China Wants Out of Spam Blocks 404
SomeoneYouDontKnow writes: "Apparently, China is feeling the effects of the e-mail blocks Western ISPs are placing on Asian mail to prevent spam, as previously reported here. A group of Chinese legislators is calling for the blocks to be lifted because they're making it difficult for them to communicate via e-mail, and a signed article in The People's Daily is calling on China to ban spam. Maybe now some of the lazy admins of these spam-spewing mail servers will clean up their acts."
Maybe we should use that tactic more often... (Score:5, Funny)
-----------
Look at thyself before thou judge other
Re:Maybe we should use that tactic more often... (Score:2, Insightful)
However, at least some of the EU and USA ISPs respond to spam complaints. None of the Asian countries above have responded to spam complaints. It's not just a language problem either. I get (or used to get before my spam filters went up) technical requests (in English) from Asia as the result of USENET postings and FAQs I wrote.
I'm hopeful that one or more of the Asian countries above will clean up my act and I can remove my spam filters.
Ethikul biznizmen (Score:3, Informative)
This phenomenon is known as the "ethikul biznisman" problem. Buy a PC in a shop in China, and the salesman's English will be quite adequate, and he will also understand what you are saying. But bring it back one week later because of a defect, and he no longer understands a word of what you say, and his accent goes to hell.
As long as they want something from you, or they want to sell something, no language barriers exists. But as soon as you want sth from them, or have a complaint, then all bets are off.
Best include a link to the above-mentioned People's daily article [zaobao.com] (translation [google.com]) in your complaint mail. They do understand your language, but they might not (yet) do understand the consequences of their (non)acts.
Re:Ethikul biznizmen (Score:2, Insightful)
The look of shock is one that i will never forget!! I also got my money back.
Re:Ethikul biznizmen (Score:3, Informative)
Not always. I've had a problem with a joe-jobbing spammer that was sending spam with my name in the From line, and was spamvertising sites in China. Complaining (via e-mail) to the abuse@ and whois addresses of the various involved providers did yield exactly no response. So I called. The phone got picked up by a person whose only reaction was to say "hooee! hooee! hooee!" into the phone every now and then (this went on for a couple of minutes... yes, this was a pay call...). He did not even have the sense to ask around in his office whether there was any English speaking colleague around. A company running an international business (which an ISP is, by definition) should at least take care to list phone numbers of English speaking personnel into the relevant contact databases (whois).
However, after I started forwarding all the joe-job bounces back to the abuse and whois addresses (over a thousand per day...), suddenly I started getting back responses written in a very adequate English ;-)
Re:Maybe we should use that tactic more often... (Score:2, Insightful)
China just doesn't get it. (Score:4, Interesting)
- They want to reap the commercial benefits without accepting the other consequences of a global computer network: namely, the inevitably open society the Internet promotes. Their feeble attempts at firewalling and sheltering their people are eventually going to collapse under the insurmountable weight of the reality that information wants to be free.
- They want to use email, but can't accept that people don't want crap to be mass-mailed to them. This is a sure sign that China's only interest in the Internet is monetary, and that it is our duty to block off abusive
.cn mail servers to show them that this bullshit doesn't play on the open Internet.
China's always going to be in an awkward situation with regards to the Internet as long as they cling to their obsolete totalitarian, isolationist regime. Write your senators and tell them that all this dicking around with China is a farce, and must be stopped. Don't allow them on the Free Internet until they become a Free State, I say.Re:China just doesn't get it. (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, boy. Where to begin? I think my favourite part of you post was the last line. You misunderstand the idea of freedom if you assume that you must be free to oppress others. China has a dictatorial regime, true; but if the internet is free then it should be embrace it, just as it embraces pornographers, neo-Nazis, gun nuts, religious zealots and all of the other dreadful things that we tolerate under the banner of free-speech but really wish weren¦t there.
Second point is this idea that we can force change onto countries by ignoring them. The Americans don't seem to have learned much from Castro in the last 30 years. If change is to be brought to China then the only options we have available are
to allow it to come fully into the free world and evolve
war. I know which option I prefer.
Re:China just doesn't get it. (Score:2)
Johnson waited for Castro to die.
Nixon waited for Castro to die.
Ford waited for Castro to die.
Carter waited for Castro to die.
Reagan waited for Castro to die.
Bush I waited for Castro to die.
Clinton waited for Castro to die.
Bush II is waiting for Castro to die.
You would think people would learn...
Re:China just doesn't get it. (Score:2)
I wish you don't regard me as a communist when I say the contrary: how about Free Internet eventually makes them Free State?
If you got to read the forums in China, you'd be suprise how people openly discussing all sort of matters, including (*can't say it or else they'll block
Sadly, sensitive issues like (*censor *) are still restricted, but it doesn't stop people speak it out, only all comments will be removed from forums, like some companies(*cough* sina.com.cn *cough*) do.
The bright side is, they can still appear to the public, for may be several seconds, before they are being removed. This is a little spark of free speech that is growing among people. Better than nothing!
Please, oh please, don't stop us using Free Internet. Don't squeeze the tiny little spark of freedom...
Can you read? (Score:5, Insightful)
The artical is talking about China banning spamming outright which is a lot more then any leader in the US is even willing to think about. They do accept that people don't want spam and are looking to an internal solution to the problem.
US leaders have already banned much spam (Score:2)
The artical is talking about China banning spamming outright which is a lot more then any leader in the US is even willing to think about.
US leaders have more than thought about it. With the junk fax law (part of the 1996 Telecom Act), the United States has already banned spam sent over a phone line [pineight.com].
Yeh wel... (Score:2)
Re:China just doesn't get it. (Score:2)
As for spam. Read the *&^%ing article. The people are trying to take steps to *reduce* spam. That is a good thing. It shows the policy of blocking China mail servers is having an effect.
In a population of 1 billion, I can assure you that less than 0.01% of the population does not promote spam so be careful who you have a gripe with and who you want to penalise
spam (Score:3, Funny)
this legitimate e-mail is not spam, it is a message from china to the united states, that has been repeated 5 billion times, once for each citizen in our overpopulated ineptly run third world country.
due to the fact that we're too poor to build nuclear missles, submarines aircraft carriers etc, we have instead come up with the following excellent products for you
1. PORN! (hell EVERYONE LOVES PORN)
2. herbal viagra, (ancient chinese formula)
3. aluminum siding (houseing value-added feature)
4. free vacations to hong kong (beautiful city, except when it rains... a lot)
please enjoy these gifts and products courtousy of china.
this message is not spam to be removed from this mailing list...
Let's not forget... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Let's not forget... (Score:2)
I did not think that that was a joke at all.
How to make the "joke" come true... (Score:2)
Actually, it is quite easy to make it happen: if you get a spam from a Chinese open relay, first warn the admin. Give them a week. If the spam still continues, start sending mass-mailed anticommunist propaganda to random Chinese addresses through the same open relay. This will get that open relay shut down real quick.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Let's not forget... (Score:4, Informative)
In case anyone thinks you're being cute, it's entirely possible that spammers might be executed in China. A brief overview of the crimes that people have been executed for [commondreams.org] are:
Surprised by any of the last ones? In 1979, there were 28 types of crime that carried the death penalty in China. By 1995, that had risen to 74, mostly by the addition of "economic offences". They admit to executing well over a thousand people a year (often after a public show trial or displaying the convicts in public places), and it's suspected that a lot more get a bullet in the head without even a record being made.
Unfortunately, the USA has a policy of not criticizing China's execution policy (or that of any other state), as we have some cleaning up of our own to do. Engaging cynicism mode, you might ponder that the only part of it that our partially hereditary, 90% incumbent political class really object to is the crackdown on corruption and bribe taking, but of course, rank retains its priviledges in China, and the biggest criminals get jail time while their minions are executed.
On the other hand, there is a certain horridly attractive efficiency to show trials and summary execution. Compare and contrast with the US system of interminable legal wrangling over minor technicalities, occasionally leading to fines that are either trivially small or unrealistically big, neither of which typically get paid.
When you read the very occasional article that "Spammer X is fined Y dollars", remember that's just the first step in actually making them responsible for their actions. Even if you can get the fine to stick to them and not their shell company, if they don't pay to a third party or collection agency, they have to be brought back to court again, and it has to be proven that they haven't paid, at which they generally plead poverty and agree to pay off their $5 million debt at $10 a month. And if they don't pay that... you see where this goes? Judges are loathe to jail people over non payment of fines unless they're taking a political stand against them. It's only nice, police, law abiding folks that pay fines. If you want to keep pursuing a third party to make them pay, you have to keep paying up front to do so. The only winners are, as usual, the lawyers.
Re:Let's not forget... (Score:2, Insightful)
Personally I think the US should be much more liberal with the death penalty, and actually carry it out once it has been issued, and not wait the usual 15 years. Maybe then it would be safe to walk the streets at night in US cities like it is in every mainland Chinese city I've ever been to.
Of course you, never having been to China, wouldn't know that. So much easier to pontificate, isn't it?
Re:Let's not forget... (Score:2)
Funnily enough, I'm not a citizen of the USA, but I'm writing for the benefit of the majority Slashdot audience. Oh, feel free to share (not force) your viewpoint on us.
And personally, I agree with you, for crimes where violence is used or threatened. That includes corrupt abuse of power by politicians and law enforcement. It does not include tax evasion, fraud, or property theft. I have no problem with the method, only the application.
Mmm, it would probably be petty and pointless to mention a one week business trip to Beijing, right? Unless I use it as an opportunity to mention how taken I was with the city, and yes, how safe I felt there.
You'll note that I agree that the US legal system is a joke when it comes to dealing with petty crimes. I also agree that executions should be carried out quickly. The idea that a capital crime should be more appealable fundamentally wrecks the whole concept of a criminal legal system that deals in innocence and guilt. While I'm at it, I'd like to see public physical punishment be used for minor crimes. Yes, aka torture. Most truly successful systems of social justice used limited physical violence quite successfully before liberals and lawyers decided that was bad for Freedom and business respectively.
If you go back and read what I wrote, you'll find that it mostly consists of some easily verifiable statements of fact. They will no doubt affirm the preconceptions of some readers, but do please bear in mind that I am pointing out that the US government is only better (or worse, depending on how you feel about hypocrisy) by degree regarding executions, and that I do try and present a gentle counter that suggests that maybe the US system isn't all peaches-and-cream.
Or, I could just have launched into a pontificating attack. Would that have provoked thought, or just attracted denial and spite, do you think?
Re:Let's not forget... (Score:3, Funny)
I was gonna suggest that if they can't recoup the costs of the bullets through selling live streaming video, they could harvest the organs and sell 'em for transplant.
But spammers have no brains, heart, or balls, so those organs are off the list.
Going down the list of organs that I've seen working on spammer bodies, we're down to one possible use. Colostomy patients who need asshole transplants. And it'd still be an insult to the transplant recipient's own shit.
Oh well, it was a good idea while it lasted. Back to the streaming video idea.
Re:Let's not forget... (Score:4, Funny)
Oh, wait..
Common sense! NO open relay = no block (Score:5, Informative)
We fixed a problem of recieving spam from their open relays by blocking them from sending to us.
We asked them to close their relays and they said no or didn't respond, so we blocked them.
Now they want us to unblock them and the answer seems fairly obvious to me. NOT until you close your relays which is why you are blocked!
Quote: "Peter Lovelock, director of Beijing-based consultancy MFC Insight, said the National People's Congress might be swayed to pass laws calling for more rigorous management of Internet-linked servers in China in order to avoid international embarrassment."
If it's such a problem that your "Chinese legislators" are getting involved they should stop complaining that they're bring punished and fix the problem.
Re:Common sense! NO open relay = no block (Score:5, Interesting)
We fixed a problem of recieving spam from their open relays by blocking them from sending to us.
We asked them to close their relays and they said no or didn't respond, so we blocked them.
I wonder if the trick might be to write mailservers that backtrack the email's headers and check for open relays before passing it on. No need to have an actual list, it would be automagic!
Re:Common sense = mail routing loops (Score:2)
Server 1: open connection to server 2, wants to send mail.
Server 2: gets request from server 1, opens connection to server 1 to check for open relay
Server 1: gets request from server 2, opens connection to server 2 to check for open relay
Server 2: goto step 2, repeat ad infinitum.
Re:Common sense = mail routing loops (Score:2)
Keep a list of servers that you're currently in the process of validating. If a relay check request arrives from one of them, send a response without bothering to send out a redundant second relay check request (this is just common sense). This would always stop the loop on its second hop.
OR
- Get request from server X
- Check to see if X appears in local cached list of blacklisted servers.
- If not on list, generate random number t between 0 and 1.
- If t is below some fixed threshold, open connection to X to check for open relay. If t is above the threshold, just forward the email even though it might be spam.
- If X is found to be an open relay, add X to blacklist. Otherwise forward the email.
Loops would still occur but they would go extinct fairly quickly. Some spam would get through at the beginning but a torrent coming from a single relay would get that relay added to the blacklist cache almost immediately.
Actual URL (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Actual URL (Score:2)
Maybe ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe some of these admins ARE the spam-spewing individuals.
~LoudMusic
Spam blocks are unfair (Score:4, Insightful)
I live in Hong Kong and because of them I can¦t get e-mail through to some of my family and friends. Now I¦m a decent person, I post to /. send in bug reports for open-source software and I¦ve never spammed anyone in my life but I still have to suffer these restrictions.
The whole joy of the internet is that anyone can communicate with anyone else. If an ISP were to put a blanket ban on certain websites because a few of them throw up annoying adverts there would be outcry. Freedom of communication is considered important enough that people just have to deal with the annoying side effects themselves. Why is this not the case with e-mail as well?
I hope that China does something about spam mail but this really is not the way to encourage it.
Of course it is unfair (Score:3, Interesting)
Spam basically makes email useless, it is certainly not the near real-time media it used to be. Blacklisting can make email almost useable again. Of course, it is nowhere near as useful as before the spammers took over, but at least the signal no longer totally drowns in the noice.
Unless something effective is done to spam at the political level, we probably soon have to either give up email entirely, or switch to whitelists. With whitelists, only people in your address book can send mail to you directly. Other people may be able to come through after various kinds of verification. This will cut of many once useful features of email, but at least some core functionality will survive.
Please do not blame the people who try to make email survive in spite of the spam onslaught. Without these people, email would die.
Re:Spam blocks are unfair (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a decent person, but for years I've lived in bad neighborhoods. Many of my friends aren't comfortable visiting me. Is that unfair? Or just reasonable behavior?
Regardless, my whining doesn't make them come visit me more often. So a few years back I moved to a slightly better area and I do what I can to make my new 'hood safer still. Perhaps you could try that? Given your location and your language skills, you could be a big help to the anti-spam community.
I hope that China does something about spam mail but this really is not the way to encourage it.
That's a nice thought, but utterly wrong. Something like this is the only way to encourage it. Chinese spammers have been a problem for quite a while, but a gazillion complaints had as much effect as the chirping of sparrows. It's only widespread blocking that has made the government sit up and take notice.
It's sad that it had to come to this, but the only lesson to learn is that ignoring spam doesn't make anything better; the longer you wait, the more painful it is to clean up.
Re:Spam blocks are unfair (Score:2)
The house-moving metaphor was just that: a metaphor. Translated to 'net terms, this means: move your internet persona out of China/Hongkong, i.e. get a damn hotmail address. (My gawd, even hotmail earns more respect than .cn or .hk...)
Re:Spam blocks are unfair (Score:2)
Then do something about it (Score:2)
It's also unfair that Chinese mail servers leave the door open for spammers, whether in China or outside, to send huge volumes of junk. It's also unfair that people like yourself who live in China are not doing more to get the problem fixed. The news article this whole thread started from does indicate some people are recognizing a problem, although they still don't seem to fully understand it. Maybe it will be hard for you to get the Chinese government to crack down on the open relays. It won't be any easier for someone from the United States to do so.
Re:Spam blocks are unfair (Score:2)
I live in Hong Kong and because of them I can't get e-mail through to some of my family and friends. Now I'm a decent person, I post to /. send in bug reports for open-source software and I've never spammed anyone in my life but I still have to suffer these restrictions.
There are two things you can do:
When you continue to pay your ISP without complaining YOU are part of the spam problem. You help paying the spammers.
So, yes, the blocks are completely fair.
Get a Yahoo Account.... (Score:2, Troll)
Re:Get a Yahoo Account.... (Score:2, Insightful)
All web based email is banned. You just can't go to the sites. Many political sites are banned. Many TOPICS are banned. They're on the cutting edge of scanning email for inappropriate words. Which is amazing considering email/internet is packet based.
Why do you think there was the big crack down on cyber-cafes? Did they ever let them open up again?
Re:Get a Yahoo Account.... (Score:2)
So, if you're fed up of China based spam, just set up a public webmail service. Or just a proxy tunnel to yahoo.com. After that, the Chinese government will just firewall your netblock, and presto, no more sino-spam!
Hmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Pot. Kettle. Black.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:2, Flamebait)
Does anyone else find it ironic that the USA is too ignorant to distinguish between Chinese academics and the Chinese government.
What's that you say? You personally don't represent the entire USA? Well, shucks, maybe that's true for people in other countries too.
This has potential. (Score:3, Funny)
and then... (Score:2)
I like it. It's...elegant.
It sounds like constipation to me... (Score:2, Informative)
On a different tone, if we can't ourselves pass any meaningful legislation here, why do you expect them to clean up? Given the fact 99% of the fucking spammers are from right here, the gun loving US of A, the problem with the open relays in China is just a side effect. If we had the proper laws here, maybe Sendmail would not come with relay disabled by default. We would all spend all the time dealing with this crap doing something more useful.
Chinese laws: genuine effort, but ineffectual (Score:4, Interesting)
This reminds me of my days in grad school in the early 1980s. I had two Chinese roommates. They subscribed to People's Daily to learn English (even though it had spelling and grammar errors, it was probably a good idea).
Anyway, after a while the paper began to sound repeative. It would continaully brag about some "new effort" to do something such as "end corruption" or "end pollution" or "improve education." That was done by passing laws saying "don't do this" or issuing a directive to "do that." Nothing would actually hapen, it appears, as I would read about a very similar effort a few months later.
So, although the Chinese are beginning to realize they need to do something about spam, don't hold your breath. Hopefully, they will come around some year to doing something effective . . . such as having ISPs actually respond to abuse reports and close open relays, for example.
Korea (Score:3, Informative)
Probably along the line of china, the admins probably don't speak english or else couldn't give a shit to stop the spammers because I just keep getting it.
Re:Korea (Score:4, Insightful)
Probably along the line of china, the admins probably don't speak english
Idea: can somebody who speaks chinese write a standard complaint about an open relay in chinese? Just leave a blank where we can fill out the IP address.
If we've got such a standard template, the language barier is effectively broken and we're a (very) small step closer to a clean internet.
Re:Korea (Score:2)
Tiptoe, tiptoe, spam (Score:5, Insightful)
We aid them block so called subversive sites from their entire country, we tolerate crackdowns on their populace, we paper over the facts, we supress demonstration when their officials visit our countries, we tolerate the occational nuclear secret heading their way and we've forgotton about Tienemen Square.
Why? Are they as bigger threat as Russia was? Are they capable of collapsing the Western economies with the stroke of a pen? No! Their near slave labor, poor working conditions and semi-rural economy is the cheapest place to make our goods. That's all. If you want the support of the west just open up your market, keep prices cheap and keep production up.
This spam blocking is another way of making China comfortable. Maybe we are doing the right thing and eventually (because of the increased trade) they'll become just like us. We'll just have to wait and see.
Re:Run over the insecure servers with tanks (Score:2)
202.0.0.0/8 contains IP assignments to many other countries. Why not go get your own list of what IP addresses actually are assigned to China.
China needs to understand the problem first (Score:2)
I've been blocking China (including Hong Kong), Taiwan, and Korea, for nearly 2 years now.
First of all, I am not blocking mail from China; I am blocking mail from SMTP connections with a source address in the IP assignments to China, regardless of where it comes from. My preferred method of filtering is to prevent the delivery of spam in the first place. That means I block it by IP address or validated domain name. Mr. Zeng Xiaozhen needs to understand that the issue is about open relays, which intermingle mail originating from China, and mail being relayed by spammers.
More of the spam from Chinese mail servers originates from other countries because the servers are open relays. They need to outlaw open relay servers, perhaps with some very harsh penalties.
Also, since most of the open relays are older versions of Microsoft Exchange Server, it appears that software piracy is a big key here. I would assume that software systems Microsoft has sold in China came with documentation in Chinese. Pirate software often comes with little or no documentation. And what it does come with may not be the Chinese version in the first place, making it useless unless the administrator reads English (assuming most pirated software has some of that). If the Chinese government were to crack down on not only misconfigurations of mail servers, but also the use of any pirated commercial software (especially that connected to the internet), I think it would go a long ways to solving these problems. If the businesses doing this cannot afford a licensed copy of Microsoft Exchange server, maybe they need to switch to a system like Linux and use one of the Exchange-like clones, or ordinary mail software.
Re:China needs to understand the problem first (Score:2)
...If the Chinese government were to crack down on not only misconfigurations of mail servers, but also the use of any pirated commercial software
Calling for a repressive government to "crack down" on its citizens in the name of spam control and software piracy is absolutely disgusting. Have you completely taken leave of whatever shred of empathy you may have once posessed? Come on, man, think! Is imprisonment or execution really appropriate punishment for such "crimes" as spamming, running an open relay, or software piracy? Is that really what you think?
Overzealous Spamguarding (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, it wasn't that long ago that someone pointed out how hard it is to be removed from spam lists [slashdot.org].
That aside, I've always wondered why people get so upset over spam. It's not that hard to hit the delete button. I get about 10 spam mails a day. It takes about 1/2 a second to read the subject, realize it's spam, and hit the delete button. Over the course of a year, I lose 30 minutes. That's not such a big deal to me.
What does irritate me is I'm a victim of spamguards, on both ends. My web hosting service (yahoo) for unknown reasons is listed on 1 spam list. I've tried - there seems to be no way off the list. So, occasionally, I run into an institution which has walled me off.
What makes me even more angry, is that my school where I did my undergrad, (UWaterloo) has implemented global "spam protection." And so now, I can't receive emails from some of my contacts.
It's about the right to choose. I want to be able to control IF my email gets spam filtered. I'm willing to give up those 30 minutes a year in order to communicate with people. As someone pointed out, that's the beauty of the Internet. If I want spam filtering software, I'll install it myself. I don't want someone else to make that choice for me. We, as users, are losing our freedom too. I'm shocked that noone seems to notice or care.
Re:Overzealous Spamguarding (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Overzealous Spamguarding (Score:2, Interesting)
That understates the problem (Score:2, Interesting)
Second, if you get 10/day, you actually don't have much of a spam problem compared to usenet regulars etc. I get hundreds of pieces of spam per day which is less than a lot of other people get. I manage to filter about 75% of it but the rest still takes much more than 30 minutes/year to deal with.
Third, even if it's just 30 minutes a year, which 30 minutes is it? A pinprick to the butt is much less annoying than one to the eyeball. An incoming email is an interruption almost like a phone call, breaking your train of thought and interfering with your work. A 5-second interruption several times a day is much worse than, say, no spam at all during the entire year except you're required to spend 2 hours on April 15 (tax day) looking at spam.
My filters get rid of lots of spam but occasionally catch a legitimate message, so once a week or so I spend a few minutes looking over the filtered messages. Batching them like that reduces the spam annoyance factor a lot, but it destroys the immediacy of the legitimate email.
The reason yahoo is on spam lists isn't unknown--it's obvious. Insane amounts of spam comes from yahoo addresses and has no signs of slowing. The obvious solution for you is get an address from a more responsible provider.
Re:That understates the problem (Score:3, Insightful)
The other advantage of name@yahoo.com style email addresses is that the email address is more likely to look legitimate to many users of the internet.
However, these emails are not coming from yahoo.com; usually the Yahoo address in question points to a Yahoo address that does not exist. What the spammers do is this:
- Send a forged email which has a false yahoo.com return address.
- Find an open relay somewhere on the internet to spew the email in question.
- Send off the email to zillions of netizens.
- Laugh as Yahoo instead of the spammer responsible for the spam gets the majority of the complaints.
As a matter of fact, Yahoo has a system which stops people from automatically getting new Yahoo email addresses.Now, as it turns out, SpamAssassin is smart enough to see whether a return email address with yahoo.com in it is forged; one needs to look at the "received:" headers to determine where the email really came from.
In conclusion: Yahoo is not in any way, shape, or form responsible for spam which has a yahoo.com return address on it; perhaps spammers should start spewing out large quantities of email with your domain as the return address on it so you know what it is like to be falsely accused of being a spam haven.
Now, if only DNS had an "outgoing MX exchange" record which made this kind of filtering easier.
- Sam
Re:Overzealous Spamguarding (Score:5, Insightful)
That's all well and good, until you start getting your email on your cellphone or wireless PDA, and you're paying for every byte you receive. Then, we're talking real costs beyond just the time wasted.
If you had to pay for every one of those 10 spams a day, would you be as willing to put up with it?
Re:Overzealous Spamguarding (Score:2)
Not receiving or answering the wrong email could do serious harm to my livelihood. It could result in an unmet project requirement. In an extreme case, it could cost me my job.
Re:Overzealous Spamguarding (Score:2)
You've just described Vipul's razor [sourceforge.net]
-- Spam Wolf - the best vaporware on the net. [spamwolf.com]
Re:Overzealous Spamguarding (Score:2)
More and more spam these days has clever subjects and/or sender names that make it harder to tell it's spam at first. Many people get high volumes of mail and can't spend the time to look at the subjects first, anyway. Your 1/2 second estimate is way off the mark. It's more like 10 seconds on average.
I block almost all spam directed to me at the server, because there is so much. I never get it in my box at all. But based on the 34,000 delivery attempts from 1 July 2001 to 31 December 2001, I would be spending more than a week every year just deleting spam. And that's if I stay awake 24x7. Looking at it another way, it's $18,000 out of my pocket if it were to take up my consulting time. So I let my servers do the deleting for me.
But this is all different for different people. My email address has made the rounds and is on a lot of lists. Yes, it is about the right to choose and it's OK for different people to make different choices.
Re:Overzealous Spamguarding (Score:2)
Lucky you. More than 60% of my
daily mail was spam before I
started using very strict filtering.
Seriously, I'm tired of the people telling me to
"just hit delete".
Re:Overzealous Spamguarding (Score:2)
So who's stopping you? You can run an SMTP server and do anything you want with your incoming mail.
Or, if you're too lazy and stupid for that, just switch ISPs.
But to demand that an arbitrary ISP should be forced to pipe spam through to you is as silly as demanding that the New York Times run the column your cousin writes for the Louisiana Southern Tech campus paper. You can choose to see that column if you want to, but not everyone is required to specifically enable it.
Re:Overzealous Spamguarding (Score:2)
Faulty anology - very faulty. What if he subscribes to the email newsletter for his cousin's column, but his ISP blocks his cousin's college's mail server?
Do you really claim it is unreasonable to expect "any arbitrary ISP" to deliver email to you that you had asked to be sent? Is that really your claim?
Re:Overzealous Spamguarding (Score:2)
Re:Overzealous Spamguarding (Score:2)
I receive roughly 500 spam messages a day, partially because my email address is and has to be public (I want to receive bug reports and patches for my software), and partially because I'm on a couple of mailing lists, some of which are even gated to spamnet (formerly known as usenet, yet another formerly valuable resource spammers managed to destroy completely).
Furthermore, since I'm in Europe, I've had to pay for my net connectivity (yes, including receiving spam) per minute until June last year [and people outside the big cities still don't have the option not to pay per minute].
I'd say in total, spammers have cost me more than 200 hours and roughly $100 just for the year 2001.
And since laws aren't sufficient, there's not too much I can do about it ("Sure you can sue them for $500, but you'll have to cover court and attorney fees, approximatley $50000.")
Furthermore, some spam is really disgusting - e.g. last week I received a piece of spam just this morning that contained a meta refresh tag that would have redirected me to a porn site automatically if I were using some stupid HTML email client.
I reported them to the police for probably sending pornographic material to children (because spam will always get to kids), and their response was along the lines of "just hit delete".
Re:Overzealous Spamguarding (Score:2)
I do take the point that filtering breaks the traditional model of the 'net, but that "traditional" model was largely set up RFC's that came out of academic institutions, and now that so many of these institutions (as you say) are filtering, perhaps the basic model has changed. We've moved away from an assumption of innocence, simply because when it met the cold reality of the Average Human Being, it became economically and socially unsustainable.
But that's not what you're talking about at all. You're only interested in your freedoms. Are you saying that you don't have the right to choose to pay for a mail service that uses your money to pay to handle unfiltered spam traffic?
Of course not, you're on Yahoo!. What you're saying is that you want a completely free-as-in-beer service, but that you want them to pick up the bill for handling spam to protect your free-as-in-speech experience.
Sounds to me like you're not pro-choice or pro free-speech at all. You're pro-beer. Last I checked, 'net access wasn't a right, not is it enshrined that it should be free-as-in-beer.
Incidentally, I put myself through university in the early 90's, when the net was free as in speech, but definitely not as in beer. If you want a free as in speech 'net experience, you can still do what I did, and choose to pay for access to it. If you choose not to pay, then you're hardly in a position to complain that you're not getting your money's worth.
Re:Overzealous Spamguarding (Score:4, Informative)
Lets say you work for a large company, with say 10,000 people. 10,000 people * 10 spams a day (low number, but lets go with that for now) = 100,000 spam emails a day. Thats a lot of spam. Now, lets say that each spam is about 10kb. 10kb * 100,000 spams = 1000000kb, or (1000000/1024) 976 megabytes of spam. Almost a gig of spam a day.
Now your company does not have a free pipeline to the internet. Lets assume for the sake of argument that they have to pay by the meg. Lets (wildly) assume that your company has to pay 15 cents per megabyte of traffic through their ISP.
Of course, thats just in internet feed charges. Assume that it takes the average person one second to read and delete a spam. With an average of 10 spams a day, thats ((10,000 * 10)/60) 1666.67 minutes per day, or 27.78 hours per day wasted on spam. Say the average person makes $20 dollars an hour, or about $40,000 a year. 27.78 * 20=$555.56 a day in lost time. Over a year, thats $202,777.78 in time lost to spam. Ouch.
So all those penis enlarger and diet spams are costing your company $256,000 a year. Multiply that by all the companies in the world that get spam, and you have a major financial burden.
Re:Overzealous Spamguarding (Score:4, Insightful)
Only 10 a day? You must be new.
One of my mail accounts, a Hotmail address I've had since before the MSFT buyout, seems to show up on every single "20,000,000 Guaranteed E-mail Addresses!" CD-ROM out there. Hang on, I'll open it up...
1513 junk e-mail messages since 28 Feb. 1513 in a week.. On top of this, there are at least 150 that have bypassed the junk filter. MSFT regularly shuts down this account because the volume of spam puts it over quota. Because of spam, this account is effectively trashed.
Just hit delete. Just kiss my shiny metal...
k.
Korea anyone? (Score:4, Interesting)
Subject: Re: Korean Schools Proxy Project?
From Joel:
"> It is possible that Appleton, Wisconsin, High School has an open connect proxy on port 3128 and the Tuscaloosa Unified School District has an anonymous mail relay.
But, apparently, one group wired every K-12 school in South Korea and they made the same goddam error EVERYWHERE."
RE: from Rob
Thanks for explaining this, Joel. Somebody sent me a couple dozen spams (morts, credit card, work at home) in the last week, each relayed through a different Korean elementary school. None bothers to record the originating IP. Amazing.
A letter to the ambassador is in order.
WTF? (Score:2)
Because it's being relayed through your servers, Zeng.
(Don't you just *hate* it when people just don't get basic concepts like this?)
Mr. Xiaozhen, Please take an hour, RTFM and close your open relays. Tell your friends to do the same. Until then, get yourself a Hotmail account - you're gonna need it.
Re:WTF? (Score:2)
Deterioration (Score:2)
Seems this plaace is getting opverrun by linux-wannabes
Why not default to SMTP blocking at ISPs? (Score:3, Interesting)
If Chinese ISPs were
Market forces are the right approach (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, it *would* help if somebody would translate a bunch of anti-spam configuration information into Chinese and Korean.
alternative solution... (Score:3, Funny)
smash
Censorship Firewalls & Spammer Blocking - Sigh (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course, if I wanted to put my Tinfoil Conspiracy Hat on, I'd say it was collusion between the unelected George Bush and the thugs in China's government to prevent cooperation between our democratic-leaning peoples, or some such rot. And if either side wanted to accomplish that, this might be the most effective way to do it. Truth is unfortunately stranger than fiction....
Can we help them comply? (Score:2, Insightful)
So now how can we help them comply and get *.asia out of the spam blocks?
What is needed are some good translations of a HOWTO which explains the problem and how to solve it. I don't speak an Asian language but I'm sure there are some who do. Step forward now and help translate such documents!
There may be a good reason for the open relays! (Score:4, Insightful)
They also may be trying to allow access to outsiders whose own networks may have been restricted somehow. All we see are the spammers, but there may be some important political or other communication going on here too, which they want to help keep flowing any way they can.
Effective (Score:2)
The key point is how effective this tactic has been, how often have we manage to 'persuade' a legislative to our view, within a week by conventional means (lobbies/petitions).
Why, we'll be happy to stop blocking your email... (Score:2)
Until then, quit wasting our time.
Rights? What about OUR rights? (Score:4, Insightful)
SpamCop statistics on China (Score:2)
If you produce counterfeit bills and try to spend them at my store, and I ask you to leave saying "your fake money's no good here", would you really want to try to sue me into accepting your funny money?
solution for china is simple: (Score:2)
find an open relay in the states and route all mail through it. hmm.. maybe a couple of open relays.
My thoughts (Score:2)
Spam control in repressive countries (Score:2)
The spam blocks, especially the DNS blacklists, are supposed to get the attention of the operator, so he will notice the problem and get it fixed. But it seems that it is the Chinese government that has taken notice. Is imprisonment a suitable punishment for neglecting to close an open relay? How about execution? If the Chinese government moves in this direction, how much culpability for the human rights abuses that would result do the operators of the DNS lists need to bear?
I am not attempting to hand out blame, I am just asking some interesting questions.
Re:Odd that China is looking to take barriers DOWN (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Yeah right (Score:2)
Given that, why is it that they can't be bothered to check their spam relays, to make sure they are "inaccessible from outside"???
Re:Yeah right (Score:3, Insightful)
That's because, when they named their country (when the whole of the USA still belonged to the natives of America) they were the central country of their known world. Japan, Korea, Mongolia, India...
They have a very arrogant view of theirselves
No more arrogant than the US and certainly less judgmental.
Re:Yeah right (Score:2)
I have a major problem with my country, the United States, because I think we are too arrogant and too judgmental.
That having been said, the above poster's statement is completely ridiculous. The United States more judgmental than CHINA? Where on EARTH are you getting your information? Yes, we are going through an extremely jingoistic phase right now, but we ain't got NOTHING on the Chinese government. Hell, the fact that I have the freedom to post this, including the first paragraph, automatically shows that the United States is less judgmental than China.
A sense of perspective, please. The United States has its problems, severe problems, but we are not Communist China nor are we Nazi Germany. Just because some of us unfairly put this country on a pedestal is no reason to unfairly dump us in a gutter.
No more arrogant than the US and certainly less judgmental. My god, what a silly statement.
Re:Poland (Score:2)
jedrek
Re:This might be a silly idea, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
For example, when a Californian governor-wanna-be spammed his voters [wired.com] (and apparently lots of Canadians), his spam provider routed the spam through a hapless Korean elementary school.
First the spammers polluted usenet, then email, now they're dicking with international relations. What a lovely bunch of lowlifes.
Reuters has an article on this topic [yahoo.com] as well.
Re:you can't legislate all your problems (Score:2)
The problem is a huge number of mail servers in China are coming online wide open for relaying. China is just in the past couple of years moving quickly to the internet. When the US started it's big growth many years ago, spamming was less sophisticated, and fewer people were involved. And the US didn't have to deal with a huge online base of foreign spammers wanting to relay through. Most new servers installed by someone for the first time on the net even in the US were open relays. The problem for China is they are just now doing all the internet expansion, and there are now a whole lot more spammers outside of the country taking advantage of the openings. Combine that with China now allowing businesses as opposed to the prior state operated socialism, there are many Chinese people wanting to find some way to get rich in business, without really understanding how to do it since it has been suppressed for so long (other than Hong Kong).
Re:A group of Chinese legislators? (Score:2)
Differing from Congress how exactly? Or the UK's current parliament come to think of it.
Cheers,
Ian
Re:Serves em right (Score:2)
Re:Serves em right (Score:2)
in KMail, I set up a filter (under 'settings')
if a message contains
ks_c_5601-1987 or euc-kr
it goes straight to the trash.
uhhh (Score:2)
Tell that to the minorities. As late as the 1950's Chairman Mao had to order the beaurocrats in southwest china _not_ to refer to the non-han minorities (miao, gui, naaxi, etc.) as "dogs" in official edicts i.e. laws.
This is not to say that the US didn't have
btw -- not sure what this has to do with closing down open relays in china. that seems like a pretty politically neutral common sense thing.
Re:first (shifman) post (damn there goes my karma) (Score:2)