UUNet Is The Number 1 Spam Host 346
An anonymous reader submits "Statistics for February have UUnet leading the Spamhaus top 10 worst Spam ISPs chart. The Register point out that ISPs like UUnet and Abovenet continue to host spammers despite advertising anti-spam AUPs." And the competition is probably wishing they had as much luck.
Largest ISP? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Largest ISP? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Largest ISP? (Score:2)
UUNet is now part of MCI (formerly WorldCom^Hn) do you think they care?
"Johnson, why are our revenues down?"
"We kicked off some spammers, in accordance with company policy, Sir."
"Well, put them back on, dammit, we need every cent we can get, it's a tough economy!"
Re:Largest ISP? (Score:5, Informative)
Check again. [theregister.co.uk] When WorldCom filed for bankruptcy they changed the name back to MCI.
Re:Largest ISP? (Score:3, Insightful)
EXCUSE ME? No one gave you permission to spam my email. It's theft, pure and simple. Theft of resources I've paid for, I own, and you have no rights to.
UUNet and Abovenet have been spammer friendly for ages, this is no news. The fact is they think they're big enough they're above the law, and act accordingly. They think they're too big to black-hole, and unfortunately they'r
Re:Largest ISP? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not a slippery slope at all. Spam is email which is both bulk and unsolicited. The email system was never designed to accomodate such, and indeed cannot survive if it is allowed. If your email to me is unsolicited, that's fine - as long as it's not a bulk message being sent to thousands or millions of people at once. If it's a bulk message, that's fine too, as long as it's sent only to those that have solicited it. But when you combine both properties, sending in bulk to folks that have not explicitly
Re:Largest ISP? (Score:4, Insightful)
I respectfully disagree. It doesn't matter one bit if it's commercial or not. It doesn't matter if I agree with the message or not. The key is it that it's unsolicited and bulk. This is key because once you allow unsolicited bulk emailings, you create a system where there is little to no extra cost to send to extra people, and it makes sense to send to as many as possible, Carry that somewhere near it's logical conclusions. Every business in the US sending one message a year to every email address is enough to destroy email as a useable media. Every nonprofit doing the same would have essentially the same effect. The point is that once you allow the use of email for unsolicited bulk mailing, you create an incentive to send so much email that no one will ever be able to find the messages they actually have their email accounts to receive.
I've been spammed by the Republicans, and the Democrats, by the Libertarians, by the Green Party and the Reform Party and the Socialist Workers Party and even by some group in Portugal whose dispatches I find difficult to decipher.
Some of these groups had my deepest sympathy. I still made sure each and every one felt the pain that comes with spamvertising. Why? Simple. If there isn't a consistent and reliable pain to be anticipated anytime you spam, commercial or not, then there is every incentive to send ads to everyone as often as possible until email becomes completely unusable. But, as long as some of us stand on our right not to be spammed, complain about it and insist politely but forcefully that those who spam us pay the price as outlined in the AUPs they agreed to, then the cost of Spam is not zero and this does not happen.
So no, I don't agree at all. UBE is Spam. Period. I don't care if they're political, commercial, or trying to raise money for crippled orphans. If you allow UBE you create the incentives that end e-mail as a usable system very shortly afterwards.
The trouble when you come to UUnet and Abovenet is that when you complain, they ignore you. Normally that means go to their upstream - well guess what, they have no upstream, for all intents and purposes they're it. If everybody else on the planet got together and blackholed them, it might work, but it would cause the rest of us almost as much pain as them. They're that big. They know it, and so unlike all the other ISPs they don't give a flying f$ck what their customers do, or what you think about it.
Got a solution to that problem? I'd love to hear it.
Re:Largest ISP? (Score:3, Insightful)
Block UUNet.
Give'm the death sentence. Sure, it's painful, but if enough people stop accepting traffic from UUNet and explain why, it should force them to enforce their policies.
Re:Largest ISP? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Largest ISP? (Score:5, Insightful)
Spam would not be a problem if all ISPs dealt efficiently with open proxies and spamvertised sites.
Re:Largest ISP? (Score:4, Informative)
And yeah... why do they still use that name? They've been owned by MCI/Worldcom for years now... eveen says so on their front page.
Re:Largest ISP? (Score:5, Informative)
Also they dont monitor your traffic, can you imagine the logs that would create. They only contact you about spam (or whatever else) if someone complains to them about something coming from your IPs.
What comes around... (Score:5, Interesting)
Rus
Re:What comes around... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What comes around... (Score:5, Insightful)
How do you identify the sender? The From: address is forged, the envelope MAIL FROM: is forged, the Reply-To: if forged, and in most cases, the originating IP address (the only one you can count on) is a virus infected zombie.
Granted this would put extra load on all of our own ISP email servers, but it would put a MUCH greater load on the ISP's who host the spammers.
No. All it will do is bombard some innocent victim (probably somebody who complained about spam to the spammer's ISP) with thousands - or millions - of emails that they were not reponsible for. That means that you are part of the attack,, part of the problem.
It's one thing to send out 1million spam messages on your server, but to have to deal with all of those emails coming right back at them...
Which is precisely why spammers forge all identifying information they possibly can, and why your plan will make spam worse, not better.
Re:What comes around... (Score:2)
Re:What comes around... (Score:5, Insightful)
But it does sound good on paper.
Not likely to happen anytime soon... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's pretty much been proven that this is wishful thinking. When a provider starts blocking large stretches of IP blocks owned by a particular ISP like UUNet, average users scream bloody murder. My prediction is UUNet will do nothing, and nothing will happen to UUNet. Sad but true.
Re:Not likely to happen anytime soon... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What comes around... (Score:3, Insightful)
why? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:why? (Score:3, Funny)
Disclaimer: NO I am not a spammer. If you want I'll supply the "XL Humungous Butt Plugs" to give to spammers as a gift, you are going to have to deliver it yourself. With dimensions of 5" x 9", most folks are not gonna like it, unless the gaotse guy is a spammer.
I know not (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I know not (Score:5, Insightful)
It DOES generate buisness, thats one of the problems. Stupid people are out there on the internet trying to make there "members" larger.
Re:I know not (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Spamming does make money, because some idiots actually buy things from spammers;
2) People don't actually buy directly from spammers, but for marketers of some products (illicit, low yield) mainstream media just isn't an option, so the only way to make people aware that these products exist is through spam. (i.e. I may not buy herbal viagra, or dental insurance or an MBA directly from the people flooding my inbox, but now I know that I can buy these things online. If me and 100 of my neighbors search for these products later, at least a few will buy from the original spammer.
3) Professional spamming shops are doing a good job of convincing retailers that 1) and/or 2) are true.
Re:I know not (Score:3, Insightful)
In fact, it would seem possible that some of the egregious vio
I bought viagra online. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I know not (Score:2)
Uh, if it didn't generate revinue, then people wouldn't do it. A huge amount of my spam gets filtered, but not enough for me. (I just updated my baysian filter yesterday, and it works much better now, but spammers aren't stupid and know how to get around filt
Re:I know not (Score:2, Insightful)
As one critic voiced it, on the BBC this morning, the current administration doesn't do anything until it's crisis. I wish that weren't true, maybe they are actually gathering up a pile of this trash and getting ready to haul in about 500 people, which should scare the bejeezus out of most of the rest. If Bush wants
Re:I know not (Score:2, Insightful)
1) I think the number of emails going out to generate the same return is going up as most people are wise to it.
2) The agent (Ralsky as one example) charges for the spam, probably could care less or is simply unable to meter success. All transactions are cash up front.
As the volume needs to increas and blocking comes into play there should be a cap. As my spam volume is still increasing, but the rate of increase is slowing I think we're approaching that c
How to stop spam. (Score:5, Funny)
Step 1: Buy an aluminum baseball bat.
Step 2: Find spammer.
Step 3: Beat spammer with aluminum baseball bat.
Step 4: Sell what is left of spammer to Hormel, makers of spam.
Step 5: Deposit money into legal fund for defense against spam. (Baseball bat Distribution center)
Re:How to stop spam. (Score:5, Insightful)
While I advocate extreme violence against spammers, I do feel that it is the responsibility of an ISP to stop spam at the source.
However, if the spammer is merely leasing an IP/Dedicated connection from the ISP, this involves placing restrictions on the actual line - which isn't called for.
In essence, if you are leasing directly from an upstream provider, they aren't so much an ISP in that case. If the customer was grandfathered in under an old contract, the provider could be left without any legal recourse against the person.
However, if a customer is in violation of their AUP and the AUP was agreed upon at the initiation of the transaction (leasing the line, buying the connection, etc), then the ISP should be held to enforcing that, be it by terminating service or installing filters, etc.
I suppose the most difficult thing is when someone leases a line to run a dedicated server serving legitimate mailing lists, etc.
This becomes a case of "How Draconian do you want your ISP to be?"
I know I can deal with the spam. I hate it, but I'd rather deal with spam than be incredibly restricted by my AUP.
Re:How to stop spam. (Score:5, Funny)
Clue (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Clue (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Clue (Score:3, Informative)
Right now, any IP address holding computer has the ability to become a mail server, so any IP address holding computer has the ability to spew spam.
Do they use stolen credit cards regularly? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Do they use stolen credit cards regularly? (Score:4, Informative)
I guess they figure the reward is worth the risk. Plus they're stupid.
Re:Do they use stolen credit cards regularly? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Clue (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Clue (Score:5, Informative)
Here's why -- UUNET is a *HUGE* ISP they have more spammers then anyone else because they're bigger then anyone else. What you need to know is if they have a higher spammer/customer or spammer/site ratio than usual.
You always hear this same stuff about crime statistics. I just heard on the news that crime in california is down 50% and they were credting the 3 strikes law. Of course it means nothing, because if you look at population statistics you'll find out that theres a dramatic drop in population of young people who statistically are most likely to commit crimes. So crime is occuring LESS (total number), but the crime rate is more or less the same.
It's all about the allmighty dollar (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow, there's a surprise. (Score:5, Interesting)
So why are there still customers? (Score:2, Insightful)
Do you want to put your faith in a business that is indirectly lining the pockets of spammers?
Re:So why are there still customers? (Score:2, Interesting)
1. every person who buys hosting just cant afford to deal with being "politically correct" when choosing providers. Its not practical to change ISP's every 3 months because their current ISP pisses off some vocal minority who represents some whacko cause (take porn, for instance, whom hosting providers get a lot of flack from Christian groups)
2. Sometimes financial constraints force you to go with one provider alone
3. If an ISP shuts down spammers, some other ISP will be happy to m
Time for ISP's to take responsiblity. (Score:5, Funny)
Give spammers their own IP range (Score:5, Interesting)
Customers who are running legitimate mail servers can stay out of that range as long as they don't break the AUP. The ISP doesn't even have to kill port 25 on the spammer IPs. They could simply limit the amount of bandwidth that can be used to something like 10MB per day on port 25. Which is reasonable. There's no incentive to out and out ban those IPs if no massive amount of junk can come out of them. The spammer is just forcibly restricted until they can behave themselves. At which time they can go back to a less restricted IP range.
I don't think there's any law that says ISPs can't selectivly put people in certain IP ranges. I don't think spammers have any way to fight it under current anti-discrimination laws. If you can even call it discrimination since it's would be based solely on the actions of the person and not who they are.
Ben
Re:Give spammers their own IP range (Score:5, Insightful)
It's easier (Score:5, Interesting)
As other people have mentioned, relays are a big part of the problem. It's better to "punish" ignorant customers by moving them to a restricted port 25 IP than to cut them off entirely. By moving them there's no harm no foul since they weren't the ones directly spamming anyway and probably won't notice they were moved.
If they do notice and call then the ISP can tell them to do something about their excessive e-mail sending and point them at the AUP. It's all very quick and painless to resolve the issue since it's the customer that has to take action to speak with people and not the company making the calls. People who have to call when they know they broke the rules are far less likely to do anything.
Cox recently cut off incomming port 25. Probably because of myDoom. I'm not about to call and complain because I was trying to run a spam can on my home system. Outgoing port 25 has been blocked since I got the service. And it would be a waste of time and money for them to call me and yell at me. They quietly cut off my server and I just shut my mouth about it.
By having a no harm no foul automated system you can punish a spammer as soon as say X MB of e-mails get sent in Y amount of time. Versus finding out about it later after it's too late and gigs of e-mails have been sent.
Automatically kicking customers entirely is just asking for trouble because the ignorant (those who unknowingly relay) will be kicked which will result in bad PR where there should be none.
You can still kick the spammer entirely. It's just a matter of starting with a little punishment and then escelating only as nesseccary.
Kicking a customer should be the last resort when just limiting port 25 traffic is sufficient.
Ben
Re:Give spammers their own IP range (Score:3, Insightful)
As good as it sounds to put a
Um, are these results weighted? (Score:5, Insightful)
UUNet is a large, large carrier with many networks globally. Are they the worst spammer because they have the most network entry/exit points, or are they unfairly attacked here because they are just large?
Re:Um, are these results weighted? (Score:4, Informative)
"UUNet hosts more spammers than any other ISP. It has 151 listings on the Spammers Block List (SBL), including 34 known spam gangs with ROKSO records, according to the anti-spam organisation Spamhaus' records for February 2004."
They host 34 known professional hard-core spam-gangs. Size has nothing to do with it.
Re:Um, are these results weighted? (Score:5, Insightful)
This leaves us with two possible scenarios to explain this :
1) UUNet is a spamhaus and will host spammers as long as they pay.
2) UUNet is dead set against spam, however somehow their abuse department has never read all the complaints, including ten month old ones. Maybe they got "lost in traffic or stuff". Or maybe those poor abuse department people are overworked ? Or just plain DEAD ? After all this silence you start to wonder...
UUNET is largely innocent (Score:4, Informative)
You're paying for it (Score:5, Interesting)
So if you're an IP carrier with no or little hosting on your network, you mostly download from your interconnects. Therefore you pay more to interconnect with the big IP backbones like UUnet.
If you're UUnet, there is an economic incentive for you to host spammers, because it boosts your upload; therefore you pay less (or, in the case of UUnet, get more money) on interconnects.
If I was UUnet, I don't see why I would waste money on fighting spammers who (1) are my customers and (2) increase my bottom line by boosting upload at interconnects.
By considering all packets to be equal on the backbone, you're averaging "unwanted" traffic vs. "useful" traffic such as web traffic (aka porn). The side effect of this is, you're paying for spam with your Internet connection.
Advertisements for bulk e-mailers (Score:5, Funny)
I particularly enjoy the "Ads by Google" in the banner at right of the article, for
Bulk Mailer
Reach 500,000 opt-in recipients
and Bulk Email List
Low Cost Bulk Email Marketing Full Email Reports.
hahaa, rooted spammer (Score:3, Interesting)
p
how about blacklisting until they clean up (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, I've added ppl I know to a whitelist so there's no delay and added IP ranges (typically uunet or above.net and some from the UK, china, korea, etc.) [Class B and Class C] to my perma-blacklist. Being able to blacklist IP ranges {or even mail that doesn't have a sender address regardless of IP) is very useful. I don't get spam that's mailed directly to me anymore (still get some spam that's sent to a mailing list like sourceforge's MLs, though).
One odd thing I've noticed is that softhome's implementation of one of the blacklisting options has changed and effectively blocks all email that's not ok'd by me (the blank sender address filter that is). But it's ok, most ppl I know get placed on my whitelist or if I'm sending to some company, I make sure I add the companies domain(s) to my whitelist as well. Hey, it's a small price to pay for lack of spam.
Also, if someone legit tries to email me and gets blocked, they get an error from their host that reports that "the server doesn't like them". Good for those pesky relatives...hehehe
I've used grey listing.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:how about blacklisting until they clean up (Score:3, Informative)
Link to more information here [puremagic.com], just to make sure that people don't get the wrong idea: a greylisting server will respond to all attempted deliveries from unknown sources with an RFC-compliant deferral, which should cause the sending MTA to queue t
Nice to see Abovenet on the list... (Score:2)
Does anyone remember (Score:2, Troll)
Those were the days... but the age of activist sys admins is gone... we have been replaced with dot bomb drop outs who care about nothing more than a few $$$.
We are finished.
And think about it... what antispam technique can you think of that is more effective than filters and less intrusive (IE less clicking) to the users?
Loads of things are effective but all make the user work harder than they would by just deleting the s
I'm not seeing it... (Score:5, Informative)
Out of the approximately 16 daily reports in my inbox, only two addresses are uu.net. I'm seeing comcast.net (37 occurences) and adelphia.net (29 occurences) a lot more, by comparison.
Re:I'm not seeing it... (Score:3, Interesting)
UUNet the Home of Spam (Score:5, Interesting)
1. In 2000 a spammer in Louisiana forges one of my domains in spam runs sent via UUNet - I get tens of thousands of bounces and hundreds of complaints.
2. I complain to UUNet - no action.
3. I phone UUNet security as the runs are being sent - no action.
4. Every weekend for 2 months this happens and I get sick of it.
5. I start to autobounce all this junk back to abuse@uunet.com.
6. Spammer sends a run using a different ISP.
7. UUNet gets really pissed that I bounce 1000 mails to abuse@uunet.com which didn't originate from their network (with some justification).
8. UUNet block all access from my class C to their servers.
9. The spam runs sent via UUNet continue....
Forward to 2004, I still can't send mail to uunet.com!
This is a problem with all top-tier providers (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, while I am happy with UUNet's performance and stability, I am even more unhappy with their apathy towards their network being clogged by spam traffic. And at least 40% of the bandwidth I pay for is consumed by unwanted UCE, so they actually profit from this crap. As a result, there's not much incentive for them to address it. And I have to grudgingly pass these expenses on to my customers.
But UUNet is not any different from other top-tier ISPs. They hide behind the "common carrier" metaphor, using it as an excuse to justify a large portion of the bandwidth they sell to others which is unuseable due to spamming.
I can't help but think if I ordered a telephone line, and 40-60% of the time I had "noise" interfereing with my ability to communicate, that the phone company would be obligated to resolve the situation. Unfortunately, with ISPs, there doesn't seem to be anyone at the top that really gives a damn, nor any incentive on their part to address the situation.
I work at a Data Center. (Score:4, Insightful)
I NEVER get uu.net spam any more (Score:4, Interesting)
Finally I resorted to bouncing all uu.net originated spam to sales@uu.net and info@uu.net
make the sales scum suffer the same problem they inflict on everyone else by selling their pink contracts.
Some of the indignant replies from the sales staff were quite amusing. I guess they told their spammers to delete me from thier spam runs, as the volume quickly dropped and then finally stopped completely.
Re:I NEVER get uu.net spam any more (Score:3, Interesting)
complaining to abuse@uu.net doesn't work. complaining to sales@uu.net and info@uu.net does work - the sales staff need the leads and inquiries generated, therefore they have to look through their inbox instead of just dumping it all.
Spam solutions (Score:5, Interesting)
Those that want to run a mailserver for legitimate reasons can do so but anyone who hasnt speicificly said "I want to run a SMTP server on my connection" will be prevented from doing so (this would cut out 99% of the spam comming from spam zombie boxes)
Second, close open relays (if you need to have an "open machine" run some kind of SMTP authentication)
Thirdly, implement SPF for more hosts and more clients (if you want to run your own mail server with xxx@mydomain.com addresses but relay through mailservers at ISP, work etc, just add those SMTP servers to the SPF record)
And forthly, be more proactive in blacklisting ISPs that are known spam havens (if enough people block the IP ranges of bulletproofspamhosting.com, spammers wont be able to get their messages through and bulletproofspamhosting.com will go out of business when the spammers leave)
If its a regular ISP with non-spam customers as well, pressure from the non-spam customers (especially if those non-spam customers are big) might convince the ISP to dump the spamers.
Eventually, if this happens enough, ISPs will realize that hosting spamers means that they will be blacklisted.
It's worth noting... (Score:5, Informative)
I know they're not anyone's favorite company, but it's worth noting that AOL is not anywhere on the top 10 list. Not so many years ago (less than 5), they used to top that list most of the time, and the rest of the time they were in the top 3 (not necc. Spamhaus's list, but Spamcop's definitely, back when they meant something).
Having been involved in the work, I can tell you that AOL was one of the first, if not the first, large ISP to implement tagging of outbound email with the true email address of the sender, regardless of whether or not they put it in there (the X-Apparently-From header that AOL inserted). Also close to the first, or the first, to implement outbound filtering of email for spam. When the second one was put into place, I watched the ranking and saw AOL drop from #1 to nowhere on the top 10.
-Todd
Major Consideration in Choosing a Web Host (Score:5, Insightful)
I got an IP address that was blacked listed by SPEWS once. Much of my email would not work and the web host company would not change my IP. They suggested I contact SPEWS. I later learned that the host company was a spammer magnet and I was not alone. I switched companies and all is well.
Jeff
How ISPs make money from Spammers - Clarification (Score:5, Interesting)
One has to wonder... (Score:3, Insightful)
Gee, isn't it deceptive trade to say one thing and do another? Is failure to enforce a published contract, saying that everyone has to abide by it fraudulant?
On the email servers I manage, UUNet, Level3, Shaw, Cox, and Above.net are all almost completely blocked. The bounce message says "This site does not accept email by default from your current ISP. Please call xxx-xxx-xxxx to request whitelisting."
I love it when spammers call and try to get whitelisted. Like I've never heard of SpamCop, SpamHaus, SPEWS or News.Admin.Net-Abuse.Sightings...
Re:Spam doesn't matter to me (Score:5, Interesting)
Sometimes I wonder if we'd "feel" a big difference in net responsiveness (browsing, file transfer, latency in online gaming, etc) if all spam stopped suddenly. Probably.
Re:Spam doesn't matter to me (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Spam doesn't matter to me (Score:3, Interesting)
Sunday: 429 emails, 1 valid. It's not often like that, some days I get as many as 10 valid for about the same overall volume.
Re:Spam doesn't matter to me (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Spam doesn't matter to me (Score:4, Insightful)
it does not matter much to people who use e-mail to forward chain letters if they miss some message - but there are also people who run business which depends on e-mail (hey I don't mean on spammers)
Re:Spam doesn't matter to me (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd say I run about the same risk of accidentially deleting a non-spam message in a fenzy of spam deleting. You can't trust yourself 100% either. Alls I can say is that I love my Bayesian filter. :-P
Re:Spam doesn't matter to me (Score:5, Insightful)
I was thinking about that the other day. Then I got to wondering how much CPU-time I was spending on spam filtering which led to my thinking about how much electricity I was using to filter spam. Then I started to think about all the electricity being used by computers moving the mail and routers between network points and so on. It didn't take long before my mind boggled.
Spam is often touted as being better than physical junk mail as it doesn't use all that paper. There are however, other costs. All that electricity has to be generated and that can't be good for the enviroment.
The next time someone says spam is a hassle but doesn't really cost them anything, remind them what went into getting that spam to them.
Re:Spam doesn't matter to me (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Spam doesn't matter to me (Score:4, Insightful)
I suspect it's the practice of putting random words at the end of the e-mails that does it.
Re:Spam doesn't matter to me (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Spam doesn't matter to me (Score:5, Funny)
This site is protected by The Do-Not-Slashdot ACT 1996
I just block domains (Score:5, Informative)
Takes care of most of the spam. And it costs spammers money every time they get a new domain so I can deal with what little spam gets through before the filter is updated. I've put hundreds of domains in my Mercury Mail filter which equals thousands of dollars worth of domains that are now useless for sending spam through my mail server. And it doesn't matter how distorted the header or body is. The domain can't be distorted or it won't work as a link.
Ben
Slashdotting spam domains ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps this would hurt spammers the only place that counts - in the pocketbook. When a message is confirmed as spam then have a filter extract all the urls from the message and place them in a file. Have an hourly cron job visit that list of urls and download using wget everything at that url and all of it's subfolders - and delete the files after downloading - and bypass the proxy if you have one - these are all wget options. Have the hourly cron job keep only the last 10,000 or so urls so that there is some semblance of only downloading current spam urls.
This process, if followed by millions of spam haters (perhaps we could have a public spam url website that would let people fetch a hundred urls at a time to work on that we could upload our own spam urls to), would apply the slashdot-effect to all the spammers. Bandwidth costs money for them - it's the only way to make 'em stop.
Two words: JOE JOB (Score:5, Insightful)
Mal-2
Re:Slashdotting spam domains ... (Score:5, Informative)
(X) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based (X) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
(X) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
(X) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
(X) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
(X) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
(X) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
(X) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
(X) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of spam
(X) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
(X) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
(X) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(X) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
(X) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
(X) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
house down!
(Yes, it's pulled from here [craphound.com]. The meta-point is, if we're going to progress in the war on spam we need to move past the solutions that have been proposed a million times with obvious holes in them. Either that, or face the possibility that the system we have now is already optimal.
Primary justification of the above snarky copy&paste job is that this patently obvious scheme has a patently obvious DDoS scheme built into it, left as an exercise for the reader.)
Re:Your sig (Score:3, Informative)
So, no, not going to change my sig, as it quite nicely explains my feelings for both Bush and Kerry.
Re:Spam doesn't matter to me (Score:3, Funny)
<sarcasm>Thanks for sharing.</sarcasm>
Do you believe that being boastful in your sig has anything to do with real credibility? You should check your vanity and leave your background to your user page where it belongs. And start using your sig for inane jokes, strange quotes and unusual observations like a typical slashdotter.
"Plaque is a figment of the liberal media and the dental industry t
Re:Spam doesn't matter to me (Score:3, Funny)
Background: 25/M/Asexual(spores); Ninja Master, Superspy, and Fry Cook; Diploma, Shaolin Class of '93; PhD in Ass-kicking, BMF Correspondance School, 2001
Re:Spam doesn't matter to me (Score:5, Insightful)
Filtering is **NOT** the solution. Blocking spamsources at the origin **IS**.
Re:Spam doesn't matter to me (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Spam doesn't matter to me (Score:5, Insightful)
However, as an interim step, it's better than not to have Bayesian filters and well-staffed ERs.
Re:grasping for customers (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure if this reasoning is sound if we're talking about regular accounts, unless spammers are paying for their bandwidth (a thing I expect they avoid doing at all cost).
A regular customer who checks email once a day should be a lot more profitable to a ISP than someone who sends spam all day long.
Of course things are probably different with commercial accounts... I'm not familiar with UUNet so I don't know if they are a commercial only ISP.
Re:grasping for customers (Score:3, Informative)
Re:grasping for customers (Score:2, Informative)
Re:ATTBI.COM!!!!!! (Score:3, Interesting)
263.net/263.com bombs me pretty consistently, I think it's chinese. It suggests pretty strongly to me that a lot of this "Chinese censorship" stuff is crap. If you've got the dough, then you can do as you please in the PRC.
Re:ATTBI.COM!!!!!! (Score:3, Insightful)