Comments on: Hitting the spammers where it hurts http://spamhuntress.com/2006/05/25/hitting-the-spammers-where-it-hurts/ Just another WordPress weblog Mon, 06 Oct 2008 19:17:35 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.7 by: Ukraine List » No. 1 Spammer is from Ukraine http://spamhuntress.com/2006/05/25/hitting-the-spammers-where-it-hurts/#comment-51905 Mon, 16 Oct 2006 13:39:20 +0000 http://spamhuntress.com/2006/05/25/hitting-the-spammers-where-it-hurts/#comment-51905 [...] The bad part is that in many countries ISPs don’t have sophisticated software to prevent spam, so according to CNET you are more likely to get spam if you are in a developing country and use an ISP without good spam filtration. The Spamhuntress notes that ICIC (another Ukrainian spammer) uses Bellsouth (in US) and Wanadoo (in France) to target Polish addresses. There was subsequently a campaign in Poland to shut the spammer down. But this doesn’t mean you have to be a cash-strapped ISP to not get spammed. The Spamhaus Project notes SBC, Yahoo, and Verizonbusiness in the top five of worst service networks for spam, and they certainly have the cash. Another quote from the CentreSource Blog brings the example back to Ukraine. The article states: “One of our clients in the [sic] Ukraine has a full office of workers on a 256Kbps connection. During peak hours, they strain this connection with email / IM / browsing / and server connections.Tack on thousands of spam messages per day (and no protection)… and now you’ve got some serious problems with bandwidth loss.” [...] […] The bad part is that in many countries ISPs don’t have sophisticated software to prevent spam, so according to CNET you are more likely to get spam if you are in a developing country and use an ISP without good spam filtration. The Spamhuntress notes that ICIC (another Ukrainian spammer) uses Bellsouth (in US) and Wanadoo (in France) to target Polish addresses. There was subsequently a campaign in Poland to shut the spammer down. But this doesn’t mean you have to be a cash-strapped ISP to not get spammed. The Spamhaus Project notes SBC, Yahoo, and Verizonbusiness in the top five of worst service networks for spam, and they certainly have the cash. Another quote from the CentreSource Blog brings the example back to Ukraine. The article states: “One of our clients in the [sic] Ukraine has a full office of workers on a 256Kbps connection. During peak hours, they strain this connection with email / IM / browsing / and server connections.Tack on thousands of spam messages per day (and no protection)… and now you’ve got some serious problems with bandwidth loss.” […]

]]> by: Lemat http://spamhuntress.com/2006/05/25/hitting-the-spammers-where-it-hurts/#comment-14619 Fri, 02 Jun 2006 22:36:16 +0000 http://spamhuntress.com/2006/05/25/hitting-the-spammers-where-it-hurts/#comment-14619 I'm proud to say that currently in Poland there is a huge antispam campaign against one of our nasty spammers - ICIC (well, the spammer is from Ukraine, sending spam from wanadoo and bellsouth legitimate mail servers but he's targeting *.pl emails only). A group of antispam people gathered at pl.internet.mordplik usenet group figured that they can build better Page Rank at search engines than spammer itself, and moreover - take out all other info advertising this spamer located on government-related webpages. (We want to take out every page related to this spammer unless it is talking about it's spamming activities). I'm saying that it is possible for ordinary people to harm a spammer. I’m proud to say that currently in Poland there is a huge antispam campaign against one of our nasty spammers - ICIC (well, the spammer is from Ukraine, sending spam from wanadoo and bellsouth legitimate mail servers but he’s targeting *.pl emails only). A group of antispam people gathered at pl.internet.mordplik usenet group figured that they can build better Page Rank at search engines than spammer itself, and moreover - take out all other info advertising this spamer located on government-related webpages. (We want to take out every page related to this spammer unless it is talking about it’s spamming activities).
I’m saying that it is possible for ordinary people to harm a spammer.

]]> by: Chris http://spamhuntress.com/2006/05/25/hitting-the-spammers-where-it-hurts/#comment-12310 Fri, 26 May 2006 08:42:58 +0000 http://spamhuntress.com/2006/05/25/hitting-the-spammers-where-it-hurts/#comment-12310 Spam is just like illegal fly-posting (pasting up posters on any wall). The city where I used to live had lots of students and there was a real problem with this. The successful solution was not to go after those putting up the posters - there's a ready pool of people ready to work for a little cash and paste and brushes are cheap! The successful solution was to crack down hard on those advertising in this way. They are the ones that need a real presence. Why Blue Frog was an issue for spammers is because it attacked the problem at source - overloading the websites of those who the spam was attempting to promote. Mostly what's being promoted is already illegal - so the relevant authorities should be encouraged to go for these people. Maybe we are taking the wrong approach in just blocking spam - maybe we should encourage everybody to respond to a few spams a day? Not to actually order, of course! That might start costing those that are promoting the spam some serious money and inconvenience. Spam is just like illegal fly-posting (pasting up posters on any wall). The city where I used to live had lots of students and there was a real problem with this. The successful solution was not to go after those putting up the posters - there’s a ready pool of people ready to work for a little cash and paste and brushes are cheap! The successful solution was to crack down hard on those advertising in this way. They are the ones that need a real presence. Why Blue Frog was an issue for spammers is because it attacked the problem at source - overloading the websites of those who the spam was attempting to promote. Mostly what’s being promoted is already illegal - so the relevant authorities should be encouraged to go for these people.

Maybe we are taking the wrong approach in just blocking spam - maybe we should encourage everybody to respond to a few spams a day? Not to actually order, of course! That might start costing those that are promoting the spam some serious money and inconvenience.

]]> by: Joe http://spamhuntress.com/2006/05/25/hitting-the-spammers-where-it-hurts/#comment-12265 Thu, 25 May 2006 22:45:18 +0000 http://spamhuntress.com/2006/05/25/hitting-the-spammers-where-it-hurts/#comment-12265 Expecting laws in the worst spamming countries to ever be passed, enforced, or be strict enough to make any difference is just plain stupid. We do need the laws passed around the world, but at best they will be used to take down a few big spammers as examples and won't really have much effect. Look how long it took for laws against email spam, and that is a problem for most all users of email, especially large corporations. We already had laws against junk faxes in the US that could have been interpreted as making spam illegal. But now that we have real laws against spam we have even less protection against it. The CAN-SPAM act has very low compliance and has hardly reduced the amount of email spam at all. Even if antispam laws were useful, web spam is not likely to be taken seriously by law makers in the near future. Blogs, wikis, guestbooks, etc. do not have major backing that is needed to get the laws we need passed. And of course another big problem (just like email spam) is a large portion of spam comes from other countries where our laws aren't going to stop anything. And last, most government agencies think they have more important things to waste resources on such as rapes, murders, assault, theft, drugs, terrorists, kidnapping, jaywalking, missing kittens, etc. The only way to stop spam is to have providers take responsibility and shut down those who do it. The problem now is that for any host that drops a spammer, he can choose from tons of others. Expecting laws in the worst spamming countries to ever be passed, enforced, or be strict enough to make any difference is just plain stupid. We do need the laws passed around the world, but at best they will be used to take down a few big spammers as examples and won’t really have much effect.

Look how long it took for laws against email spam, and that is a problem for most all users of email, especially large corporations. We already had laws against junk faxes in the US that could have been interpreted as making spam illegal. But now that we have real laws against spam we have even less protection against it. The CAN-SPAM act has very low compliance and has hardly reduced the amount of email spam at all.

Even if antispam laws were useful, web spam is not likely to be taken seriously by law makers in the near future. Blogs, wikis, guestbooks, etc. do not have major backing that is needed to get the laws we need passed. And of course another big problem (just like email spam) is a large portion of spam comes from other countries where our laws aren’t going to stop anything. And last, most government agencies think they have more important things to waste resources on such as rapes, murders, assault, theft, drugs, terrorists, kidnapping, jaywalking, missing kittens, etc.

The only way to stop spam is to have providers take responsibility and shut down those who do it. The problem now is that for any host that drops a spammer, he can choose from tons of others.

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