80% Of Incoming E-mail At Hotmail Is Spam 422
The Llama King writes: "According to this AP story at The Houston Chronicle, 80 percent of the e-mail that makes its way into Hotmail's user inboxes is spam. And that does not include the UCE caught by Hotmail's filters. This is the first of a three-part series the Associated Press is doing on spam."
dah ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course most of it is spam. That's not Hotmail's fault.
Most spam is the result of an account owner's own actions (direct and indirect).
Other spam is just broad coverage, i.e. people sending to aaaaa1@hot/mail.com aaaaa2@hot/mail.com aaaaa1hot/mail.com and so forth.
I hardly have any spam on Hotmail, the spam I do get I mostly get from auto-forwarded e-mails to an address I had 2 years ago.
Re: I agree with the original poster (Score:3, Interesting)
How much of the spam in there is actually Hotmail's own fault? Who knows.... We don't really care either. She just deletes everything in it, each time she signs on, after retreiving anything of value buried in all the junk.
Re:dah ? (Score:2, Insightful)
Most spam is the result of an account owner's own actions (direct and indirect).
So, my 8 year old son, who is not allowed to use email without supervision, is responsible for all the pornographic spam he gets in his Hotmail account? My wife specifically set his account up as being a minor. He gets to send email to family only. And yet he receives 30+ unsolicited emails a day, 90% of which are pornographic in nature. And yes, we did set all the privacy options available on Hotmail. I'm guessing that our direct actions of trying to protect our son's email account so he can stay in touch easily with his grandparents is the issue. We have since switched to cable internet access and our son now uses one of our ISP provided emails (we get 6, which is a bit of an overkill). No difference in email patterns. Voila, suddenly he gets no spam.
Re:dah ? (Score:2)
The same goes for our 13 and 15 year olds. They aren't constantly supervised, but I do make sure I know what they're doing.
Things aren't the same as they were back when we played with BBS' and jerked around with newbies by telling them that ATH+++ would get them into "special" areas of the BBS. Ahhh.. those were the days.
The electronic world has evolved, and not always in the right direction. Complete supervision at very young ages is goood, but as children grow they do need room to explore and learn.
So I agree, and I disagree. Free reign doesn't work until they're older - kids will be kids regardless of what you teach them - but constant supervision isn't the answer either.
Re:dah ? (Score:2)
I NEVER had given the address out to *anyone* - and I de-selected the "list me in the hotmail phone book" option or whatever its called when I signed up.
I got about 100 spams a month in that box. now the only thing I use it for is give it to sites that require a response to their email for verification of something - like craigslist postings etc...
so yes - it is hotmails fault in that I had never told anyone of that account and still spam was getting through. also - they added me to the public user listing at a later date without telling me... and I ahd to go back and re-de-select that option.... lamers..
Re:dah ? (Score:3, Informative)
The funny thing is, once I registered the new domain, I started getting four and five spams a day at Yahoo! (probably from address harvesters crawling thru whois entries), but since I now only check the account to make sure I don't miss any mail from senders who don't have the new address yet, it doesn't concern me much.
Spam goes both ways (Score:2, Funny)
Judging from my inbox it seems that 80% of outgoing email at hotmail is spam.
Where's that mentioned in the article?
------
Cost effective attractiveness [wallpaperscoverings.com]
Re:Spam goes both ways (Score:3, Informative)
> outgoing email at hotmail is spam.
If you read the message headers, you'll probably discover that most of this spam isn't actually *from* hotmail. It just shows a hotmail address in the "From:" line. The "From:" line is no more accurate than a return address written in the top left-hand corner of a letter you'd get in the mail. In other words, it can say whatever you want it to say.
And as someone who has more than one e-mail account, bring able to change "From:" without trouble is a *good* thing
Re:Spam goes both ways (Score:2)
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/tech/1516
Well, i have a filter on my mail programm which redirects all mail from htomail.com, yahoo.com, aol.com and msn.com to the trash.
And that is enough to get rid of almost 90% of all the spam i'm receiving.
Re:Spam goes both ways (Score:2)
Re:Spam goes both ways (Score:2)
> filtering a high percentage of the e-mail you
> actually want to receive.
Quite right. I use e-mail for (among other things) communicating with my students. If I filtered out all those providers, 90 percent of my students' messages to me would get dropped. Looking over one of my classes, that guys filter would block 17 students out of a 19-student class! (Okay, so that's 89%
Of course, my main spam problem (I'm not on hotmail) is still the Korean spammers, which *are* rather easy to filter out without alienating my students. Although it still is annoying when the Koreans send me 50+ spam messages overnight and I'm checking my mail with a dialup connection...
My first reaction (Score:5, Interesting)
Still, there is promised security of the MS passport system etc. In this case it looks like more like a spam enhancement system. since this is supposed to be something to verify your login across the net. This means that most email addresses there have been preverified by MS as being valid.
a gift to spammers everywhere.
Not junk, per se (Score:2)
Actually, I use a yahoo.com account for my junk, since their spam filters are better.
Since I still have a Windows machine, I have Outlook Express installed and check my Hotmail through that, usually.
What's really stupid, IMHO, is that the best way to prevent excess spam is to block the domains, which I can do through the Hotmail web site, but not via Outlook Express.
Re:Not junk, per se (Score:2)
Not only are Yahoo's spam filters very good, but either they fight back at the isp level, or they just plain block some spam. I don't seem to get repeated spam like I do with conventional email addresses.
Forgeries (Score:3, Informative)
No, spam does not have to work because there's so much of it. What does work is selling harvested email addresses to assholes.
Cindy (Score:3, Funny)
Makes me feel good.
It's pretty much the most interesting thing that happens in my day.
hmmm.. I think I need a new job.
Yay. (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, we all know that email is a "powerful new marketing tool", but few have written about how much negative impact it has to the economy and our everyday lives.
I have an email address that I've never given out, and 90% of the messages I receive are spam. The email address on this posting ONLY receives spam... mostly in some funky character set that I can't bother to being to read. This address gets about 40 a day (and likely more after this posting).
So, industry self-regulation? Well that doesn't seem to work - and it didn't work with Enron (or WoldCom or Andersen or
So I think it's time that we hit them where it hurts. Pass -strong- laws. Pass laws that permit individuals to sue in certain circumstances.
They passed laws to control the misuse of FAX machines... and although not perfect, they do help. Then again, how many people do you know that have a fax machine at home? Betcha most people have unplugged theirs due to FAX Spam.
Re:Yay. (Score:4, Insightful)
So I think it's time that we hit them where it hurts. Pass -strong- laws. Pass laws that permit individuals to sue in certain circumstances.
What good is that going to do? Do you actually know the identity of the person spamming you? You can't sue John Doe defendants in Small Claims Court.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Stop letting the ISPs hide the spammers. (Score:2)
No, I want to make anonymous spam (commercial) e-mail illegal.
Can people have anonymous email accounts or not? If they can, they'll just use those accounts to send their spam.
There is no reason for a legitimate business advertising their goods or services should do so anonymously by spamming people.
But there is a reason that a person would want to get an anonymous email account. My information shouldn't be given out without probable cause that I am committing a crime. If a judge decides that there is probable cause to believe that I've sent spam, that's one thing, but that requires a subpeona. Merely requiring that someone "provide reasonable proof that the headers are legit" is not due process.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Stop letting the ISPs hide the spammers. (Score:2)
Can people have anonymous email accounts or not?
Yes, until they send spam with them. Then the accounts stop being anonymous and the ISP turns over the contact information for the responsible party. The key is who has the originating IP address, not the e-mail address.
I don't think you understand the question. My account is not anonymous if my ISP knows who I am.
Merely requiring that someone "provide reasonable proof that the headers are legit" is not due process.
I really thought you understood the law better than that. You are not entitled to "due process" except in a legal proceeding.
Bullshit. I am entitled to due process whenever my life, liberty, or property is being taken from me. Forcing the ISP to divulge information which it has promised not to divulge violates both my liberty and the liberty of the ISP. Further, it violates the ISP's right to not be unreasonably searched.
To use an analogy, if you get into a traffic accident, you cannot refuse to give out your name and address because you have not been given "due process."
Refuse to give out my name and address to whom? I can certainly refuse to give out my name and address to the person with whom I got into an accident. As for whether or not I can refuse to give the police officer my name and address without a warrant being aquired or an arrest being made, I'm not completely sure of the law. I suggest you show it to me before you make such a statement. IN any case, there is probable cause that you were involved in an accident.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Fax Spam (Score:2)
Re:Fax Spam (Score:2)
ttyp0's [slashdot.org] point is probably that the cost of the long distance phone call is what keeps the level of junk FAX's down. Of course junk FAX costs money, and considering the paper and the phone line time, certainly even more than spam. But that cost of making the phone call at least keeps the volume in check. With costs for sending spam being on the order of $0.0001 (1/100th of a penny) or less, depending what method the spammer is using, it becomes attractive for not only anyone to get into doing it, but also for them to use the shotgun approach and use millions of addresses. And if even 0.0001% of recipients are gullible enough to respond, the spammer has at least broken even on his own costs. That run of just one million, assuming 1 second (and that's a low assumption) to delete the message, costs recipients an aggregated minimum of $1500.00 in lost time at minimum wage. In reality it often takes more time to delete, involves people who are paid more for their time, and the cost of bandwidth, server operation and system/network administrator time needs to be added in, too. The real costs are much higher.
Re: spam ratio too high? (Score:2)
I, for example, have an account with Southwestern Bell, and last time I checked - they don't even have any spam filtering in place on their end.
I try not to give this address out, but I have accidently posted a message once or twice to Usenet with my real email address in it. (This was due to freshly re-installing my OS and applications, and forgetting to change a couple defaults before I posted.)
Even having done this, I only get 2 to 4 emails per day of spam. I receive quite a bit of email each day, too - so this isn't a bad ratio at all, IMHO.
Every time I've had real problems with spam on an email account, I can trace it back to something stupid I did myself. (Most often, it had to do with leaving it up on a web site for a long time, under one of those "click here to email me" links.) Those email harvesting bots will eventually find it and add it to spam lists if you do that.
For what it's worth, legislation rarely solves problems. Our knee-jerk reaction of "there oughta be a law!" every time we're upset usually causes our country more long-term harm than good.
I will say, however, that laws have been in place for quite a long time that may already apply to spam email. I just saw a Supreme Court ruling yesterday, while perusing a list of older "free speech/free press related" rulings. It basically stated that anyone receiving an article in the mail that they consider to be offensive or obscene (and the receiver can make this determination on their own) can legally ask the post office to block any further articles from that recipient. As you also pointed out, there are laws in place governing unsolicited fax transmissions.
We may not really need any *additional* laws to handle the problem.... only the courts interpreting existing laws in such a way that they cover electronic mail as well.
Re: spam ratio too high? (Score:3, Informative)
Additionally, for major providers like AT&T, Hotmail, etc, they'll take every single username that they know of at hotmail, and try it at AT&T, and see what bounces.
Add to this the fact that they often do these tests while bouncing through 500 open relays that they don't control, and you have an extremely hard to detect, hard to control wardialer.
Re: spam ratio too high? (Score:2)
How difficult/time consuming would it be for someone with a decent commercial internet connection (DS3 or better) to run a scan of the entire IP address range, sending a test e-mail back to himself through all discovered open relays (perhaps with the e-mail address used @testingcompany.com for easy identification)? This list could then be used either to contact address owners and perhaps creating public blacklist for those who refuse to plug the holes.
Simplifying the math, with about 4 billion total addresses (I'm not factoring in private ranges), and one attempt per second, I get 134 computer years. Divide this by a corresponding increase in the number of possible attempts per second, and it slices down rapidly. For example, 100 attempts per second would be 1.34 computer years, and that could be further lowered by either faster or multiple computers (or both). Factor in the private address ranges and it drops even further. The main problem I see in this is the possibility of a perceived attack, though this could be moderated by randomizing the address listing so a large block owner doesn't get hundreds of probes a second.
I'm sure spammers already do these kinds of things anyway, so why can't we? Or does someone already do this?
Re: Yay. (Score:2)
What could the other 10% possibly be, since you've never given the address to anyone?
Re:Yay. (Score:2)
Do you mean "never given out" except to family and friends? I only give my primary account to family and friends, and I still receive hella-spam.
I have a feeling I get added to lists when unsuspecting friends send me e-cards or click those "E-mail this article to a friend" links. I tell them never to enter my e-mail address into a web page, but they forget since it is seemingly harmless to them (and they trust "the Internet" for some reason).
I have dealt with it... (Score:2)
As a result I am one happy camper. I can keep my old email address and not have to worry about the tons spam...
Of Course It Is (Score:3, Interesting)
Problem with that theory... (Score:2)
I have never displayed the address on it's own in public, so maybe that's part of the problem. It can be viewed on the web page I created for this trap test [geocities.com], but nowhere else.
Hmm, now that I mention this page, two of the links seem to be down... looks like I have a bit of editing to do.
Serious question (Score:2, Interesting)
For instance, I've got a nice spam-free email account w/ my ISP, but all my friends have accounts with shady-web-based-email-company.com. If I send them (or if they send me) messages, is my pristine address now at risk because it's now in their in/out boxes? Technically, this type of collection would seem trivial to implement.
I'm not sure if the big guys (Hotmail, Yahoo) sell even their registered addresses (I could be wrong), but does anyone have a report of a web-based email service engaging in this kind of practice?
Re:Serious question (Score:2)
The same goes for outbound email recipients, if there's any truth in numbers. I have the AOL screen name "File," and a lot of AOLers seem to believe that CC'ing their email to "File" is supposed to save a copy to their local drive. I presume this habit comes from some email client somewhere but after years of receiving such misdirected email I haven't been able to figure out which one. (If only these people knew what they were sending to a real person, instead of to their local "File!") Anyway, I skim almost all of the mail I receive on that box - thousands a month, 99% of which are accidental carbon copies - and you should see some of the email addresses that people are sending email to:
"www.jimbob@example.com"
"JIM BOB @ EXAMPLE
"jim bob example com @www.com"
"mailto:jimbob@example.com"
It never ceases to amaze me; there really are a lot of clueless folks out there who truly don't know how the heck to format an email address. IMO, it would be a waste to attempt to mine the recipient addresses on outbound mails, since (from what I see) so many of those addresses are bogus.
Shaun
This article itself is pure spam (Score:3, Funny)
Well filter better ... (Score:3, Informative)
All these things are pretty standard these days, but webmail providers (not just hotmail) don't actually seem to bother. Remember, the more times you check your inbox, the more ads they have viewed.
They should be more aggressive (Score:2)
As soon as a filter picks up a message as spam, the originating server should be probed to see if it's an open relay, and added to a blacklist network if it is. More agressive, probe every server that connects! (Hey, there's less than 2^32 of them :-)
This way a spammer would only be able to relay _one_ message onto hotmail, and if they do the must expect the server to get blacklisted everywhere within hours.
Instead of defining spam, hotmail could define spam combating.
No surprise here... (Score:2)
I set up a Hotmail account on Sep 10, 2001. I needed to get a couple small files for a job, and since I had a cable modem I didn't have any internet access unless I was home. (Dial-up is so much more convenient in that regard...) Until that point, it was a small point of pride that I had not succumbed to Passport and all its' evil empire connotations. (So much for that...)
We soon realized there were more than a couple small files missing, so they FedEx'd a CD from Massachusetts to South Carolina. While I waited for the truck, I was reading /. -- and learned right here of the terrorist attacks. I ended up staring at CNN for an hour before the package came and I went to work.
Not a very auspicious start...
That hotmail account was spam-free for a month or so... I never used it other than to give the address to one person. I know for an absolute fact she didn't give it out or sell it or whatnot.
Let's see now... I haven't checked it in 2 days, so I wonder how much crap is in there?
- 73 Messages -- all spam, of course
- 362 KB
I don't know why I don't just let the account expire... morbid curiosity, perhaps?Laws won't reduce spam (Score:3, Interesting)
Now if only all the mail server admins (corporate and private) of the world get their collective brains together and start blocking all the spame using any combination and permutation of RBL possible, spam might not make it into our mailboxes.
SPEWS blocks ISPs. I like that. I don't receive crap from certain domains anymore since using SPEWS. I also don't accept mail from hotmai, yahoo, lycos, and many other free web-based email services except from whitelisted users.
At work I get about 15-20 spam emails daily from an old work email address when the company changed named two years ago. If only the HMFIC of email would block off that domain i'd receive none. Laws won't help in this case because the email server is located in another country. Only a technical solution.
I'm so sick of spam I run my own mail servers and filter the crap out of all mail. I receive on average 1 spam per week in my inbox. All the rest gets rejected or filtered into a spam filter that i oly perue occasionally, but I don't see it in my inbox.
Keep going SPEWS - it's a great system.
Bill Gates - I have the answer! (Score:5, Funny)
Scott and Larry said you would like to know about this.
Are you tired of churning Hotmail accounts due to spam? Have you ever found yourself wondering if others have inside tips that are holding your back?
Wonder no more. I have the answer. Move Hotmail to Debian Linux, type 'apt-get install spamassassin razor' and your problems will be solved.
Send your credit card details now to pay for my $0.02 worth.
Patrick
Re:Bill Gates - I have the answer! (Score:3, Informative)
In fact, amavisd-new (or is it -ng?) supports spamassassin/razor now, so you get 3 milters for the price of one
Re:Bill Gates - I have the answer! (Score:3, Informative)
Spamassin also is very bad at deciding attachments are spam because any large image will have enough 4 letter regex hiding that it hits. I figure it false positives at least 5% of time.
Re:Bill Gates - I have the answer! (Score:4, Interesting)
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=ad.law10 .hotmail.com [netcraft.com]
Same for ad.pav0.hotmail.com, law2-ad.hotmail.com, and many others.
Don't fix, what ain't broken - maybe Microsoft understood this rule.
Well (Score:5, Interesting)
Granted, a lot of spam gets through on guesswork (such as every common permutation of John Smith @ hotmail.com) but you have to wonder if something odd is going within the company when (as a test) you register ibtgsrq at hotmail dot com and within two weeks it starts receiving the usual fake degrees, penis enlargment and general porn stuff.
subnote: ibtgsrq stands for I Bet This Gets Spam Real Quick - and it did.
Re:impssible account names (Score:5, Interesting)
There were of the form (slightly changed to protect the poor accounts)
qris9.4food772a@hotmail.com and
3metre3e4w.pa7@hotmail.com
not the kind of addresses a script could guess by incrementing numbers. I carefully un-checked all the "please let M$ partners spam me" boxes as well. For the first 2 weeks after creating these accounts, not a single message came in. Then they both started getting occasional spam, obviously targeted.
A couple of weeks ago I handed out the first address to a number of people while in Spain, and then checked it regularly from cybercafes around Portugal. Within days it was getting 3-10 portuguese language spams per day. Now it gets about 20 spams per day in various languages, but the second account is still only getting 2-3 per day.
Strange.
the AC
Re:impssible account names (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:impssible account names (Score:2)
Back home (in Italy), I got lots of viruses from Mexico (obviously the PCs in the cafes got infected by Nimda, CodeRed, Klez and friends). A few months later I also noticed an increase in spam-mails from all over the world.
For me it's clear: viruses also spread your e-mail addresses a lot, and finally your address ends up in some spammers database.
Spammers obviously use *any conceivable method* to harvest addresses.
Re:impssible account names (Score:4, Informative)
It saves a lot of tedious filling out of Hotmail accounts and attracts a surprisingly small amount of spam. (And you get to find out who spammed you...)
Re:Well (Score:2)
I don't get any spam at all from hotmail, because when I click sign up all I see is this:
Microsoft®
(When using galeon, which should work just fine.)
Spam techniques (Score:5, Interesting)
8 - diane@domain.com
2 - diane1@domain.com
2 - diane2@domain.com
2 - diane3@domain.com
2 - diane4@domain.com
2 - diane5@domain.com
And also, such classics as jsmith@domain.com (and all numbers attached.)
Obviously, they can't afford to do this all of the time, but do it once, and use web bugs to track who opens the message, and boom. Instant verified email addresses.
Re:Spam techniques (Score:2)
I've set up wildcard dns and I only allow email for very specifc domains. I also am filtering at the sendmail level so I can say "sorry, their mailbox is full, try again" since I figure the server isn't going to be doing anything most of the time anyway, whats a simple database lookup and a few packets if it can get a spamer to reque a message. What I want is a way to get MTU discovery on their link to decide their outbound routers likes an MTU of about 52 bytes.
Social and technical measures - automatic fines (Score:4, Informative)
One of the better articles I've seen on how to stop spam covers Social and technical measures (Google cache) [216.239.37.100], by Richard Jones - using Google because that site isn't reachable right now. It doesn't have all the answers, but has some very good ideas. Most importantly, they can be implemented by ISPs without legislation, important though that is in the medium term.
I think a combination of strong filtering, strong terms of service (e.g. take credit card numbers of those who sign up for email service, and have an automatic and substantial fine for abuse), and legislation could really help. Spammers moving offshore actually makes filtering easier, for those people who don't do a lot of business with China at any rate...
One key point is that spam-filtering should be controllable by the individual, to allow people to make sure they receive email that might look like spam (e.g. most commercial newsletters) and server-based so that nobody needs to download spam over slow dialup or mobile wireless connections. SpamAssassin is the best tool I've found so far.
Re:Social and technical measures - automatic fines (Score:2, Interesting)
I would suggest an alternative. I would think a large deposit from any bulk emailers would be in order. For customer who will only send out say 20 emails an hour with at most 10 addresses on each email, a no deposit account would be available. Software will enforce limits. If the customer wants to send more emails to more addresses, then the ISP can have a sliding scale deposit, which will be forfeited if the emails violate the terms of service. Again, I don't know if implementing such a scheme would cost more than makes, but it might stop some spammers. Of course, most ISPs would have to have such a policy for this to be effective.
Re:Social and technical measures - automatic fines (Score:4, Funny)
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Disregard the remainder of this message, it was necessary to get around the lameness filter.
Well, now I have to type a bunch of stuff to get past the lame-ass filter. Blah Blah Blah, the cat sat on the fat rat, this is a waste of my time. The ends do not justify the means. I wonder if this line is long enough to raise the average line length yet, maybe I should keep typing. Man, I know why they call it the lameness filter, it is damn lame. 20.3 chars per line now, better type some more to raise that average. Lets see, I've wasted, what, 10 minutes of my life now because of this stupid filter? I wonder how many people just give up by this point. Blah Blah Blah, test test test. Maybe I can paste this line twice.
lamenessfilterlamenessfilterThis is for the lamenessfilterlamenessfilterThis is for the lamenessfilterlamenessfilterThis is for the lamenessfilter menessfilterThis is for the
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Re:Social and technical measures - automatic fines (Score:2)
tracking leaks through vanity domain mail (Score:2)
Over a year ago, I started forwarding webmillion@[mydomain] to postmaster@webmillion.com, because I was getting several spams a day to that account, and it was pretty clearly their fault.
Last month, I was cleaning up my rules, and decided to remove that rule, thinking that the problem had passed. Wrong! Within an hour I had 4 mails. So the forward went back on.
Oddly enough, Webmillion never contacted me about the fact that I was forwarding buckets of spam to them; I guess they are used to it because of the harvesting they apparently do, and just ignore that account.
If everyone on Slashdot started asking sites like these about their harvesting practices, or simply forwarded the crap mail back to them, they would inevitably find the parctice more costly than beneficial to the bottom line.
Re:tracking leaks through vanity domain mail (Score:2)
Well, if you really want to mess with them, look in the SOA record for their DNS - you can frequently find high ranking real people listed as the email contact, especially if it's a small company. You can also check the domain registration itself. Just make sure you're mailing an address at their company, and not some consultant that they hired for DNS, or their ISP...
Punish The Users: The Microsoft Solution (Score:2)
Perfect quote to show attitude of spammers (Score:2)
Obviously he would prefer to live in a non-democratic country and keep on spamming (read. annoying) people. Rather then try to provide a valuable service to the general populous.
As well, Ralsky is right, you don't get the same kind of grief, you get worse. But, that's the attitude of a con artist, no true intelligence or consideration for anyone else. I say, send the spammers to China. Hell, I'll pay for their plane ticket even.
Re:Perfect quote to show attitude of spammers (Score:2)
Re:Perfect quote to show attitude of spammers (Score:3, Funny)
>
>
> As well, Ralsky is right, you don't get the same kind of grief, you get worse. But, that's the attitude of a con artist, no true intelligence or consideration for anyone else. I say, send the spammers to China. Hell, I'll pay for their plane ticket even.
Well, if Ralsky physically moves to China (as opposed to merely spamming through Chinese ISPs), I'm all for it.
First - he'll have to spam through Chinese ISPs. Most of us have blocked China's netblocks at the router due to Chinese ISPs' unwillingness to terminate spammers.
Second - I won't pay for his plane ticket. But I will gladly pay Ralsky $5000 for a spam that says "Citizens of China! Bring freedom to Tibet, and bring freedom and prosperity to yourselves by overthrowing the Communist Party and restoring power to the rightful leaders of China, currently in exile in the independent nation of Taiwan!" (I'm sure the Falun Gong would pay Ralsky to spam on their behalf too.)
I'm equally sure that Ralsky, being such a smart entrepren00er and ethikul bidnizman, would take the money and spam from a Chinese ISP. (Ralsky's proved to himself that he's smarter than Verizon by leaving the country to escape judgement, so why should he fear a bunch of dumb Chinks? You hear that, Alan? You're smarter than a bunch of dumb Chinks, aren't you? You'll never get caught!)
30 seconds later, I'd be watching with glee as the aforementioned "dumb Chinks" he's underestimated broke through the door of his Beijing apartment and started beating the living hell out of him for his crimes against the State. Oops, guess it's not like America after all, and they're not as dumb as you thought. Aaw, poor Ralskyboy fall down go splat.
A couple of weeks later, an enterprising PLA soldier with a handycam would have a grainy videotape of Ralsky getting his just desserts - and Ralsky's relatives would be paying for the bullets.
Now, considering the fact he's brainless, spineless, heartless, lily-livered, and terminally short-sighted, I can't imagine any of his organs would be useful for transplantation. (I mean, how many people need an asshole transplant? And even the most desperate colostomy patient probably wouldn't take Ralsky's asshole in a transplant. I mean, having to force your feces to slide through that for the rest of your life? Have a little respect for your own shit, man!)
But yeah. Go to China, Ralsky. Go there, piss off the wrong people, and get your just desserts.
(Any PLA d00dz out there wanna make a bundle? Lots of us, myself included, think government is wholly evil, but you could make up for a lot of that by webcasting Ralsky's arrest, trial, and execution. The number of Americans who'd pay good money to watch such a tape in the millions.)
If you use hotmail (Score:2, Informative)
And block as many domains as you can in the block sender list. Every time you receive a new piece of junk add its domain to the blocked list if possible.
I just tried this recently and the spam I had to review went down from a 100 per day to about 10 per day which is much more manageable.
Of course the spammers will probably get more sophisticated and we'll just have to think of something else.
Re:If you use hotmail (Score:2)
This is news? (Score:2)
Microsoft's way of making money from Hotmail (Score:2, Insightful)
This has been said for months, but it's obvious why the spam gets through: because Microsoft lets it get through.
If you don't check your Hotmail account for a few weeks, spam will surely push you over the 80% mailbox size limit... and suddenly you get an email from Microsoft telling you that you've nearly reached your limit, and you should upgrade for only $x a month.
Also, don't they also have an advanced spam filter for paid accounts?
It's FREE, for crying out loud! (Score:2)
Read aloud:
"It's a free service, I get what I paid for".
If you want good quality webmail/email, hook up with an ISP who delivers that webmail/email for you. Yes, that probably will cost you money, but the last time I checked, my groceries weren't free either.
If you're dutch or from belgium: check out XS4all. This ISP has webmail, plus they have an antispam service, which lets you create a shadow mailbox which is used to dump the spam in (i.e.: you can check it if the filters have moved some mail as spam but it is legitimate). The filters use all blacklists available and some other sophisticated mailfilters. I received 25 spammails per day or so on my account there, and after I applied the filters this dropped down to 0.0. Especially the filters to block
myrealbox, Free and Spam Free (Score:2, Informative)
From the Myrealbox [myrealbox.com] No Spam Policy:
"Spam is no good.
Don't do it.
It causes bad karma and cancer (and perhaps some other diseases).
Yes, this is true.
No, it's not a joke.
Oh, and spammers rot in hell."
"For each violation of the no spam policy, users will be fined ten dollars ($10 USD) for EACH E-mail sent. This damages provision does not preclude Novell from seeking other damages as well."
They give you IMAP, POP in addition to a nice webmail interface. I'm assuming they'll start charging for at some point but this is a good example of how it is possible to block spam if the service provider is committed.
How about outgoing mail? (Score:2)
AAAAAHHHHHH!! For crying out loud!!! (Score:2, Redundant)
Done! Finished! No more spam!. Spammers are no more! And stop whining about bloody getting spam for Christ's sake!
[1] http://razor.sourceforge.net/ and http://www.cloudmark.com/ for Lookout.
[2] http://pyzor.sourceforge.net/
[3] http://www.rhyolite.com/anti-spam/dcc/
reason (Score:2, Insightful)
Well don't give out your email address (Score:2)
I also have another hotmail address that I use for absolutely everything, from registering to websites to putting it in my website, etc. Last time I checked I had 470 spams within a month.
Re:Well don't give out your email address (Score:2)
Once in a great while I'll look at it and marvel at all the crap that collects in there, but since I don't want it I usually just let it go until M$ disables it so Trillian doesn't bug me with 'new mail' notifications.
~Philly
Throwing the baby out ... (Score:3, Interesting)
I use Mail Washer as a pre-processor for my email accounts. It has now turned out to take more time to weed out legitimate messages.
More and more of my legitimate email from distro lists I have subscribed to from cNet, Woody's Windows Watch and even obscure lists such as Amusing Facts Daily now show up in the ORBD and other spam lists it consults.
For instance, just coming back from vacation I had 1200 messages across five accounts. 70% were tagged as spam from a spam list. 20% of those were legitimate distro lists.
The independent spam lists do a good job of catching most of the spam, but it also catches too many legitimate lists. I try to send an email to the list admin letting them know, but typically they respond that it's not worth the effort trying to get off the lists.
I've gone through a something just like it where I was Mudrered Electronically [compunotes.com] by my ISP.
This site [dotcomeon.com] talks about what happens when a legitimate company gets on the list.
I'm suriprised no one mentions Greg Egan. (Score:5, Interesting)
In one of his short stories, he mentions having a setup where a whitelist of people you know are allowed to send you email for free, and anything else requires a minimum payment (which can be set from 0 to as high as you want). Tired of spam? I wouldn't be, for 25 cents a spam. That'd pad my bank account nicely.
How could it be done? There are already proposed extentsions to the SMTP command set so that clients and servers could agree on an amount and pass a token to each other (be sure you're using a TLS aware MTA, like Postfix [postfix.org]), and it could be verified by both sides with the 3rd-party escrow server (which manages the money). Paypal is the only current online money system with enough momentum to make this work well for everyone, but maybe another one will come up
Either way, it makes it easy to stop spam by removing the one thing that spammers like -- the cheapness. Only people who want spam (haha), or people who don't live in the 21st-century (MTA wise) will have to deal with the 20th century scourge known as spam.
Filtering programs that work with Hotmail (Score:2)
ONLY 80%!!! (Score:2)
-Restil
Temporary addresses (Score:2)
99% is more like it (Score:2)
95% of my incoming E-mail is spam... (Score:2)
I use SpamCop, which is quite effective. Once in a while I look at the queue of messages that SpamCop has decided are spam. About a thousand messages a week are rejected. Sometimes I hit the "report them all to their ISP" button, but usually I just let the stuff scroll off after 3 days.
Why Hotmail? (Score:2)
I am currently getting around 75 spam messages a day to my Hotmail. Since I don't use that address for regular correspondence, just Passport, I just decided that perhaps its possible to get around the spam by setting my junk mail filter to exclusive, and then not adding anyone to my list of contacts. Sure I'll still get the MS crap about upgrading my account and stuff, but it should be so much better.
Is anyone else doing this? Does it work?
My solution (Score:2)
The domain sounds weird, but it is a web based email provider written by geeks for geeks. I paid $20 for a premium account after one day of using their free service. IMAP/POP/SMTP access, spam protection, virus protection, a really cool 'bounce' feature, 50 MB inbox, and a great 'Sieve' based filter system (you actually code rules in a pseudo-language designed solely for mail filtering), and you can receive email at anyaddress@youraccount.fastmail.fm. The interface is simple, fast, HTML only (with lightweight style sheets) and I've yet to see it go down or lose an email.
Not a single spam yet. Additionally, I use the anyaddress@ feature to provide better tracking in the event of spam. I gave slashdot the address slashdot@myaccount.fastmail.fm - so that if slashdot ever sells out (heaven forbid) I can just block that address in my ruleset.
Anyway, your mileage may very, but there are much better providers out there - there is no reason to stick with hotmail.
-josh
One thing people are forgetting.... (Score:2)
This means that it actually has nothing to do with hotmail, or microsoft, other than spammers assume (correctly in most cases) that mail admins won't block the entire hotmail.com domain as SPAM.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending anyone here, I'm just saying, be clear on what the problem is, and who the bad guy is before getting out the pitchforks and torches.
just my .02 cents (US)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Surprise? Public Emails Are Spamtraps (Score:2, Informative)
Here's my strategy. My ISP: 1 email account; personal use (friends and associates). Mail(.com): identifying myself in public commentary
Thus, my ISP email is utterly clean of spam. My Mail(.com) account gets a couple pieces of spam a week, with some replies from journalists, webmasters and programmers; I logon to Mail(.com) once a week to delete some spam and find some replies. My Hotmail account is a windswept and dusty wasteland of spam, getting 2-6 pieces of spam a day, and has some notices from the sites I subscribe to; I logon to Hotmail every 1 to 4 weeks to delete essentially everything, which is dozens of spam mails. The Go and Excite accounts are still being evaluated for their usefulness; I just login once a month to keep 'em active.
So, thank you Microsoft for providing me a spam filter. Go ahead and even sell the list of your Hotmail clients
Lawsuits (Score:2)
That 80% is probably only what they catch using the Junk Mail filters. I get a lot more that I don't even report because of how much of it I get.
There would be no way I would spend a dollar on increasing my Hotmail account size considering the circumstances I mentioned. That's lost $$$$ for MS
My 2 year old HM account is spam free (Score:3, Interesting)
Why is this? Simply because my Hotmail account is the address I give to people and sites I trust (this one for example) that I'm sure won't share it with spammers. My Yahoo acccounts serve the opposite purpose. Whenever I register to some shady looking website that just seems to want to collect names it goes to the Yahoo accounts.
I've said this before: People that sign up for Hotmail and get barraged with spam are either 1) using an easy to guess address or 2) using a numbered extension suggested to them by Hotmail eg Cindy1234567@hotmail.com. It goes to figured that every numbered extension before that is a valid address. Do you think spammers don't realize this?
Anyway, I know that
Oh boy! (Score:2)
You just have to laugh at what the spammer said. He's going to CHINA because the don't give you that kind of grief over peddling spam.
Yeah man, go to China. They'll love you there.
Dude! I'll pay for your plane ticket! (Score:5, Insightful)
"I think China is good place to be," Ralsky said. "You don't get the same kind of grief.""
You go do that. And as more and more Chinese domains are blocked at the border Beijing will start to notice the effect it has on business there, where their businesses aren't able to reach customers that can afford such luxuries like "indoor plumbing" (with the local GDP per capita still hovering around $3600, China needs Western markets). And Beijing will start to impose new anti-spam laws with penalties ranging from all-expense paid trips to one of the interior's lovely "re-education" camps to death by an accute case of lead poisoning delivered to the back of the head (conducted in stadiums so we all had the chance to cheer them on).
Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out!
Re:Er... (Score:2)
Re:Er... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Er... (Score:2)
Re:Er... (Score:2, Interesting)
Unlike with snail mail or junk phone calls/faxes where the incremental cost means there is at least some attempt on the senders part to restrict who they send their stuff to. You don't generally get junk telephone calls from half way around the world in an incomprehensible language
Re:No surprise (Score:2)
- HeXa
Re:Simple Solution - Don't Use Hotmail (Score:2)
- HeXa
Re:Simple Solution - Don't Use Hotmail (Score:2)
Re:Simple Solution - Don't Use Hotmail (Score:2)
The computer illiterate insisting on using Hotmail predates this though. Even when a better, faster, more reliable system is available.
Re:Why do people use hotmail? (Score:2)