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Spam The Internet Your Rights Online

China Blocks Spam Servers 250

clafarge writes "I just read in the AP's LiveWire that, as reported by Xinhua News Agency, China has blocked 127 mail servers which it identifies as major sources of spam. Oh, happy day. They also published a list of 225 spam servers around the world just last month." Guess they're following through on this.
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China Blocks Spam Servers

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  • Bah (Score:4, Interesting)

    by krray ( 605395 ) * on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @01:45AM (#6918651)
    That's IT? Jeez, me, myself, and I (plus my wife :) @ home have gotten about a dozen emails today (legit).

    Didn't _see_ any spam, but the logs surely show 685 rejects from known previously spammed us IP's.

    169 IP's made it known through various methods (ie: we don't KNOW anybody outside the US...) that they would probably spam us.

    55 messages/IP's (slow day, typically a couple of hundred) were harvested from trap addresses.

    To date I've had to unblock one (1) such IP at home (work is up to maybe a dozen now) that got caught in the traps. As email flows in, and not blocks, those IP's are reverse-harvested as OK. A problem child will become evident quickly. Damn, still trying to build the perfect mouse trap as a people, eh?

    IP's that have made themselves KNOWN to be a problem for us? Up to 117,469,666 as of midnight tonight. Yeah -- that's 117 million IP's blocked. Only about 3% of the total ~3.9-4 billion IP's assignable.

    127 mail servers. Bah -- child's play...

    Oh -- and the number of spam's that I personally saw today? I think one, which the Mac highlighted for me and dumped it. I know the wife got worried her pecker must be too small a couple of times today...
    • Re:Bah (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @01:53AM (#6918701)
      127 mail servers. Bah -- child's play

      Come on now. It's a start. If this helps other countries and ISPs to admit that unsolicited commercial email is a real problem, then this is good news. 127 mail servers today, several thousand tomorrow?

      And to pre-emptively strike at those who claim that spam is "free speech" and only godless communist countries would block it:

      No, unsolicited commercial email (aka "spam") is NOT free speech. The burden of storing received email falls squarely on the recipient, thus sending email is a privilege not a right. In the exact same way you don't have the right to call someone up as many times as you without it being harrassment.
      • Re:Bah (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @02:07AM (#6918769)
        Such a intelligent replay and posted anonymously :(

        You are right. Sending me email is a privilege, NOT a right. My bandwidth, heck my mail server, my network, my workstation, my time.

        Just as it is not my right to view any web site I wish. Some are paid subscriptions, some require user info, some may just not want me view their info for whatever reason (browser type, thinks I'm an ass, or feels violated because I block their email -- whatever).

        Bing - first spam of the day. Nothing there. Oops, bayesian eaten. It _was_ to the HOSTMASTER no less -- those absolute dumb idiots. What, that's not going to piss off the wrong people? rotflmao

        Literally. Really. That's my "spam out" programming's name: rotflmao

        NOW, recently, spam doesn't really bother or phase me. It's been more fun to watch their methods. Useeless attempts really. Fun to watch none the less. Yet -- I still get/send my email as "freely" as before.

        Simple and effective rule: one strike and your OUT
        • Bah again (Score:2, Funny)

          by BrokenHalo ( 565198 )
          Now if only someone would just block all those US spammers...

          After all, if my penis grew by 100% overnight, I think my wife might complain :-)

      • Re:Bah (Score:3, Insightful)

        by SlugLord ( 130081 )
        Hmm, well no I suppose spamming isn't free speech, but who defines what spam is? I'm not sure the government itself should be blocking the ISPs. I mean they can publish as many lists as they want, but if they're actually blocking those ISPs, that could be censorship. It's actually good that they only have blocked 127 ISPs, since that would almost suggest that they have only blocked notorious ISPs, not ISPs who also host useful material. Remember that there are servers that do nothing but provide webpage
        • Re:Bah (Score:5, Insightful)

          by whereiswaldo ( 459052 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @03:15AM (#6919010) Journal
          I suppose spamming isn't free speech

          Why isn't spam free speech? What is free speech, anyway? Check this out:

          http://www.spectacle.org/899/free.html

          It is important not to make the common error of assuming that speech is "unfree" because disfavored. ...

          "Free speech" in fact is a phrase like "free gift". There is only speech, and government opposition to it. Speech lies on a spectrum, and government is only good at binary determinations--the law is so often a sledgehammer where a scalpel is required. The more useful lens is our second category: lets not speak of "free speech" but of "freedom of speech"-- the desirability or not of various proposed rulebooks for determining government responses to speech. The nature of government and law as a sledgehammer influences the outcome of this discussion: it implies we must either smash speech or tolerate it, and that there are few nuances or choices in between.


          By definition:

          Free speech: the right to express one's opinions publicly.
          • Re:Bah (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @03:41AM (#6919084)
            The contents of the spam is speech and protected, and nobody minds if spammers read aloud their messages to inform people that they can enlarge their penis or provide generic Viagra. In fact, I thank them. (I'm up to three rock-hard inches as of last week!) But their message delivery method uses other people's money and resources without permission. That's why it's evil.
          • Free speech or DoS? (Score:2, Interesting)

            by Angostura ( 703910 )
            Your argument seems to rest on the belief that most spam contains 'opinion' that has the right to be expressed.

            Now, does the belief that my penis is to small count as opinion? what if the mail consists of the characters 'tretretrdytreye' - opinion? what about if the mail consists of a self-replicating Word macro. Is that an opinion? and would it be a restraint of free speech to turn macros off?

            Not intended as a flame, but there are interesting gradations here. It could be argued that spam, like the pe

            • Not intended as a flame, but there are interesting gradations here. It could be argued that spam, like the person who shouts 'fire!' in the movie theatre, is actually a DoS attack

              BUt in both cases, what is punished (or should in the case of spam as it is in the case of fire in the theatre) is the action, not the speech. In other words, it is not illegal to shout fire in the theatre. It is illegal to incite a riot with intent to cause harm to people. Likewise, it is not illegal to write an email talki

          • Re:Bah (Score:5, Insightful)

            by nagora ( 177841 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @04:27AM (#6919208)
            Why isn't spam free speech?

            Because there is no freedom to not listen to it. Free speech is something you can walk away from. Once the "speaker" follows you it's harassment.

            TWW

          • Re:Bah (Score:4, Insightful)

            by Capt'n Hector ( 650760 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @04:30AM (#6919214)
            Express publicly all you want, email is private.
          • Re:Bah (Score:4, Insightful)

            by AlecC ( 512609 ) <aleccawley@gmail.com> on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @05:01AM (#6919300)
            Free speech: the right to express one's opinions publicly.

            Indeed. My mailbox is not a public place. It is my private property. Spamming is like shouting your political opinions through my letterbox.

            Free speech on your website - of course. Free speech on my private hard disk - certainly not.
            • Re:Bah (Score:3, Insightful)

              by Dannon ( 142147 )
              That brings up an interesting question. What about people who print up flyers, then walk around a parking lot sticking them under windshield wipers? After all, the cars are private property.

              Or, for that matter, someone who wants to advertise babysitting, pressure-washing, or other services by putting business cards or flyers on every mailbox in a neighborhood? Heck, I constantly get unsolicited menus from Chinese restaurants on my front door, and I'd consider my front door to be private property. And then
          • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

            by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @07:44AM (#6919720)
            Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • Re:Bah (Score:4, Insightful)

            by Malc ( 1751 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @08:43AM (#6920085)
            If somebody stands in the street yelling at my home, I will eventually call the police and have them removed. If somebody keeps calling my telephone and spewing crap, I will take steps against that too. Why shouldn't I expect similar protection on the internet? I don't appreciate the intrusion in to my life. I don't appreciate, no matter how small, subsidising these people through my ISP's service charge (my ISP has to pay for the resource usage, and for the additional costs of their upstream providers). It's not a matter of free speech - it's a matter of my right to privacy, and my right to not have to pay for something I don't want. People who are apologise for spammers using this free speech argument are deluded or just plain stupid.
          • Re:Bah (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Anonym1ty ( 534715 )

            Why isn't spam free speech? What is free speech, anyway?

            Well lets look at it from a much simpler angle here

            I have to pay to receive spam there for it cannot be free speech

            END OF ARGUMENT

            What exactly is so difficult for you people to understand?

      • Re:Bah (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Seehund ( 86897 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @02:59AM (#6918960) Homepage Journal
        No, unsolicited commercial email (aka "spam") is NOT free speech.

        Be that as it may. OTOH, does anybody honestly believe that this will not be used as yet another excuse for the Chinese authorities to suppress real, non-spam free speech?

        Add spammer/open relay to the list containing out-of-the-blue accusations like "counter-revolutionary activity", "banditism" or "drug smuggling" and all those other capital offences.

        It won't just be the widows of spammer scumbags that will be picking up the bodies of their loved ones at the police station after having payed for the one used rifle cartridge... I can imagine the name of the offence being the easily and arbitrarily applicable "counter-revolutionary computer banditism" or something along those lines.
        • So in China, the next-of-kin of a state-sponsored assassination victim has to pay for the bullet? Muddy Mildred, I thought the death penalty itself was as low as a society could sink.

          What if you don't pay? Do they shoot you? I can see a situation where an entire fdamily get wiped out and the Government is seriously out of pocket!
  • by RinzeWind ( 413873 ) <chema AT rinzewind DOT org> on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @01:45AM (#6918655) Homepage
    So now China can only get mail from the rest of the world, but not from inside. That's the deal, isn't it?
    • by cioxx ( 456323 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @02:37AM (#6918894) Homepage
      The funny part is, communists will have much more success with stopping (or at least substantially curbing) the spam problem than western democracies. All China has to do is to look at the current situation, cut the lifelines of these companies which send bulk mail, and execute a few people to set an example.
    • If only it were that simple. According to the article the bulk of the servers are in Taiwan, what a coincidence, given the emnity in that relationship. Now if they were firewalling off the 127 top servers in China that send spam, then the rest of the world might see a benefit too, but no, they are just stopping servers mainly outside China sending email in. In short, this only stops the Chinese from receiving spam/propaganda depending on what you believe.

      Of course, just because the bulk of my spam come

  • eh? (Score:4, Funny)

    by pergamon ( 4359 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @01:46AM (#6918662) Homepage
    YAY CHINA!

    Wait, that doesn't sound right...
  • Nooooo! (Score:4, Funny)

    by GarbanzoBean ( 695162 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @01:48AM (#6918671)
    All my asian college friends can no longer send me a suggestions on how to increase my breast/penis/bank acount. I guess there are always Carribian islands.
    • Re:Nooooo! (Score:2, Funny)

      by btg ( 99991 )
      All my asian college friends can no longer send me a suggestions on how to increase my breast/penis/bank acount.

      You have a breast account and a penis account?

      Eww. Squishy.
  • by Enoch Root ( 57473 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @01:49AM (#6918678)
    So is China evil because they censor the Internet? Or are they good because the block spam?

    Hard to see the world in slashdotter green-and-white, is it? :)

    Being in China myself, I can't wait to see if this measure will block the 200+ spam emails I get every day. That would rock, evil-communist-empire-decree or not.
  • by Derlum ( 216320 ) <jmb6860NO@SPAMcs.rit.edu> on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @01:50AM (#6918680)
    ...but you're missing out. I just refinanced my mortgage for the third time this month, helped get a chunk of change out of Nigeria, and finally broke nine inches!
  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @01:51AM (#6918693)
    Is it possible that these "spammers" are actually servers with legit users sending "illegal material" to China via e-mail? "Illegal Material" in this case would include anything that speaks out against the Chinese governent, or reveals news articles from unapproved sources.
    • No, the great firewall already picks those out - that was done long ago since it was a higher priority.

      Sorry, I just can't see how pretty much the same comment is always insightful.
    • In the majority slashdot worldview, spammer == terrorist.

      We're all for an end to spam, which means we won't object very strongly to increased government monitoring and filtering of the Internet for purposes of ending spam.

      Don't get me wrong -- I think that non-consensual e-mail is a form of assault, just like many other non-consensual activities. I just hate to solve the problem by government monitoring and filtering. I don't want a world where I need a government-issued photo id to get access to the p
  • by suky ( 59722 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @01:56AM (#6918710)
    After all, China has never done anything that even remotely hints at censoring communication from the outside world that the government deems "subversive" and a threat to the Communist party...

    If this is the list of servers they admit to blocking, just imagine what the list they aren't showing the world looks like.

  • Riiight. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by PsionicMan ( 74653 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @01:56AM (#6918712) Homepage
    Uh huh. Blocking "spam" servers. Wonder how long it'll take before this becomes the convenient excuse for blocking servers espousing such dangerous ideas as freedom and political/ideological dissidence. Not that they don't do it already, mind you, but it would provide a nice, PR-friendly reason. After all, everyone wants to stop spam, right? Screw the constitution, get your shotgun, and let's go find the spammers?

    Spam, child porn, and terrorists seem to be the current Horsemen of the Infocalypse. A couple of the old favorites, money launders and drug dealers, don't get so much press these days.
    • Fast, fast, FAST relief for your social and cultural woes!

      (Not available in Florida.)

    • Re:Riiight. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by kubrick ( 27291 )
      A couple of the old favorites, money launders and drug dealers, don't get so much press these days.

      I don't think you got the memo. Due to the fact that terrorists have been known to launder money and deal drugs, all money launderers and drug dealers have now been reclassified as terrorists.

      Ashcroft Logic (tm). It's easy when you know how!
    • Wonder how long it'll take before this becomes the convenient excuse for blocking servers espousing such dangerous ideas as freedom and political/ideological dissidence. Not that they don't do it already, mind you, but it would provide a nice, PR-friendly reason.

      Er... You do realize it's CHINA we are talking about, right?

      They don't exactly need a reason to do anything, and as you pointed out yourself, they already do it and are fine with it.
    • China and spam make strange bedfellows.

      About the horsemen, I wanted to address this.

      As soon as they said, "This joint helps pay for terrorism", I knew they were full of shit on everything. As for why it's not played out as much, I'm sure one of the press agents for Bush leaned over and said, "maybe we should let go of this foolish idea about the cash waterfall of dope flowing only to terrorism; I mean, sir... lots of dope is made by good upstanding Americans who just want to relax after a hard day of ass
    • Wonder how long it'll take before this becomes the convenient excuse for blocking servers espousing such dangerous ideas as freedom and political/ideological dissidence.

      If I read the press release correctly, that's a part of the current definition of what qualifies a site to be blocked. They appear to have included those things as a part of their definition of spam.

  • Article Text (Score:4, Informative)

    by BenFranske ( 646563 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @01:56AM (#6918714) Homepage
    For the predictable /. of the story:

    China Moves to Block Spam Servers
    The Associated Press
    Tuesday, September 9, 2003; 11:47 AM
    --
    In its latest battle against junk e-mail, China has blocked 127 mail servers it identified as responsible for spam, the official Xinhua News Agency said Tuesday.

    "This has been the first large-scale spammer blockade launched by the Chinese Internet industry," Ren Jinqiang, an official with the Internet Society of China, was quoted by Xinhua as saying.

    The crackdown came as Chinese Internet users complained they were being bombarded daily with hundreds of junk e-mails, Xinhua said.

    Ren said e-mail messages from 127 servers will automatically be refused. Xinhua said the sanctions would be lifted after the servers stop sending junk mail for three months.

    Ninety of the blocked servers were from Taiwan, eight were from the mainland and 29 were from elsewhere, Xinhua said, without providing other details. It did not say if other countries were being inundated by spam from the same servers.

    Internet service providers in the United States and elsewhere sometimes resort to blocking specific servers in their war on spam. Those efforts succeed in curbing the number of junk messages reaching subscribers, though they can kill legitimate e-mail as well.

    Ren said the blacklist resulted from a month of monitoring by the state-run Internet Society of China, a group of 140 members drawn from private companies, schools and research institutes. The Beijing-based group aims to promote the development of the Internet throughout the country.

    Last month, the group published a list of 225 spam servers around the world.

    With 68 million users, China has the world's second-biggest online population after the United States, according to government statistics.

    Internet use for business and education is encouraged, although the communist government censors chat rooms and tries to block access to foreign sites run by dissidents, human rights groups and news organizations.
  • by Rathian ( 187923 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @01:59AM (#6918725)
    In its latest battle against junk e-mail, China has blocked 127 mail servers it identified as responsible for spam, the official Xinhua News Agency said Tuesday.


    *snip*

    Ren said e-mail messages from 127 servers will automatically be refused. Xinhua said the sanctions would be lifted after the servers stop sending junk mail for three months.

    Nevermind that ~70%+ of the spam sites I have been reporting are HOSTED in China. I had complained countless times to the Chinese whois contacts without positive result.

    Spammers will ALWAYS find a way to send their unwanted garbage around until SMTP is upgraded/replaced with something more secure.

    If China really cares, they need get Chinese companies to stop hosting these asswipes.

    • by Dimensio ( 311070 ) <darkstar@LISPiglou.com minus language> on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @02:26AM (#6918856)
      I had complained countless times to the Chinese whois contacts without positive result.

      I managed to get a Viagra shill site yanked. That happened after a mail filter misconfiguration caused over 4000 e-mails to be sent to to the host (china-netcom.com)

      I've heard that people have had some results by CCing their complaints to every known Chinese ambassador contact address:

      chinaemb_in@mfa.gov.cn, secretary@chinaembassy.nl,political@chinaembassy.n l, inf2@fmprc.gov.cn, chinaemb_in@mfa.gov.cn,china@opendf.com.br, webmaster@chinaembassy.bg,chinaemb@soficom.com.eg, info@chinaembassy.org.nz,consul@chinaembassy.org.n z, administration@chinaembassy.org.nz,culture@chinaem bassy.org.nz, science@chinaembassy.org.nz,defence@chinaembassy.o rg.nz, education@chinaembassy.org.nz,chinaeco@paradise.ne t.nz, webmaster@chinaembassy.nl,adm@chinaembassy.nl, culture@chinaembassy.nl,commercial@chinaembassy.nl , jiaoyu@xs4all.nl,military@chinaembassy.nl, scitech@chinaembassy.nl,culture@chinese-embassy.no , webmaster@chinaconsulate.org.nz,webmaster@chinaemb assy.org.tr, webmaster@chinaembassy.org.zw,webmaster@embajadach ina.org.pe, press@chinemb.fi,consulate@chinemb.fi, culture@chinemb.fi, edse@chinemb.fi,office@chinemb.fi, fin.shangwu@kolumbus.fi, chinaemb@simnet.is,chinacom@islandia.is, chinaemb@012.net.il, info@china-embassy.or.jp,consular@chinaembassy.org .np, culture@chinaembassy.org.np,embchina@adetel.net.mx , chnempng@daltron.com.pg,embaixador@embaixadachina. pt, conselheiro@embaixadachina.pt,politica@embaixadach ina.pt, cultura@embaixadachina.pt,militar@embaixadachina.p t, chancelaria@embaixadachina.pt,consular@embaixadach ina.pt, chinaemb_sa@mfa.gov.cn,political@chinaembassy.se, consular@chinaembassy.se,administration@chinaembas sy.se, military@chinaembassy.se,culture@chinaembassy.se, science@chinaembassy.se,moftec.swe@swipnet.se, info@cnedu.nu, protocol@chinaembassy.se,webmaster@chinaembassy.se , CHINA-EMBASSY@BLUEWIN.CH,chinaembassy_tr@fmprc.gov .cn, sinoem@zol.co.zw,chinamission_un@mfa.gov.cn, fmco_mo@mfa.gov.cn,minister@legalinfo.gov.cn

      • Uhmmm... Pardon me, but just by posting these guy's emails publically didn't you just let them in some of the spam 'goodness'? :)

      • I've heard that people have had some results by CCing their complaints to every known Chinese ambassador contact address

        Dude... That's a lot of VERY powerful people you're trying very hard to piss off...

        I hope you're not planning a vacation to the PRC for the next 10 years... :)
      • people have had some results by CCing their complaints to every known Chinese ambassador

        Partial agreement here. I prefer to limit governmental CCs to the sending & receiving nations [iiehongkong.org]. It doesn't make sense to involve Sweden in China-USA spam, for example. Here's a combined reformatted guaranteed opt-in list:

        chinaemb@012.net.il, embchina@adetel.net.mx, china-embassy@bluewin.ch, info@china-embassy.or.jp, webmaster@chinaconsulate.org.nz, admin@chinaconsulatela.org, commerce@chinaconsulatela.org, educati

    • by 2Bits ( 167227 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @04:43AM (#6919249)

      Nevermind that ~70%+ of the spam sites I have been reporting are HOSTED in China. I had complained countless times to the Chinese whois contacts without positive result.


      Here's maybe something you want to know.

      We have been asked recently to help figure out network and server problems by two companies (one travel agencies, one of the fastest growning in China, one textile company), and two government agencies.

      All were complaining that their network is slow, even during the evening when nobody's using, and they don't know why. These people are not in the business of managing networks and servers. Their system has been built up by patching here and there as the needs come up. Their email servers are very old software developed american companies (ah well).

      They brought us in to do diagnostic. We took a look, and the network usage is at 90% during non-working hours. We took closer look, and found that the email server and a few machines were sending out tons of messages. We traced again, and found that 5 to 6 (in each company and in each agency) machines have been owned, and are sending out spam (!) using the local email server. Well duh....

      Then we stayed up about two evenings trying to see if someone will log in. Sure enough, the spammer logged in, and uploading new spam message. We traced their IP, and here's what we found: one from Indianna (US), one from Texas (US again), one from Florida (US again), the last one from Mexico.

      So, what do you think?

      You can blame the Chinese for relaying spam or for not securing their network/server, but these are the people who are trying to cope with the growth of their business, and have no expertise to handle this security issue. I bet a lot of SMEs in America have the same problem too.

      And if you want to fix the spam problem, shouldn't you fix the root problem first?
      • by anticypher ( 48312 ) <[moc.liamg] [ta] [rehpycitna]> on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @08:24AM (#6919948) Homepage
        This is the main reason China and Korea seem to be the origin of most spam, owned machines. Most of the spammers, probably more than 90%, are physically in the United States, but they crack machines in other countries to make it difficult for prosecutors to go after them.

        Many companies in China do the absolute minimum to set up their computers, and to connect them to a local ISP. Firewalls, applying security patches, locking down systems, and other basic sysadmin functions are ignored because the companies directors don't know any better. Most of the press about hacking, spam, security and other problems are in English, very little of that makes it into the local papers and in the local language. So the problem will just continue until American prosecutors go after the criminals in the U.S. breaking into computers physically in other countries.

        2bits, did you contact the abuse people at the upstream ISPs in the US and Mexico? Did you send them a detailed report of a criminal activity, breaking into your machines and stealing all your bandwidth? Did you do your part to help get these spammers off the internet, or did you just take money from your clients and not fix the problem.

        Its not that difficult to get into the machines spammers are using, they tend to install pirated copies of PCAnywhere or BackOrifice, and not bother with passwords. So then you can check back and see where the spammers are, and mostly they are in the U.S. The biggest problem right now is getting US authorities to file charges against the spammers, because a real cyber-crime case is actually very difficult to prosecute, and the prosecutors tend to be very technophobic.

        I gave up a long time ago trying to provide evidence to US Attorneys General to shut down spammers, and many spam fighters are turning to vigilantism now to chase the spammers from the net. Even /. has gotten [slashdot.org] into the act [slashdot.org] of exposing spammers [slashdot.org]

        the AC
        • (Reposting, damn ./ cookies)

          > This is the main reason China and Korea seem to be the origin of most spam, owned machines.

          Spoken like a dude who's forgotten how long it's been since he blocked 12.0.0.0/8 (attbi.com), 24.0.0.0/8 (rr.com and other cable modem providers), and wide swaths in 64.0.0.0/8 and 66.0.0.0/8 for the rest of the North American cablemodem and DSL providers.

          > Most of the spammers, probably more than 90%, are physically in the United States, but they crack machines in other coun

          • In the event of a break-in, I think some US-based ISPs might take action. But for the ongoing flood of spam from consumer-level broadband, North American ISPs clearly don't give a shit.

            Some ISPs do worse. I've had spam directly deposited into my inbox. No 'received from' headers at all.

    • I had complained countless times to the Chinese whois contacts without positive result.

      I'm sorry; living in China, I find your statement very funny.

      The day a single man complaining to China makes a difference is the day I push the Earth out of orbit by sneezing.
    • Spammers will ALWAYS find a way to send their unwanted garbage around until SMTP is upgraded/replaced with something more secure.

      Wrong. Spammers will ALWAYS find a way to send unwanted garbage around even if SMTP is upgraded/replaced with something more secure.

      Think about it - how would increasing the "security" of the mail protocol stop someone from sending something that the recipient doesn't want?

      Whitelisting? Destroys email altogether. (Part of the power of email is that anyone can send mail to a
  • The list? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by gonaddespammed.com ( 550312 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @02:02AM (#6918744)
    So where is this list. I'll block the same servers.
  • I guess that China's GNP is going to drop by 25% as one of the biggest Chinese exports. I wonder where Ralsky will go?
  • by jlemmerer ( 242376 ) <xcom123.yahoo@com> on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @02:06AM (#6918761) Homepage
    I think that it's sometimes a quite good idea to block spam, but I should leave this to corporate or private spamfilters, for maybe you block a server that acutally also relays "normal" mail traffic. If this spam blocking is done in China, it may very well look like censorship, because who guarantees that - accidentally if course - no mail servers that support civil rights activists are listen on the block list?
    Here in Austria most ISP have Spam filters, but it is up to you if you use them or not, and I pesonally have my own customized Spam filtering. I my opinion gouvernment controlled AntiSpam solutions produce too many false positives to be useful, and especially in this case, it looks like censoring mail, all under the cloak of "protecting" the people from unwanted spam
  • by future assassin ( 639396 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @02:06AM (#6918764)
    Maybe the spamers will pay off restaurant owners to spam through fortune cookies. Vigra will make you lucky in the future.

    Future Assassin [futureassassin.com]

  • by molo ( 94384 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @02:08AM (#6918774) Journal
    Ninety of the blocked servers were from Taiwan, eight were from the mainland and 29 were from elsewhere, Xinhua said, without providing other details.

    Now we see the real agenda here. This is just another round of annoyances that China is imposing on Taiwan. Nothing to see here, no real spam blocking, just more propoganda.. or perhaps (tin foil hat on) they are blocking political messages/organizations from Taiwan and elsewhere?

    I think that is actually more likely.

    -molo
  • It's nice to see them doing something, but I have to note that the times that I've tried to get something done about a server hosted in China that's attacking one of my client's IP addresses have gotten NIL results. Zilch.

    That's in contrast to efforts to contact the named administrators of a given block of IP addresses in other countries. Not always responsive but it's been known to happen which creates a contrast.

    Good to know they'll try to quash what they see as SPAM when it affects themselves. Be

  • Only 127? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Jailbrekr ( 73837 ) <jailbrekr@digitaladdiction.net> on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @02:15AM (#6918806) Homepage
    I guess when they upgraded from an 8 bit OS, they can block more. :)
  • No, No, No!!! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Mostly a lurker ( 634878 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @02:20AM (#6918825)
    Trying to block spam by blocking email seeming to originate from specific servers just does not work. Email headers can too easily be forged. Further, even assuming you could identify where email originated, what do you do about, say, hotmail? Vast amounts of spam still start there. But, everyone I know also receives valid email from hotmail accounts.

    Effective solutions to the problem of spam will need much more sophisticated approaches than just blocking based on the content of email headers. I have read some proposals, but none yet that seem both effective and easy to implement.

    • Re:No, No, No!!! (Score:4, Informative)

      by DocSnyder ( 10755 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @03:47AM (#6919098)
      Trying to block spam by blocking email seeming to originate from specific servers just does not work. Email headers can too easily be forged.

      "Received" lines are written by the receiving email system and can't be forged by the sender. Of course the spammer can use some tricks like inserting faked "Received" lines oder the recipient's IP address as HELO string, but no spammer can hide the IP address the spam has been sent from. And these IP addresses will get blocked.

  • A shame (Score:2, Funny)

    by veg_all ( 22581 )
    Think of all the small penises neglected.
  • by Mnemennth ( 607438 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @02:25AM (#6918849) Journal
    Wow... that must have been the hiccup I saw in my Inbox between 07:08 and 07:11 while pouring cream into my coffee...

    Mnem
    "It takes a special man to water his lawn with an eyedropper."
  • Only 127? (Score:4, Funny)

    by tntguy ( 516721 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @02:31AM (#6918873)

    Damn, they should've used an unsigned char. They could've closed 255 instead of only 127. Or they could've used an int and closed 2,147,483,647.

    I don't think an unsigned int, nor a long long would've been necessary.

    • With an unsigned int they'd have been able to block the entire ipv4 address space! No more spam! ..until the spammers discover ipv6...
  • Oh No *sniff* (Score:4, Interesting)

    by cluge ( 114877 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @02:31AM (#6918875) Homepage
    *begin tongue in cheek mode*
    But where will I get my viagra? How can I loose those extra inches I dont' want and gain the stronger thicker inches I have been promised? How will I ever live longer without my supply of DHEA - or how will I ever find term life insurance or a good mortgage rate?
    *end tongue in cheek mode*

    *begin rant*
    Any help is appreciated - but I'm afraid that unless you take the consequences to the spammer out of the cyber world and put it into the real world nothing will stem the flow of SPAM. For example; when a spammer is hurt in his/her-> it's pocket book, or they get jailed with a large inmate who calls them "my personal love chicken", then and only then will they stop. I favor baseball bats and the angry mob approach, your mileage may vary.

    Pressure must continue to be exerted on ALL spammers and their customers. Lets face it China did this because enough mail providers had blackholed the entire continent of china and chinese business men were resorting to hotmail/some other method to communicate and it cost them MONEY. It took the consequences out of the cyber world, and put them into the real one.
    *end rant*
  • by skinfitz ( 564041 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @02:33AM (#6918881) Journal
    I think most people have something like "DENY * FROM *.cn" in their firewalling / mail filtering (including probably many people in China)..

    Why don't they just make it a crime to run an open mail relay? I mean - you can get locked up in China for reading a web page why not increase the scope to running an unsecured mail relay?
    • by 2Bits ( 167227 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @04:56AM (#6919288)

      I think most people have something like "DENY * FROM *.cn" in their firewalling / mail filtering (including probably many people in China)..


      Hehe, guess what, most chinese portals (Sohu, Sina, china.com, ...) and some ISPs have recently implemented a total block of emails that are originating from an IP not in Asia. Unless you send in the request to open up your IP, I don't know the procedure yet, need to find that out.

      Our company is in Shanghai, but our email server is hosted in America. Our mails (very legit, I assure you) get bounced with the error message explicitly stated that the IP of our email address is not in Asia. This "feature" is activated only in the last two weeks or so.

      That's nasty for us, because a lot of customers (again, all legits) are using their email at those portals, just like a lot of people in America use yahoo, hotmail and aol for their business emails.

      If you have customers in China now, and they are your bread and butter, I bet you wouldn't think blocking the IPs of a whole continent is very nice.
  • Naive (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @03:21AM (#6919031) Homepage Journal
    China has blocked 127 mail servers which it identifies as major sources of spam. Oh, happy day.
    Come on people, don't any of you see how inconsistent this attitude is? We criticize the Chinese government for blocking its citizen's access to information -- unless it's information that we think should be blocked.

    No, I'm not arguing that spam is "free speech". I hate it as much as anybody, and I'd kill for a simple solution to it. But if you believe in free speech, you do not want any kind of central authority controlling who is allowed to send email.

    Spam is a problem because individual recipients have no control over who can send them email. The only solution is some kind of digital certificate system, so a spammer can't establish a new identity simply by opening creating -- or forging -- a new email address. Any anti-spam measure that isn't based on recipient control, not server control, is going to be both ineffective and dangerous to civil liberties.

  • by e_AltF4 ( 247712 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @03:57AM (#6919123)
    >Ninety of the blocked servers were from Taiwan,
    blocking .tw servers should be no problem for .cn, but it's not blocking any spam not going to .cn addresses ?

    >eight were from the mainland
    wow! 8 servers from .cn - great!
    leaves how many still open ? 2^24 ? more ? less ?

    >and 29 were from elsewhere,
    that surely will save us from lots of spam NOT

    nice of them to tell all the world that thy block 127 servers from sending mail to THEM, but i am afraid that won't save the whales or the rain forrest in the very near future :-)

  • I'm not so sure I like the idea of the Chinese going haywire blocking spam sites, even if spammers are evil, and even if our mail servers have most netblocks registered in China blocked to start out with. As several other posters hint at, free and unfettered access to information is a good thing, and something that can only help Chinese (and every other society)--if the government is encouraged to start blocking sites, I can see the potential for abuse. Not like they do that sort of thing already.

    What I
  • by goodbye_kitty ( 692309 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @04:19AM (#6919185)
    You've gotta applaud the Chinese government for censoring spam mails given that the populace cant even read the bulk of them (yet). Thankfully the chinese language spam market is still fairly limited and hopefully this will nip a potentially very big problem in the bud. Having lived and worked in china i can say with confidence that their internet filtering systems are weak at best and easily circumvented, even by accident. Most of the time they just filter according to URL, e.g. www.cnn.com would be out but europe.cnn.com would work. No content based blocking occurs at all, for example if you find that you cant read CNN in china (which is usually the case) you just go somewhere that you would expect to pretty much mirror the content (e.g. The Sydney Morning Herald) and read away to your hearts content. As well it is interesting that chinese language taiwanese news sites are censored but english language taiwanese news sites are not. Having said all this i must add that most (read 99.99%) of the internet population in china couldn't be the least bit interested in reading american-biased news or cheap CD offers, and trust the US government almost as much as most USians trust the Chinese government.
  • Here's The Blacklist (Score:5, Informative)

    by Pakup ( 624459 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @05:05AM (#6919314)
    You'll find the list of banned mainland addresses HERE [isc.org.cn], the list of banned Taiwan addresses HERE [isc.org.cn], and the list of the other banned addresses HERE [isc.org.cn]. There's a long report in Chinese about the blacklisting HERE [isc.org.cn]; it notes the special effort China's made to close open relays nationwide.

    Here's the list of 29 banned addresses outside the Mainland and Taiwan:

    1. 200.84.154.28 dC8549A1C.dslam-01-1-2-01-01-01.acr.dsl.cantv.net 2. 24.29.146.158 (RoadRunner) 3. 64.15.239.131 mail.bigfoot.com 4. 65.54.247.110 bay2-f110.bay2.hotmail.com 5. 66.218.66.101 n33.grp.scd.yahoo.com

    6. 66.218.66.103 n35.grp.scd.yahoo.com 7. 66.218.66.106n38.grp.scd.yahoo.com 8. 66.218.66.66 n11.grp.scd.yahoo.com 9. 66.218.66.72 n17.grp.scd.yahoo.com 10. 66.218.66.73 n18.grp.scd.yahoo.com

    11. 66.218.66.77 n21.grp.scd.yahoo.com 12. 66.218.66.80 n24.grp.scd.yahoo.com 13. 66.218.66.84 n28.grp.scd.yahoo.com 14. 66.218.66.92 n8.grp.scd.yahoo.com 15. 66.218.78.131 web40514.mail.yahoo.com

    16. 207.199.160.40 (Crosslink, US) 17. 216.33.121.8 www01.rfaweb.org 18. 195.147.87.107 ip03.afrocari.adsl.gxn.net 19. 80.49.187.11 pd11.ostroleka.sdi.tpnet.pl 20. 61.41.62.138 (Mobile Leader, Korea) 21. 203.251.44.102 (Taejon, Korea)

    22. 210.121.220.77 (Woosung, Korea) 23. 211.186.145.100 (Thrunet, Korea) 24. 211.198.226.96 (Korea Telecom) 25. 211.206.199.2 (Sunchunac, Korea)

    26. 202.144.67.19 (Satyam Infoway, India) 27. 193.162.153.2 (Tele Danmark) 28. 24.81.222.210 h24-81-222-210.vc.shawcable.net 29. 202.163.130.7 (Online Training, Australia)
  • Do as my Professor: reject all emails originating from .com adresses!


    (This is not a joke! He really does reject all .com emails.)
    • Another academic who doesn't live in the real world. It's easy being militant and idealistic academia, but try it elsewhere and you will have problems getting or holding down jobs.
  • by billstewart ( 78916 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @05:34AM (#6919388) Journal
    If you read the articles, it doesn't say that they're stopping Chinese spammers from sending spam to foreign countries. It says that they're blocking mail to Chinese ISPs _from_ 127 alleged spam sites, mostly in Taiwan. Now, I wouldn't be surprised if most or all of them really _are_ spammers, because China has a market for Viagra and Cable Descramblers too, and there'll be spammers happy to fill it. But China's been heavily into censorship for a while, not that it's easily enforced even if you have quasi-monopoly Internet backbone providers.

    Unfortunately, I'd guess that almost all of those sites are sending spam in Chinese. I get very little of that - almost all the spam I get from China is in English, though there does seem to be less of it than there used to be.

  • Spam from Florida. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by vitojph ( 638205 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @05:36AM (#6919392) Homepage Journal

    Come on, guys, everybody knows that the spam capital of the world is the beautiful Boca Raton, Florida: in spanish [gsmbox.com] and in english [guardian.co.uk].

    China ha nothing to do with this.

  • Now... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @07:23AM (#6919634) Journal
    if we can just block AOL, Yahoo, and MSN from doing spam at a corporate level.
  • open proxy list (Score:2, Insightful)

    by humankind ( 704050 )
    Does anyone have a good list of verified open proxies? DSL and Cable connections that should not be running SMTP traffic? This seems to be the main source of Spam.
  • Great news (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tcr ( 39109 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @08:21AM (#6919929)
    This feels good...

    I've been using Spamcop on my personal accounts for a while now, and blocking all email from China, Brazil, Argentina, etc. Analysing the held queue now and again, it was amazing how much of this crap was coming out of China.

    Guess it shows that if enough organisations are prepared to ignore their torrents of junk, things start to happen.
  • by Anonymous Coward
    http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=linford-A379 E 8.17102005092003%40news.supernews.com&oe=UTF-8&out put=gplain

    The shyster representing the spammer's org tried to drop his frivolous case. Spamhaus won't let him! Not unless he pays legal fees! Aritcle in today's Wired.

    Oh, the URL above, a post by head of Spamhaus, lists the home address of the shyster's atty:

    MARK E FELSTEIN
    2207 S CAROLINA AVE 22
    TAMPA, FL 33609

    Sorry no email address provided. Sure would be a shame if someone got mad at him
  • I'm amazed... between this and the worms apparently forcing people to actually close open relays, my spam has gone from ~20/day to near zero... any chance of russia also shutting down spammers?
  • It is too bad the USA and Russia couldnot get a clue here, and China has to lead the way. The solution to ending spam has always been simple, but the US admins/govt keeps throwing up their hands. he way to do it is

    1) make spamming in the USA completely illegal, worth jailtime in federal pound-me-in0the-ass prison.

    2) make it mandatory for border routers to block all traffic to and from servers on a black hole list which any network which is the origin of spam automatically gets added to.

    If ISPs find out

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