people than in the past.
So which is it? Personally I have MUCH MORE spam than I had a couple of years ago. It is handled marginally better but THERE IS LOTS MORE.
For me Spam is much more of a problem than at any time in the past. And yeah, it does and will wreck internet communications as we have come to know them.
My ISP is Integra and they are unable to do anything because the blacklists contain not just whole ISP's, but MULTIPLE ISP's in one subnet! This assinine idea of "move" doesn't work, because these subnets can include entire geographical areas.
There IS something they can do. They can call their provider and demand the spamming stop. If they don't have the balls to do that they deserve to be blacklisted. We all need to be proactive here!
This isn't whining...I'M FUKKIN PISSED OFF. There must be a process for the innocent and it's not collateral damage anymore.
You don't like the obvious process that exists, call your provider and demand they stop the spamming. If the spammer is a customer on an adjacent block, maybe from another ISP on the same upstream they should call the upstream. DEMAND they stop the spamming, since it is damaging their legit customers.
Tell them you will sue them for your damages they have caused by not getting rid of their spammers. That is the cause of the blacklisting. It's silly to blame it on the blacklist, while the spamming continues.
Be a part of the solution. You can probably solve all your problems in an hour or so on the phone. DO IT. You're a legit customer. They have to listen to you.
Test it.
Send an email to your own ISP.
Abuse@your isp's domain.
Say something like
"I heard you guys might not be reading your abuse mail. Is that true?"
See if they respond. LOTS bounce! The OP was possibly on peer1 and in this thread someone said they were running spamassassin on their abuse mailbox. That'll keep the complaints down, huh?
If they don't respond they probably have similar policies towards complaints about spam from their network.
Sad as it is there are a very large percentage of ISPs that don't read their abuse mail.
Luckily it's getting better.
So as long as your ISP is a large regional one or the only one that serves your community they can host spammers? They don't have a responsibility to the rest of the internet to handle their spam complaints? I don't think so.
Understand this: NO ISP gets blocks listed in MAPS or anywhere else without ignoring complaints about spam.
I don't know anyone at MAPS anymore, but they used to call on the phone and talk to the ISP before they listed them. Tried hard to resolve the problem.
What should they do? Say pretty please? Send certified mail? Nope.
Here how it goes (I would guess, though I don't know firsthand how MAPS works nowadays): Spam arrives. Someone complains to the ISP. Sends a copy of the spam with a complaint. The ISP doesn't know who it is that is complaining typically, it is just an email. But secretly the email is from a SPEWS maintainer or a MAPS person.
The spamming continues. The spam source IP (maybe just one number) is listed.
Another complaint is sent. More spam. a/24 is listed. Another complaint is sent.
Spamming continues.Remember, most of the ISPs we are talking about do not read their abuse mail and thus don't know about the complaints. A/22 is listed.
The legitimate customers of the ISP (if any) start noticing problems. They call on the phone, the support droid has no idea. Remember, nobody is reading the abuse@isp.com email. YET.
Spamming contunues. a/19 is listed.
Now there is some noise. Someone posts to slashdot. We discuss the problem, people complain about the blacklists where the actual problem is with their OWN ISP. People yell at the ISP. They get a clue.
The ISP starts reading and acting on their abuse mail. Spammers are kicked off. Trojaned machines are disconnected and cleaned.
See, the system works. We just gotta get past this rough part here.
If you don't want you mail filtered tell your ISP not to filter it. If you brother wants his mail unfiltered he should tell his ISP not to filter it.
Acting like it's MAPS fault you had email connectivity problems is ridiculous. Your and your brother's problem is with YOUR ISPs. Complain to them. Why should it be anyone else's problem?
The reason your cable company is in MAPS (and that is likely not the only place it's listed) is the totally lax way most cable ISPs have had towards spam spewing trojaned machines on their networks.
Why should the rest of the internet have to put up with machines on your network sending 2 million spam a day through proxys? How about 200 million a day? More! They didn't read their abuse mail, didn't pay attention to the problem and it got worse and worse.
Comcast and RR, both big cable modem providers, 525 million emails in the last 24 hours. Comcast is #1, 373 million emails today! They don't have anywhere near enough customers to account for that. How many are spam through infected machines? LOTS. So that's the reason. Call your cable ISP and make them scan their network for those trojans and shut them down. Be a part of the solution, not a part of the problem
It's all about actually stopping spamming. Not about stopping spam. Blocking spam is not too hard. Actually making spammers stop spamming is the lofty goal MAPS apparently is trying for.
GOOD FOR MAPS! Being a part of the solution. If they were just blocking spam they would be a part of the problem.
Think about it: 5 or 6 years ago there was much less spam than there is today. Why is that? It's partially because of spam blocking!
Now the spammers who used to have to send 75,000 messages to get one order for penis enlargement pills not have to send 2,000,000 to get one order. Unfortunately they have been able to do it.
Blocking of spam is the cause of so much spam. If we would all concentrate on stopping the spamming there could be real progress.
Using a spam friendly ISP and whining because your legit mail was blocked by some is counterproductive. What you should be doing is screaming bloody murder at your ISP about you being blocked because of THEM TAKING MONEY FROM SPAMMERS. If they really want YOUR business they will get rid of the spammers and the problem is solved.
Gee, they can't write a script to include only the offenders? I thought they were 'uber'?
They don't want to. That will not stop the spamming. It will only stop the spam. MAPS is apparently interested in using their influence to actually stop the spamming.
"FWIW that is how the spews.org blacklist works."
That's just it...it does NOT work either. All these groups attitudes have done is move the battle in that they're the bad guy now. People would rather get and filter the span than miss out on a legitimate email that contains important information.
Those people should not use such a blacklist then. No problem.
FWIW, I do not use any blacklists, I read all my mail.
It's not the spammers who are really getting hurt here. The collateral damage caused by MAPS' brain-dead sledgehammer approach is not justified.
You mentioned an operation similar to MAPS that could charge a fee. Who would pay this?
MAPS is a commercial operation. Their customers pay them for their list of spamming and adjacent IPs, some of them probably use it to block mail.
MAPS is responsible only to their paying customers. Not to spammers, or some guy in a colo center somewhere.
If MAPS' customers found too much legit mail was being blocked they would stop using it. MAPS would lose money.
Someone must find MAPS effective since the OP had email trouble when his colo was listed.
There are free services like MAPS. Some list only sources of spam and have few or no false positives. Some try to put pressure on legit ISPs to stop the spamming by listing adjacent blocks. MAPS must be in the second group nowadays.
I find it interesting to read about all the bad shit in cyberspace....spam, malware, viruses, etc.
Only to wonder how many of the scumbags, that code/engineer all this shit, have slashdot IDs.
RBLs don't block mail. Their users do. Nobody has to use it. They use it because it keeps the spam away.
MAPS is apparently not a list of spam sources, it is a list of places that sent spam and their associated blocks. They do that so the legitimate customers will call their ISP and demand they stop the adjacent spammers.
FWIW that is how the spews.org blacklist works. First lists only spam sources. Then if the spamming continues increases the pressure on the ISP to dump their spammers by causing pain to the legitimate customers of that ISP (if any). Course some ISPs have no legitimate customers......
Which explains perfectly why the OP couldn't get removed, only his ISP could. Oops.
I can't imagine a valid reason to password protect a hard drive, especially at drive level-though most support that now.
There are supposedly default passwords for many PC Bioses. I haven't tested them but if the ones I have saved are valid bios pw is not good security in any case.
Postscript controllers like used on the early Apple Laserwriter printers had such a password capability at the controller level. It amazes me that there was never any mischief with those in all these years, at least that I have heard of. Those things were $5900 when they came out years ago!
Re:I'm in the book
on
Spam Kings
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
It's not much of a book either.
I skimmed most of it in about a half hour at Borders. Save your money.
Admittedly I know most of what he wrote about so that likely helped me to skim it.
I know many of the people interviewed as well, and some of them at least are irritated with what McWilliams said they said.
Thankfully I am not in the book. At least I wasn't in the index. Heh.
TIVO is a paid service, they charge plenty for it after making you buy their hardware (though admittedly it is unlikely they make money on the hardware).
If you are paying for a service I think you have an expectation they are not going to be selling your eyeballs to advertisers to make money.
I would charge $3000 a month to view such ads from TIVO. Since they haven't paid I don't have any TIVO. I have something lots better IMHO.
Anti-Spam services that STOP spam?!? You don't say? Now there's a novel idea...
No, not to stop spam. To stop spammers. There is an important difference.
If this results in 800,000 of the 1,000,000 reported trojan infected PCs being fixed or taken offline that will be a step in the right direction.
I'm for anything that stops spammers. I am not so interested in stopping spam.
5. Don't all those challenges take up unnecessary bandwidth?
A little bit, but it takes the server much less time to send out a small challenge than it does for the user to look at it in the spam folder, no matter how fast he presses the delete key. Legitimate senders know immediately that a user hasn't received their email, and they can click a button to have it delivered. Meanwhile, the emails sit in the queue for only an hour if they can't be delivered.
The problem with this scheme is the "click a button" aspect. This would require HTML mail. The spam problem would be 80% solved if HTML mail were not used at all.
1. Spammers wouldn't be able to track mail opening with tagged image links.
2. Spammers wouldn't be able to propagate their custom programmed spamming trojans and viruses nearly as effectively.
3. HTML mail is not needed. When was the last time you got email with a remote loaded picture in it (not attached) that actually interested you? Almost never in my case.
Sooo.. its ok to commit a crime and 'put down' someone that doesn't even know what is going on?
It's not a crime, IBM proposes sending back only spam sent from that machine. They are comfortable with the liability aspects. I am too. In order to get attention. The problem has been ignored too long.
That's about like shooting out the tires of someone that didn't know the speed limit and went over 5MPH.. "well they had to be stopped"
No, it's more like shooting bank robbers in the head while they are trying to get away after having shot multiple victims in the bank. They ARE guilty of spewing spam, even if they didn't know it.
How about telling their ISP instead.. so they can notify the user.
Heh. You have no idea. We have been telling the ISPs for years. Most have no response, don't read their abuse mail, which is why they get listed in SBL and SPEWS, and are then whining about their mail being blocked.
They had every chance to solve the problem but the vast majority do nothing about it and the spam continues.
It is also not reasonable to require that the average Joe understands their pc enough to not get infected.. no more then it would be reasonable for you to understand heart surgery before you went to the doctor for the flu.. Or how to rebuild your transmission when you go in for an oil change. Skills like that take training.
No, but it is reasonable that he prevent his computer from causing damage to others BEFORE he shares the internet with US. Just like it is reasonable that he know how to drive without crashing into others, BEFORE he shares the roads with US. Or his ISP has to manage the problem. Or they can both pay the price. Blackholed, DOSsed by the IBM antispam system. Whatever. Time to take responsibility.
If this causes pain for some who are a part of the problem and gets their attention, it's good.
Heh. What IBM will do for ISPs with port 25 blocking and spewing zombies will likely be to send it all to the ISPs server, or to some place where the load will be noticed.
This is an incentive for the isp to shut down the zombies. I have no problem at all with that.
If it gets some attention and action it will be a beautiful day.
The important issue here is the defendant doesn't live in New Hampshire, where the plaintiff is. The plaintiff sued the defendant in a state the defendant has no ties whatsoever to.
I think plaintiffs have to file their lawsuits against you where the defendant is, or where the tort took place. And I doubt where the complaining email was received would make a difference. At least I hope not. What if the ISP were a national in Florida?
That is what they tried to get dismissed and failed.
AFAIK the defendent did engage an attorney in New Hampshire and did respond to the lawsuit. Perhaps he created the right to sue him in New Hampshire when he hired an attorney there?
IANAL, but I thought what you would do in a case like this is let them do the case, get a default judgment, and get it vacated with a simple form since you have no ties whatsoever to the jurisdiction.
It might be messy but I don't think you are required to respond to a case that is not filed against you where YOU ARE. I doubt attorneys like this strategy, most of the ones I have known were eager to litigate the merits of the case at your expense.
Perhaps some of the attorneys reading would like to comment on this.
Slashdot Mirror
Personally, I don't think Congress should be making an anti-spyware bill. It's stupid, and a waste of time and money. What they SHOULD be doing is coming up with a bill that forces companies to be more straightforward with their EULAs. Certain things should have to be hilited, and restated in non-legal terminology.
d -screensaver/
h tml
What congress should be doing is setting statutory civil penalties, like $5000 or actual damages whichever is more, for distributing software that deliberately or even negligently damages your computer. So you can sue them for your damages.
Damages are trebled if there is deception involved, like a multi page EULA such as used by Gator (Claria) & 180Solutions and described at http://www.benedelman.org/spyware/installations/3
In the recent news 180solutions is complaining about CA and their PestPatrol product which removed the 180solutions spyware product, and Gator threatens to sue CA over removal of their spyware.
See http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2005/040405-spyware.
The above article is well worth a read.
I feel the government should encourage broadband as much as possible, but I wouldn't want to invest in providing a commercial service for customers and have the government come in and with MY TAX MONEY compete with me.
It's just not right.
That said, municipal WIFI districts are not too bad an idea IMHO.
About Godaddy, you call them on the phone at 1 AM their time, they answer. They are helpful and immediately deal with whatever I called about.
Which is a much better service level than the other four registrars I have used, and they are the lowest price too.
Their web interface works great too.
About that phone call thing: I often call a company I am considering doing business with, to see if I can get through. It's an important check on them before I jump in. And I often do it off hours as well. Just to test.
The ability to get someone on the phone can become especially important in the event of problems, like the OP wrote about.
And no, I don't have anything to do with Godaddy. I just like them better than the others I have used.
This article in Scientific American says /. there was another article about how spam was LESS of a problem for people than in the past.
5 7208&tid=111
"The suffocating effect of spam sometimes seems likely to undermine, if not wreck, Internet communications as we have come to know them."
Which seems to mean spam is getting to be MORE of a problem than in the past.
But yesterday in
People are More Accepting of Spam
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/11/01
So which is it?
Personally I have MUCH MORE spam than I had a couple of years ago.
It is handled marginally better but THERE IS LOTS MORE.
For me Spam is much more of a problem than at any time in the past.
And yeah, it does and will wreck internet communications as we have come to know them.
My ISP is Integra and they are unable to do anything because the blacklists contain not just whole ISP's, but MULTIPLE ISP's in one subnet! This assinine idea of "move" doesn't work, because these subnets can include entire geographical areas.
There IS something they can do. They can call their provider and demand the spamming stop. If they don't have the balls to do that they deserve to be blacklisted. We all need to be proactive here!
This isn't whining...I'M FUKKIN PISSED OFF. There must be a process for the innocent and it's not collateral damage anymore.
You don't like the obvious process that exists, call your provider and demand they stop the spamming. If the spammer is a customer on an adjacent block, maybe from another ISP on the same upstream they should call the upstream. DEMAND they stop the spamming, since it is damaging their legit customers.
Tell them you will sue them for your damages they have caused by not getting rid of their spammers. That is the cause of the blacklisting. It's silly to blame it on the blacklist, while the spamming continues.
Be a part of the solution. You can probably solve all your problems in an hour or so on the phone. DO IT. You're a legit customer. They have to listen to you.
Test it. Send an email to your own ISP.
Abuse@your isp's domain.
Say something like
"I heard you guys might not be reading your abuse mail. Is that true?"
See if they respond. LOTS bounce! The OP was possibly on peer1 and in this thread someone said they were running spamassassin on their abuse mailbox. That'll keep the complaints down, huh?
If they don't respond they probably have similar policies towards complaints about spam from their network.
Sad as it is there are a very large percentage of ISPs that don't read their abuse mail.
Luckily it's getting better.
So as long as your ISP is a large regional one or the only one that serves your community they can host spammers? They don't have a responsibility to the rest of the internet to handle their spam complaints? I don't think so.
/24 is listed. /22 is listed. /19 is listed.
Understand this: NO ISP gets blocks listed in MAPS or anywhere else without ignoring complaints about spam.
I don't know anyone at MAPS anymore, but they used to call on the phone and talk to the ISP before they listed them. Tried hard to resolve the problem.
What should they do? Say pretty please? Send certified mail? Nope.
Here how it goes (I would guess, though I don't know firsthand how MAPS works nowadays):
Spam arrives. Someone complains to the ISP. Sends a copy of the spam with a complaint. The ISP doesn't know who it is that is complaining typically, it is just an email. But secretly the email is from a SPEWS maintainer or a MAPS person.
The spamming continues. The spam source IP (maybe just one number) is listed.
Another complaint is sent.
More spam.
a
Another complaint is sent.
Spamming continues. Remember, most of the ISPs we are talking about do not read their abuse mail and thus don't know about the complaints.
A
The legitimate customers of the ISP (if any) start noticing problems.
They call on the phone, the support droid has no idea. Remember, nobody is reading the abuse@isp.com email. YET.
Spamming contunues. a
Now there is some noise. Someone posts to slashdot. We discuss the problem, people complain about the blacklists where the actual problem is with their OWN ISP. People yell at the ISP. They get a clue.
The ISP starts reading and acting on their abuse mail. Spammers are kicked off. Trojaned machines are disconnected and cleaned.
See, the system works. We just gotta get past this rough part here.
I do get it. And I am not a MAPS supporter.
If you don't want you mail filtered tell your ISP not to filter it. If you brother wants his mail unfiltered he should tell his ISP not to filter it. Acting like it's MAPS fault you had email connectivity problems is ridiculous. Your and your brother's problem is with YOUR ISPs. Complain to them. Why should it be anyone else's problem?
The reason your cable company is in MAPS (and that is likely not the only place it's listed) is the totally lax way most cable ISPs have had towards spam spewing trojaned machines on their networks.
Why should the rest of the internet have to put up with machines on your network sending 2 million spam a day through proxys? How about 200 million a day? More! They didn't read their abuse mail, didn't pay attention to the problem and it got worse and worse.
Take a look here:
http://www.senderbase.org/
Comcast and RR, both big cable modem providers, 525 million emails in the last 24 hours. Comcast is #1, 373 million emails today! They don't have anywhere near enough customers to account for that. How many are spam through infected machines? LOTS.
So that's the reason. Call your cable ISP and make them scan their network for those trojans and shut them down.
Be a part of the solution, not a part of the problem
It's all about actually stopping spamming. Not about stopping spam. Blocking spam is not too hard. Actually making spammers stop spamming is the lofty goal MAPS apparently is trying for.
GOOD FOR MAPS! Being a part of the solution. If they were just blocking spam they would be a part of the problem.
Think about it: 5 or 6 years ago there was much less spam than there is today. Why is that? It's partially because of spam blocking!
Now the spammers who used to have to send 75,000 messages to get one order for penis enlargement pills not have to send 2,000,000 to get one order. Unfortunately they have been able to do it.
Blocking of spam is the cause of so much spam. If we would all concentrate on stopping the spamming there could be real progress.
Using a spam friendly ISP and whining because your legit mail was blocked by some is counterproductive. What you should be doing is screaming bloody murder at your ISP about you being blocked because of THEM TAKING MONEY FROM SPAMMERS.
If they really want YOUR business they will get rid of the spammers and the problem is solved.
Gee, they can't write a script to include only the offenders? I thought they were 'uber'?
They don't want to. That will not stop the spamming. It will only stop the spam. MAPS is apparently interested in using their influence to actually stop the spamming.
"FWIW that is how the spews.org blacklist works."
That's just it...it does NOT work either. All these groups attitudes have done is move the battle in that they're the bad guy now. People would rather get and filter the span than miss out on a legitimate email that contains important information.
Those people should not use such a blacklist then. No problem.
FWIW, I do not use any blacklists, I read all my mail.
It's not the spammers who are really getting hurt here. The collateral damage caused by MAPS' brain-dead sledgehammer approach is not justified.
You mentioned an operation similar to MAPS that could charge a fee. Who would pay this?
MAPS is a commercial operation. Their customers pay them for their list of spamming and adjacent IPs, some of them probably use it to block mail.
MAPS is responsible only to their paying customers. Not to spammers, or some guy in a colo center somewhere.
If MAPS' customers found too much legit mail was being blocked they would stop using it. MAPS would lose money.
Someone must find MAPS effective since the OP had email trouble when his colo was listed.
There are free services like MAPS. Some list only sources of spam and have few or no false positives. Some try to put pressure on legit ISPs to stop the spamming by listing adjacent blocks. MAPS must be in the second group nowadays.
I find it interesting to read about all the bad shit in cyberspace....spam, malware, viruses, etc. Only to wonder how many of the scumbags, that code/engineer all this shit, have slashdot IDs.
I'd say all of them.
Brad Templeton? Is that you? Heh.
RBLs don't block mail. Their users do. Nobody has to use it. They use it because it keeps the spam away.
MAPS is apparently not a list of spam sources, it is a list of places that sent spam and their associated blocks. They do that so the legitimate customers will call their ISP and demand they stop the adjacent spammers.
FWIW that is how the spews.org blacklist works. First lists only spam sources. Then if the spamming continues increases the pressure on the ISP to dump their spammers by causing pain to the legitimate customers of that ISP (if any). Course some ISPs have no legitimate customers......
Which explains perfectly why the OP couldn't get removed, only his ISP could. Oops.
I can't imagine a valid reason to password protect a hard drive, especially at drive level-though most support that now.
There are supposedly default passwords for many PC Bioses. I haven't tested them but if the ones I have saved are valid bios pw is not good security in any case.
Postscript controllers like used on the early Apple Laserwriter printers had such a password capability at the controller level. It amazes me that there was never any mischief with those in all these years, at least that I have heard of.
Those things were $5900 when they came out years ago!
I want a Mr. Fusion Home Energy Reactor!
It's not much of a book either.
I skimmed most of it in about a half hour at Borders. Save your money.
Admittedly I know most of what he wrote about so that likely helped me to skim it.
I know many of the people interviewed as well, and some of them at least are irritated with what McWilliams said they said.
Thankfully I am not in the book. At least I wasn't in the index. Heh.
As to rebates that are not redeemed, here is a table about that.
w ww.frontlinenow.com/newsletter/redemptionrates.htm l
http://web.archive.org/web/20010822172811/http://
The table doesn't go as high as a $100 rebate on a $200 item like TIVO, but it IS interesting.
BTW, the marketing term is "slippage". Rebates not paid, but someone bought the product to get it.
That's just not the point at all.
TIVO is a paid service, they charge plenty for it after making you buy their hardware (though admittedly it is unlikely they make money on the hardware).
If you are paying for a service I think you have an expectation they are not going to be selling your eyeballs to advertisers to make money.
I would charge $3000 a month to view such ads from TIVO. Since they haven't paid I don't have any TIVO. I have something lots better IMHO.
The larger solution is for corporations to install a mail server that strips html (or better, bounces the mail) before anyone recieves it.
Virus problems are largely solved!
Spam problem too.
IBM Unveils Anti-Spam Services to Stop Spammers
Anti-Spam services that STOP spam?!? You don't say? Now there's a novel idea...
No, not to stop spam. To stop spammers. There is an important difference.
If this results in 800,000 of the 1,000,000 reported trojan infected PCs being fixed or taken offline that will be a step in the right direction.
I'm for anything that stops spammers. I am not so interested in stopping spam.
5. Don't all those challenges take up unnecessary bandwidth? A little bit, but it takes the server much less time to send out a small challenge than it does for the user to look at it in the spam folder, no matter how fast he presses the delete key. Legitimate senders know immediately that a user hasn't received their email, and they can click a button to have it delivered. Meanwhile, the emails sit in the queue for only an hour if they can't be delivered.
The problem with this scheme is the "click a button" aspect. This would require HTML mail.
The spam problem would be 80% solved if HTML mail were not used at all.
1. Spammers wouldn't be able to track mail opening with tagged image links.
2. Spammers wouldn't be able to propagate their custom programmed spamming trojans and viruses nearly as effectively.
3. HTML mail is not needed. When was the last time you got email with a remote loaded picture in it (not attached) that actually interested you? Almost never in my case.
Hey! I got it, the FUSSP! Just ban HTML mail!
Sooo.. its ok to commit a crime and 'put down' someone that doesn't even know what is going on? It's not a crime, IBM proposes sending back only spam sent from that machine. They are comfortable with the liability aspects. I am too.
In order to get attention. The problem has been ignored too long.
That's about like shooting out the tires of someone that didn't know the speed limit and went over 5MPH.. "well they had to be stopped"
No, it's more like shooting bank robbers in the head while they are trying to get away after having shot multiple victims in the bank. They ARE guilty of spewing spam, even if they didn't know it.
How about telling their ISP instead.. so they can notify the user.
Heh. You have no idea. We have been telling the ISPs for years. Most have no response, don't read their abuse mail, which is why they get listed in SBL and SPEWS, and are then whining about their mail being blocked.
They had every chance to solve the problem but the vast majority do nothing about it and the spam continues.
It is also not reasonable to require that the average Joe understands their pc enough to not get infected.. no more then it would be reasonable for you to understand heart surgery before you went to the doctor for the flu.. Or how to rebuild your transmission when you go in for an oil change. Skills like that take training.
No, but it is reasonable that he prevent his computer from causing damage to others BEFORE he shares the internet with US.
Just like it is reasonable that he know how to drive without crashing into others, BEFORE he shares the roads with US.
Or his ISP has to manage the problem. Or they can both pay the price.
Blackholed, DOSsed by the IBM antispam system. Whatever.
Time to take responsibility.
If this causes pain for some who are a part of the problem and gets their attention, it's good.
Heh. What IBM will do for ISPs with port 25 blocking and spewing zombies will likely be to send it all to the ISPs server, or to some place where the load will be noticed.
This is an incentive for the isp to shut down the zombies. I have no problem at all with that.
If it gets some attention and action it will be a beautiful day.
The important issue here is the defendant doesn't live in New Hampshire, where the plaintiff is. The plaintiff sued the defendant in a state the defendant has no ties whatsoever to.
I think plaintiffs have to file their lawsuits against you where the defendant is, or where the tort took place. And I doubt where the complaining email was received would make a difference. At least I hope not. What if the ISP were a national in Florida?
That is what they tried to get dismissed and failed.
AFAIK the defendent did engage an attorney in New Hampshire and did respond to the lawsuit.
Perhaps he created the right to sue him in New Hampshire when he hired an attorney there?
IANAL, but I thought what you would do in a case like this is let them do the case, get a default judgment, and get it vacated with a simple form since you have no ties whatsoever to the jurisdiction.
It might be messy but I don't think you are required to respond to a case that is not filed against you where YOU ARE. I doubt attorneys like this strategy, most of the ones I have known were eager to litigate the merits of the case at your expense.
Perhaps some of the attorneys reading would like to comment on this.