War on Spam

[Geoff Wild]

Not really a question - just venting...

Over 7 days my little server rejects approx 600,000 emails.

It accepts 40,000.

Of those 40,000 - about 38,000 are SPAM.

So, only 2,000 legitmate emails out of 640,000!!!!

That doesn't count the thousands of ip addresses I block on my firewall...

Now - for any SPAMMER who happens to read this - guess what? of the 38,000 emails that got through I bet that less then 10 were read.

My point is - why are you SPAMMING???

Point 2 - for those so called companies that employ SPAMMERS - I for one would never buy anything from a company that uses SPAM tactics.

SPAM is a waste of internet bandwidth and IMHO, SPAMMERS should be hunted down and when found - sentanced to be blockked from the Internet for 10 years.

This will be a 1 point thread....

Rgds...Geoff

[spex]

Geoff,

Unfortunately, enough people are buying these products to make spamming worthwhile. The public needs to be educated on how much spam is actually being sent, and how taxing it is on various resources, such as bandwidth and people's time. Personally, I don't feel the situation will improve much until governments step up and put appropriate legislation in place. Although this will just cause the spammers to change tactics.

Spamming really is just another form of advertising, and in our society, advertising is extremely pervasive.

PCS

[DCE]

Geoff,

As much as I do not like the idea, the only way to curtail some of the spam is to make it expensive. Right now it is a No Cost way of advertising. The spammer have gone from junk mail to email, one - because they can reach a larger audience and two - it does not cost anything to send it.

Some type of regulation must be put in place to make these people pay a price. Whether that is government taxation, or a new rule from the internet ISP's that says any e-mails over 100,000 (or what ever number is reasonable) has a surcharge of X amount of money.

just my two cents worth

Dave

[Rick Garland]

Spammers are like a lot of people.
They see a "get rich quick" opportunity.

Unfortunately not much can be done to enlighten these people. As stated, they do get sales.

I do not want to see regulation only because our govt can't regulate itself.

I vote for putting a cost on bulk emails. And unlike the Post Office, offering discounts for larger bulk mailings, this should become more expensive with the larger number of mailings.

Hit 'em in the pocketbook! This will get their attention!

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Shame on you. If it weren't for SPAM where would the market be for Anti-SPAM software? This is just one of those things that is woven into the fabric of the Internet and unfortunately almost any cure is worse than the disease. At least with SPAM there is some finacial point to their efforts unlike those who loose Trojan Horses and the like.
I also have to concede that the SPAMer's are very creative spellers especially as it relates to certain body parts.

Like you, I do take the attitude that whatever SPAM's get through my filters, I will never buy their products.

[SteveKirby]

*SARCASM ON*

You know I hate sales people. We should put a tax on talking. If you are a sales person and you talk to more than 10 people ... you should be taxed. I hate hearing from sales people. Do sales people really make money? I get propositioned by sales people all the time... especially in third world countries. I wish third-world contries were more civilized. Lets regulate sales people.

* SARCASM OFF*

If you can find a way to reconcile free speech and e-mail (Internet) let me know.

Or, put another a way, if you can find a system that everyone can trust to authenticate users of the internet so we actually know who is on ... you might also solve the problem.

In my opinion the cost of freedom is abuse by people like spammers.

In today's age when the person sending the spam is faceless ... it is easy for them to do it.

*A* solution might be to force everyone to identify themselves on the internet... but that smacks of big-brother. You register with the government, like a drivers license, and you are allowed on the next but everything this checked against your id.

Sorry .. but as long as we want anonymity (and i suspect anyone not in agreement those in power appreciates it) we will get abuses like spam.

* slight sarcasm *
Another solution ... pursue the spammers legally ... oh, wait ... most of the spamming is coming from China and overseas ... maybe we should tell them they can't send spam to use ... or cut off their internet connection ...

[Jay Bollyn]

We have recently rolled out Brightmail university-wide, with good results http://www.symantec.com/enterprise/index.jsp . From the user point-of-view, it is not 100% effective, and will not be anytime soon. Network admins now have a new title to add to the rest of it - antispam cop.

Major institutions have the hardware and IT resources to combat this nuisance. I think the main target of spam is smaller networks and home users, who don't have much of an antispam plan in place, and are too busy running their business anyway.

We all know that spammers need only a very small percentage of replies to be profitable. As long as there are unscrupulous ISPs to host these senders, we will continue to have this wasted bandwidth.

- Jay

[Dave Unverhau_1]

Ahhh...spam...high on every internet-enabled person's "most-hated" list...but what to do about it without negatively impacting the non-intrusive users?

I agree completely that we should all avoid doing business with companies who employ spam for their advertising. This is a "low-life" means to do business, and such business tactics would instill no confidence on my part in that company's scruples. Avoid them like the plague!

But when it comes to government legislation, we need to proceed very carefully. I'd love to see these clowns squashed, but in the words of Benjamin Franklin:

"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."

As far as getting the ISP's to crack down on mass-mailings by imposing charges, I'd love to see that, too, but the spammers will just adjust their tactics by breaking up their mailings into smaller chunks that "slip under the radar".

Probably the only effective approach in the near-term is continued vigilance by all internet users and employment of advances in anti-spam technology by the "good guys".

It's a shame that the spam problem undermines the usefulness of the net to so many of the masses who can really benefit from it, but I think its become a sad fact of internet life...

Okay...I'll get off my soapbox now...

Best Regards, all!

Dave

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom Geoff,

The fact that you are rejecting the messages means that you are handling it in the most efficient method possible.

Major server issues:
blanked forwarding of domains without checking user id.
not using the access.db file to limit incoming mail.
open relay servers.

That being said, I sometimes wonder as A. Clay seems to where the anti-spam industry would be without the spammers.

Without a major source of revenue.

Consumer reports suggests a good strategy for this. Don't use the services or products of any company that uses spam.

Why is there so much spam out there?

Because its cheap and because the 1%-2% out there that respond to spam make it profitable.

If nobody bought the products or services of companies that use spam, spam would stop happening.

SEP

[inventsekar_1]

Geoff,
nice topic.
my reply is like this
How can I help make a difference?
http://spam.abuse.net/bits/makeadifference.shtml

[Mel Burslan]

Geoff,

As you can guess I am not a spammer and I have the luxury of not touching any internet facing mail gateway. Having said that, I have to say, I understand your pain as our recently departed colleague, who was waging a war against spam hitting our gateways, was always at the losing end of the war.

You said:

Now - for any SPAMMER who happens to read
this - guess what? of the 38,000 emails
that got through I bet that less then 10
were read.

Here, do the math as a person blessed with analytic brain. What did it cost the spammer to send that 38000 emails ? Especially considering those were all sent from an unsuspecting home user's zombie-fied pc and broadband connection. 10 people read the message. Let's agrandize and say the spammer sent 380000 messages which get past the filtering software and landed in users' mailboxes and 100 of them were read one way or the other. If only one in that hundred users take action to buy a drug enhancing a certain body part, by clicking a link in that email, spammer dude made most probably something in the order of $3-4. In return of what ? A big $0 cost.

As long as there are fly-by-night operations, which will pay spammers a comission, this problem will not go away. The only way to get to the bottom of this problem is to punish the commission payers, not the spammers. We all know that, any pharmacy, who is selling the blue pill, at least requires a doctor's perescription to sell it. What these online pill retailers are, nothing more than scam artists, most probably selling a sugar pill. But at the end, these online pharmacy looking sites are being hosted under someone's name. I think a sting operation can be run against these people living and hosting their operations in the civilized world, by the law enforcement.

On the flip side, coming to the spam prevention, Verizon, AT&T scream off the top of their lungs that, companies like Google, vonage, skype and so on are using their oh-so-precious bandwidth without paying an extra dime. Why don't they go after the zombie computers sitting on their networks, spewing out tons of spam. They have modern equipment to figure out a saturated bandwidth by any home user. That only should be a dead giveaway that, either the person at that end is a spammer (highly unlikely) or his/her computer has been own3d by the hacker crowd. In either case, they are in violation of the term of service and their connection could be shut down until they alleviate the situation. I still do not understand what is so hard about implementing such a trap.

Well, this was my version of the rant. Thanks for reading/listening :)