Walling off Asian E-mail to Prevent Spam

SomeoneYouDontKnow writes: "Seems there's been lots of spam news lately. This piece from Wired describes how frustrated sysadmins in the West are responding to a torrent of Asian spam by simply refusing all e-mail from that part of the world. As anyone who's ever reported spam to Asian ISPs can attest, getting a response of any kind is almost impossible, so some ISPs are simply giving up on receiving any mail from them. Setting up barriers like this is regrettable, but when the originating ISPs refuse to take responsibility for the actions of their users or close their open mail servers, there would seem to be no other choice. Has anyone ever had any kind of constructive conversation with one of these ISPs to see why they are unable or unwilling to do anything?"

Ban Asia???

[Markvs]

Sure, why not. Heck, I blocked France on principle!

Walling off Asian email?!

[qurob]

Is this why my mail order bride isn't writing back to me?

"Cultural Issues"

[suss]

Cultural issues also contribute to the problem. Many spammers in Asia say they do not understand why spam is a problem.

"It's a sign of respect that someone sends you an electric business card. It means he wants you as a customer," said Zhao Peng, owner of a computer store in Hong Kong.

So what does it mean when they hammer your firewall all day long?
They're just being considerate in checking you for exploits? (Most scans originate from asia in my logs.)

Re:An interesting counter point...

[CodeMonky]

what you don't know is that the client was hunted down and shot.

I think we've just found the first...

[Mikesch]

legitimate use of a DDoS attack. I know it is wrong on so many levels and immoral and all that, but doesn't it just make sense on a primitive level that if they are unwilling to shut down their open relays, someone else should shut them down for them? 24 hours notice, then hit them until they promise to shut it off. Make there be direct consequences for them not playing nice on the net.

Like I said, I know this is inherently flawed, but it is nice to dream. Mmmmmm, vigelante justice on the net...

Re:Setback for the net?

[Skirwan]

What about getting laws that say that unsolicitated mail is illegal?

That's brilliant! Then, we can make a law that outlaws terrorism! And then fascism! And rudeness, and poor driving, and taking the last donut! Hell, we could just make a law that outlaws 'being mean' in general!

And while we're at it, we should make it illegal to respond sarcastically to extremely simplistic solutions to complex problems! Yeah!

--
Damn the Emperor!

Re:Ban Asia???

[Jay L]

I don't block France... I just refuse to let them fly over my airspace.

Re:I can't disagree more

[rope]

i saw this on alt.freeware:

after i tried removing myself from a mailing list, this is what i got:

--------
This Message was undeliverable due to the following reason:

The following destination addresses were unknown (please
check
the addresses and re-mail the message):

[e-mail]

Please reply to [e-mail]
if you feel this message to be in error.
--------

um, i guess they don't know they don't exist ?

Re:okay, fine - so we block

[crow_t_robot]

Yes, i have a taiwanese pen-pal that i write configuration tutorials for in flash5.0 and in the native language. and since i am so rich i send my lunch money everyday to africa. and working in the tech industry leaves me with an abundance of minutes to relax when i get home before i go to bed so i use that time to teach Exchange Server basics to the needy in bahrain. all this extra activity that i have taken on has left me with very little time to continue saving the whales.

Dealing with Chinese spam ;-)

[Ryu2]

As most /.ers should know by now, the Chinese government just ordered all ISPs in China to start monitoring [slashdot.org]
email for subversive phrases and the like, so just reply to
Chinese spam with little replies of the form at the end of this spam.
Might be a useful tactic on companies who think that unsolicited
email is "just regular advertising".

Bill

"Jack(export manager)" wrote:
>
> Dear Sir
> How are you .
>
> We are a lighting factory in China ,It is glad
> to introduce ourselves to you:
>
> I am XUBIN (Jack) , XUBIN is my chinese name , you can just
> call me Jack !! , I am export manager of [deleted] ,
> China, our group have four factory
[snipped]
>
> Here is our company profile :
>

[Rest of sales talk snipped]

(And now, the reply)

Thank you for your coded order. The weapons and ammunition
will ship by way of the usual route in ten days, and you
already know our secret Swiss bank account number to
wire the payment to.

It is a pleasure doing business with you for so long,
and I hope your cause will prevail. I am new to this
particular computer, so I hope the encryption is
working and the monitoring authorities cannot read
what I am sending you.

Long live the Falun Gong! Free Tibet!

Best regards,
Your arms supplier

When I contact a French ISP...

[lww]

they usually surrender right away ;)

Re:I've considered doing the same thing but...

[Jay Mirioashi]

If I do not daily have privelage of learning how I too can enlarge my member by up to 6 inches, ...then, my fellow Americans, the terrorists have already won.

Won't *somebody* think of the children?

Re:Dealing with Chinese spam ;-)

[Anonymous Coward]

Strange, you posted this comment already on the FTC thread (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=27875&cid=299 6436 [slashdot.org]). You are a karma whore, whores ought to be bitchslapped. Do you jobs, moderators.

PS : /.'s search engine sucks, I had to use google to find it back.

Re:Sadly, this is the only way to go

[mttlg]

Like actually bothering to translate your contact messages into various non-English languages.

I usually have no problem getting replies from foreign ISPs in English. For some reason though, they all seem to keep telling me about some postmaster account being over quota...

Re:Ban Asia???

[xtremex]

I have the entire Prinicipality of Liechtinstein blocked. Not that I have ever received anything from Liechtenstein, but it's just a safety measure. :)

Perhaps we should add Asian ISP's?

[asv108]

To the "Axis of Evil?"

Re:Watch out with that scheme

[Phroggy]

The trouble is that every address you use gets on spam lists and gets spammed forever. By having 100's of addresses, you get 100's of times more spam than you otherwise would. Even if you can filter it on arrival so you don't have to see it, it's still clogging your bandwidth and you can always filter a legitimate email.

Hmm, what about this?

Run your own DNS and mail servers, and use your own domain name. Generate a unique hostname every time you need an e-mail address, and use [e-mail] as the address. After you're done with that e-mail address, delete the hostname from the DNS, or change it to resolve to 127.0.0.1 or something. You might still get DNS queries, but that shouldn't take much bandwidth at all, especially since DNS is cached.

Re:Why are open relays used at all?

[schon]

in my job, I have had the pleasure of talking to many a customer who had an open relay. Here are some VERY common reasons:

You missed my favourite:

"What do you mean spammers are using it? I know it was open, but I didn't tell anyone about it! Spammers can't be using it, I didn't even add it to the DNS"