Oh Look: You're Still Getting Plenty Of Spam
from the not-going-anywhere dept
Yesterday we noted how silly it was for federal authorities to tell the press that by arresting a single spammer that spam could start to drop. While the guy clearly was a big spammer, there's no shortage of others willing to fill his place. And the idea that this would scare off other spammers is simply false. Other spammers have received huge fines and long jail terms in the past and it hasn't decreased spam one bit. Also, many of the biggest spammers aren't based in the US anyway, so they don't care what's happening here. So it's nice to see the press pushing back (though, a day late) pointing out that the arrest appeared to have no impact on spam rates while quoting many critics pointing out that it's ridiculous to think that this arrest would have any impact on spam rates.
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Definitely less spam
We get 50% less in the last 6 weeks.
Something has definitely changed.
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Re: Definitely less spam
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Uh, end of school year and summer happened.
Your spam and overall network usage goes down at the end of the school year winds down. All of those infected machines get de-commissioned or turned off.
The arrest was a spammer that used large zombie networks to deliver email. Millions of PC and thousands of zombies go off-line in the summer as college students head home to slower network connections and Public Schools shutdown.
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even more so...
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Get a good spam filter and call it a day.
What about telemarketers?
How is internet soliciting so much worse than getting a phone call while your eating dinner?
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Re:
We have someone here that needs to be reminded a few times a month that there is a reason that it is going to junk mail - "but I think I REALLY WANT THIS" - says she...
As long as there are idiots there will be spam.
Internet Solicitors, as you so kindly call them are much worse than telemarketers, with the national do not call list you can tell them not to call and you have recourse if they continue to do so. Since adding myself to the list I have only gotten one or two unsolicited calls, of course you still have the people calling for donations to the cops, used to do this every year until the guy on the phone got too pushy.
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Re: what a bad comparison
That's an average of about 83 spams per account per day. I do not get 83 telemarketing calls in one day. Granted, I only have one home phone number, which is digital, and in the three years I've had that number we've only gotten 2 telemarking calls and all of my work numbers are cell based so I only have the oh so rare random dialer call...but c'mon! What a bad comparison to try to act like this is no big deal.
Sure, it's easy to mass delete the spam with the same subject line and anything that has the words :penis, rolex, investment, loan, viagra (and all related), etc., but even that takes time if you are not a super macro genius because sometimes things get snagged as spam that are not, and they are messages that I need to receive, personal or business. So I still have to comb through them.
I don't know what the solution to this is, because the tech keeps changing. One can hope that jail time, fines, etc. will do something. But instead of just fining them, how about returning all the money in cases like phishing and such? Folks would really appreciate that at least.
Anyway...the comment that spam would go down significantly was just part of the Dog and Pony show. But by all means, prosecute when possible.
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Running Theme
"If you can't totally fix the problem don't even try."
I agree that officials and politicians have an ANNOYING tendency to being both naive and political all at the same time. They either think they are making huge steps in fixing things, or they at least want you to believe that they are. In reality though their attempts have minimal impact.
But your comments imply that no effort, unless totally effective, should be employed. Temper the enthusiasms of others all you want, but at least articulate that you recognize that people are trying to change things for better.
If we want to stop problems ( sexual predators, spammers for instance ) we need laws that lay out punishment, laws that define what offences constitute grounds for punishment, and enforcement agencies willing to then try to round up people who don't comply with the law.
For comparison. We have laws that say its illegal to drive drunk. Yet thousands upon thousands do it every day. Arrest a drunk driver and one more drunk will leave the bar to fill his place. You can never arrest enough drunk drivers to get the populace to stop drinking and driving. So applying your philosophy cops shouldn't pull over drunk drivers, because its a pointless fight. Judges shouldn't hand down punishments to drunk drivers after they cause a wreck or injure / kill people, because after all any penalty he hands out won't stop the waves and waves of drunk drivers who go out every day.
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Re: Running Theme
"If you can't totally fix the problem don't even try."
No. I'm not saying don't even try. I think it's great that this guy was arrested. I'm saying don't make stupid statements that this will stop spam.
Why? Because by saying that people stop looking for the REAL ways to stop spam. It makes them think they're making progress, when it's just a tiny drop in the bucket.
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Re: Running Theme
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Re: Re: Running Theme
But I do agree that deterrents still help, no matter how small of a degree.
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Here's How To Stop Spammers
Indeed.
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spam sucks
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Time for an internet postoffice
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Re: Time for an internet postoffice
Legitimate mass e-mailers, however, would be massively inconvenienced by this since they don't use botnets. Internet postage is a bad idea.
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Supply and Demand
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Spam Arrest
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Spam Arrest
Sorry what was this whole thing about???
Spam's here to stay, arrests will slow down the spread but only temporarily. Sorry to burst anyone's balloon. If you think arresting one person is going to make any difference, then good for you, I happen to believe that the real source of 95% of all spam is from elsewhere in the world, and there is no hope in hades that these countries will be arresting their citizens for spamming.
Now back to my Danish mail order penis elongator!
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Re: Spam Arrest
I personally like the idea of shoot-on-sight, but the whiny liberals will never let that happen.
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I think if you go and re-read the story you linked to, not a single FBI official is quoted as saying that this arrest will "stop spam." In fact, no FBI official was even quoted in the story that you linked to.
Many analysts who were interviewed, however, were quick to note that this would not stop spam and that there are 10 spammers ready to fill the gap.
I would argue, however ... that even in the abstract, having one of the nation's top 10 spammers suddenly having no access to his botnet; and being unable to actively sell access to his botnet to other spammers must have an impact. It may only slow the growth of spam ... but to suggest there is no value is to misunderstand just how few real high-volume spammers there are in the world.
Additionally ... at some point, this guy is gonna turn states evidence and help the FBI learn how the spam underworld is organized, how it operates, ways it can be combatted, etc. etc. This will definitely have an impact on law enforcements ability to go after the next spam organization.
To argue otherwise would be just running the theme out further.
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Re:
Actually, this is fascinating: the AP changed the original article. However, here's another version:
http://www.kiplinger.com/businessresource/apnews/XmlStoryResult.php?storyid=377619
No te that it *does* say that authorities claim that spam will decrease.
Additionally ... at some point, this guy is gonna turn states evidence and help the FBI learn how the spam underworld is organized, how it operates, ways it can be combatted, etc. etc. This will definitely have an impact on law enforcements ability to go after the next spam organization.
That hasn't helped any time in the past. Why would it help this time?
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One Raindrop.....
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Report It.
If they want to waste my time sending it to me, then I want to waste some of their time reporting it. Time costs them money too.
I also do this with snail mail advertisements, usually by calling the number on the ad.
freak3dot
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AOL tried this one...
Actually, AOL tried to do this: a while ago, they tried to setp a service where organizations could pay a small fee to make sure their bulk e-mail wouldn't be sent to the Bulk Mail folder. A large number of charities (possibly the Red Cross?) complained that this would be discriminatory since they couldn't pay the fees.
The organizations completely missed the point... and I believe led the media to believe that AOL would block mail from anyone who didn't pay. No one ever seemed to get the point that mail would still be delievered if you didn't pay, but the payment was to make sure the messages weren't flagged as spam.
So, if AOL can't even put this kind of system in place on its own network, just think how far a "Internet mail delivery tax" would go.
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Project Honeypot
http://www.projecthoneypot.org/home.php
Project Honey Pot is the first and only distributed system for identifying spammers and the spambots they use to scrape addresses from your website. Using the Project Honey Pot system you can install addresses that are custom-tagged to the time and IP address of a visitor to your site. If one of these addresses begins receiving email we not only can tell that the messages are spam, but also the exact moment when the address was harvested and the IP address that gathered it.
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opinions are like ....
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Priceless
Right now, his biggest danger is probably his former friends who are afraid he will snitch them out.
The IRS and Secret Service will be combing every dime of money he or his family has earned in the past seven years; freezing bank accounts, credit cards all that stuff. I'm sure plenty of warrants went out to Telecoms and ISP's, all that fun stuff.
I would expect further arrests downline. Our country is becoming quite famous for abducting people from foreign countries and making them dissapear, so we may not even know what happens to some of the people he rats out.
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Priceless
Right now, his biggest danger is probably his former friends who are afraid he will snitch them out.
The IRS and Secret Service will be combing every dime of money he or his family has earned in the past seven years; freezing bank accounts, credit cards all that stuff. I'm sure plenty of warrants went out to Telecoms and ISP's, all that fun stuff.
I would expect further arrests downline. Our country is becoming quite famous for abducting people from foreign countries and making them dissapear, so we may not even know what happens to some of the people he rats out.
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spam
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