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New Spam Site Found Every Three Seconds
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed Apr 16, 2008 09:24 PM
from the spam-sausage-spam-spam-spam-mail-and-spam dept.
from the spam-sausage-spam-spam-spam-mail-and-spam dept.
Stony Stevenson writes "New figures suggest that 92.3 percent of all email sent globally during the first three months of 2008 was spam. The data from Sophos also indicated that 23,300 new spam-related web pages were created every day during the period, or one about every three seconds. For the first time Turkey's contribution to the global spam problem puts it in the top three offending countries. Compromised computers in Turkey are now responsible for relaying 5.9 percent of the world's junk email, compared to 3.8 percent in the final quarter of 2007."
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ntpdate time.spam.net? (Score:5, Funny)
Ranking is unimportant (Score:5, Insightful)
Third placed Turkey and tenth placed UK are wthin a +- 6% band, probably close to the margin of error in the analysis.
I dont get it... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I dont get it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes; it takes plenty of processor time, electricity, memory, bandwidth, and administrator time to make sure that you don't get spam. Also, not everyone uses e-mail the same way you do. Some of us actually want to hear from people we don't know.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Also for some reason I am more likely to get spam on my hotmail/gmail accounts than I am on my work account, and I don't hand those emails out to anybod
Re:I dont get it... (Score:5, Interesting)
IIRC there was someone who tried an experiment some time ago. They tried to buy some of the v1|4|g|r|4 that they'd seen advertised in spam.
They couldn't find a single spam which actually led to someone genuinely trying to sell something. I think they concluded that spam had mostly become a pyramid scheme, with a handful of people at the top trying (with some success) to persuade everyone below that they could make lots of money from spam - all they needed to do was buy this mailing list software and that list of email addresses...
Parent
Re:I dont get it... (Score:4, Informative)
Try it yourself. I just did, went to my trash folder and opened the first mail. Took me to sale-drug.com, which certainly looks like they have stuff for sale (or at least, they'll take my money). No need to take anyone's word for this, we all have plenty of spam.
After a few months with most of the spam being stock scams, it's back to good old penis enlargers, generic viagra and cialis. It's all so fucking repulsive and insulting.
Parent
Re:I dont get it... (Score:5, Insightful)
- Included you on a To: or CC: list of recipients,
- Used your email address to search for you on social sites,
- Sent you e-cards/e-invites
That's pretty amazing. I'm sure most of the spam in my "friends only" or "business only" email accounts were not leaked by me but by a trusted party who didn't know better.Parent
Re:I dont get it... (Score:4, Funny)
- have only geek friend
- have no friends
Take you pick - I don't know what's worst.
Parent
Re:I dont get it... (Score:4, Interesting)
* Used your email address to search for you on social sites,
* Sent you e-cards/e-invites
There is an astonishing number of people who've had email accounts for years now, and still do the very first and worst thing you mention in your no-no list. I guess it's the most convenient (read: lazy) way to re-send the same lame joke to fifty people. The CEO of the company I work for keeps doing this in my business account!
Or those blasted chain emails. I can imagine that many of those were created by spammers harvesting addresses, exploiting peoples' superstitions in machiavellian fashion.
Back in the days of dialup, when the "Dalai Lama wisdom tidbits, send this to twenty people you know" type pps files were already bugging me beyond belief, some bitch that somebody knew that somebody knew that I knew had the nerve to send out a gigantic list of CC: recipients to hundreds of people, with no message whatsoever, just the headline "Let's see what happens". Needless to say, she was bombarded with hate mail, but it was too late. In a few months' time, I was getting about a hundred and fifty spam mails a day, so I created a new address, notified my inbox contacts and asked them to never, ever put me on a CC: list.
It worked for a while, then I started getting spam again, and I couldn't figure out why. Then it hit me: "Damn, I used my address to register in Amazon (also buying stuff through its' independent affiliate sellers), Paypal, eBay and the like". Could that be an additional reason?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Then you do get spam. You've just chosen to deal with it by making sure it all goes to a particular address.
As soon as you sign up to a public mailing list, post on usenet or put your email address on something not terribly well known for privacy (eg. Facebook), you'll find that - lo! - you get spam.
Either that or your school's email admin staff have finally discovered the Holy Grail of anti-spam solutions. Perhaps they
Wooohooo!!! Go Turkey! (Score:3, Funny)
A video from the Spam Dept (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anwy2MPT5RE [youtube.com]
Enjoy!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Wait a minute (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wait a minute (Score:5, Interesting)
I think you may have answered your own question there
Officially, S.P.A.M originally stood for "Shoulder of Pork And haM". However, it most often referred to as "Something Posing As Meat" and "Spare Parts Animal Meat."
There are also, completely unsubstantiated of course, rumors that old man Hormel himself thought he was going to hell for his part in creating it...
Parent
Re:Wait a minute (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Sturgeon's Law (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
In the same period I've gotten 25,818 spam.
That means 99.69% of all my email is spam.
A Rate Comparision (Score:5, Funny)
I didn't think it was possible.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't be silly! Of course it's not actually possible. You see the sex "thought process" is actually a continuously running background process with at least one dedicated processor at all times. The size and strength of that processor varies of course, but is nonetheless always active. Furthermore, the rate at which some people are measuring this process is incorrect, as they only measure when it gains control over the active "window", which is about once every few seconds.
Was anyone surprised here? (Score:5, Insightful)
And the part about a new spam site created every 3 seconds shouldn't surprise anyone either. As much as people despise spam, there is still money to be made in it. Thats why people continue to send spam, of course. Thats also why people continue to buy new domain names to sell discount "drugs" and "software".
This just tells us what many of us already knew. The spam problem will continue to get worse until we actually apply a economic solution to this economic problem.
The ratio is completely wrong for that. (Score:4, Interesting)
The reality is that a single sale of "herbal \/1agr4" can mean a profit for the spammer. The cost of spamming is that low for them.
In order to make it economically unsound for the spammers, you'd have to make it economically annoying for the rest of humanity. More annoying than simply putting up with the spam.
UNLESS we get rid of the stupid CAN-SPAM law and allow each state to institute its own anti-spam laws and allow citizens in those states to sue the spammers for violating those laws.
Yeah, this will hurt "legitimate" fucking "email marketing" companies
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The reality is that a single sale of "herbal \/1agr4" can mean a profit for the spammer. The cost of spamming is that low for them.
No, the reality is that spammers don't care if the product they're pumping sells at all. Spammers sell spam, it's the fool that's buying the spam that wants to sell "herbal \/1agr4". Sure, spammers would like it if someone would buy the stuff, but when the current fool finally realizes he's not making any money there's always another sucker with a get rich quick scheme and a little cash to buy the spammer's services.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Except of course for those who use botnets controlled by compromised servers to send spam, which is most of them nowadays.
ASSP is the answer (Score:4, Informative)
30 minutes to install on an exchange server... filters out all the spam.
I run it on all my clients, and they average about 95% of all mail intercepted as spam with a zero false positive rate.
http://assp.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
ASSP (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I too can install a filter that filters out all the spam.. Send it to dev null. A good filter should have a low false positive rate along with removing most spam. Many filters that remove most (or all) spam also have a high false positive rate.
My ISP seems to lose about 50% of my business mail. Some comes marked spam and some doesn't even arrive.. Either that or my requests for quotes are ignored by my vendors.
I've been trying to ge
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Or I can blacklist his ass.
summary is misleading (Score:4, Interesting)
What everyone gets in their mailbox are mainly American spam messages intended mainly for Americans, sent via hijacked Windows computers around the world. There's also a significant fraction of messages intended for a handful of other rich countries, but the only third world country seriously contributing their own spam is probably Nigeria.
Different kinds of numbers (Score:3, Informative)
But the 1st number, the amount new web pages related to spam, needs to be explained a bit more. The original Sophos report [sophos.com] at least explain that are the related to the web links included with the mails, but not sure if that implies more spam realted domains, more spam related servers or if the big numbers are more related to different ways to write urls in the same servers,
One day... (Score:2, Interesting)
Never give up! (Score:2)
"But this does not mean that other countries can give up the fight."
That's right, it's still early in the year, no one is down and out quite yet. Plenty of chances for any up-and-comer to catch up and make an appearance on the leaderboard - who knows what the second quarter may hold!
While American spam offers girth and inches... (Score:4, Informative)
Why (Score:3, Funny)
This is just so utterly ridiculous to me that it actually makes me sick to think about it. The shear amount of waste being dealt is just insane. And it's not just Email, it's regular postal mail too. The US Mail System is so clogged up with junk that it amazes me that my paycheck gets to me each month. Every single day my mail box is full of, basically, junk that goes straight into the fire.
Simple but no one will do it (Score:3, Insightful)
This is the problem with decentralized control.
Isp's are part to blame.
Do the numbers mean anything? (Score:3, Insightful)
But I have to wonder, how does that statistic that 92.3% of all email sent is spam relate to the rate of junk mail sent via snail mail? I don't know about you, but I'd say that 90% or more of the mail that comes to my home is junk mail, so I'm not sure that the spam statistic is all that surprising. This may just be the expected signal/noise ratio.
Tarpits (Score:3, Informative)
I have the ability to turn my mail server into a tarpit, but it won't do much good unless there are a lot of other tarpits out there too.
One man could fix this... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I hate spam... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Won't sombody think of the children? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, sir! something should be done about spam!
And, while we're at it, someone should really do something about domain squatting.
Oh year, and what about phishing? Why isn't anyone doing anything about that!?
Seriously, guys; get on it. I'll be watching the third season of Seinfeld DVD.
Parent
Re:Won't sombody think of the children? (Score:5, Interesting)
If you block a country because it is relaying spam, it will be switched to go via another country before the week is out. Meanwhile millions of innocent people will find themselves cut off.
Specifically, if required, then the U.S. of A. should be subject to these same rules.
You bet. Clean up your own act first. I'm not holding my breath. Easier to blame nasty foreigners.
Did you RTFA:
And see the ROKSO list [spamhaus.org], note the nationalities.I live in Hong Kong. About 80% of the spam I get is from the US. And yet I find my emails often bounced from US addresses because of similar enlightened attitudes.
Most of the world's spam ORIGINATES in the USA, is PAID FOR by USA companies. Your government does nothing to stop it. (What is it, two or three prosecutions in the last 5 years?) American companies lobby to prevent any effective measures to stop spam. Bit bucket Florida and you might make a dent in it for a while. But attack the source, not the routing.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Facebook (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
No, you're not.
However, Zombied machines on Turkish dial-up or broadband connections aren't the biggest problem I have - they seem to get added to various blacklists fairly rapidly. The biggest headache I have right now is those wacky Nigerians and their national sport, abusing Hotmail and Gmail and Yahoo accounts for fun and profit.
Let's tell Dubya that Osama has been seen hanging out in Lagos, and that most of the proceeds from
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
More interesting is the ratio of infected computers. It isn't stated. But take the population of the US and the Population of Turkey and do a comparison. The other interesting number is the number in Russia. Russia has a large population, but how many of them even own a computer or have internet? Something tells me they have a very high proportion
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
( ) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based (*) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the mone