As the Spam Turns 408
Anonymous writes "The SBL has added Verio's corporate mail servers
to its blocklist which protects nearly 100 million mailboxes, because of the number of spam gangs on the Verio network.
Verio also provides connectivity to AS26212, a collection of 9 of the most notorious spammers netblocks. AS26212 - the new spambone? - is also connected to he.net and bbnplanet.net."
Congratulations! (Score:3, Interesting)
I used to subscribe to a few filter lists on my mail servers, but the operators are such assholes about things that the lists are now useless, filtering out more valid email than bad (when you consider that a few intelligent local filters can eliminate 90% of spam).
Spam to spammers (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Great, more censorship (Score:2, Interesting)
I specifically choose ISP that follow spam black-out lists. Makes my life a lot easier. It's my choice to choose my ISP.
Kids with their Yahoo! or Hotmail account usually don't care about spam, but I do, because each piece of spam causes me to loose billable time.
Is that why spam in my Hotmail account has dropped (Score:4, Interesting)
Spam for Collectionists (Score:2, Interesting)
I guess it was one of the most aggressive spamming campaigns I have ever been victim of.
Now, those who support these spammers will have to suffer the consequences. But, who will have to pay the bandwidth when my E-Mail Backup service provider come to tell me that I've reached the limit?
Re:Is that why spam in my Hotmail account has drop (Score:3, Interesting)
There ought to be a law... (Score:5, Interesting)
After all, it's really just a consumer protection issue: Verio claims to have an active abuse department, and is thereby misleading people who assume that spammers on Verio's network will be shut down.
Re:in case it gets slashdotted (AC,not karma whori (Score:1, Interesting)
a disastrous state of affairs for Verio customers and shareholders
Verio is a privately held subsidiary of NTT Communications, and thus, has no "shareholders" to speak of, other than its parent company.
Spammers (Score:5, Interesting)
ISPs need to realise that if they're not going to do anything about it, they'll be blocked. This happened to us years ago when the ORDB started, and we fixed the problem immediately. We didn't think they were being nasty to us, we realised we had a problem, and we set about fixing it. When ISPs get globally klined from IRC networks, their customers want to know why, and put pressure on the ISP. They listen and respond.
This is no different. If yer gonna be a spammy host, prepare to be blacklisted. Reponsible, rigid, no nonsense, targetted policies are the only thing that will have ANY effect, and even they won't STOP all spam. But it sure helps.
Re:Good (Score:2, Interesting)
If you are blocked, you aren't getting off in a reasonable time, at least reasonable for the Internet. It might be reasonable for a 1850's pony express route.
The goal of most spam blockers is to eliminate commercial use of the Internet. This is the only way they can succeed. Any commercial use of the Internet is going to involve some level of what these people claim to be "unsolicited" email. And, once you send that you are a spammer.
Oh, and don't forget. If you claim not to be a spammer and put every effort into not spamming anyone the result is simply that you are lying. You can't prove you don't spam and everyone knows spammers lie. If everything you say is a lie, what is the point of discussing anything?
Yeah, I'm bitter. We got unblocked yesterday. We don't spam, but plenty of customers are wondering why we were silent for four days. Some just want their money back now.
Re:A temporary fix (Score:1, Interesting)
Spam source (Score:2, Interesting)
How likely is it that the spammers get gobs of bandwidth and turn around and relay off of verio's mail servers? Isn't it *much* more likely that the spam is being sent directly from the IP addresses assigned to or owned by the spammers?
Unless I'm way off base, I think this is more a punative measure against verio than a real reduction in spam.
And yes, I do support blacklisting.
Re:This is depressing... (Score:4, Interesting)
What is "your site", if its "your site", you are CEO of Reozone.com? If thats true, do you affilate with them?
Let me tell the real story. You had some sort of an innocent mailing list, than you sent that reozone.com URL with your affilate link to them.
Oh blocking Yahoo.com? gmx.de blocks them, Novell Myrealbox blocks their mailing list service because of non-serious abuse policy (even they are a potential huge customer). Also, when a yahoo mail user spams you, I have a record like, 2 hours later his account has been deleted.
SO EVERYONE CLICKS ON YOUR REFERER ID'ED URL ON SLASHDOT GIVES YOU MONEY?
bleh
Re:Is that why spam in my Hotmail account has drop (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyway, I used to plow through at LEAST three screenfuls of garbage at a time this way on Hotmail, but in the past few days, I've been doing only one screenload and getting all of it. So maybe something has happened.
Of course, it's going to come back very soon, so don't get too used to this. It's strange how we've sort of come full circle from being an agricultural economy and shoveling horseshit all day, to having an industrial revolution, and then computers, and worldwide computer networks, and after all this we end up still having to shovel mountains of horseshit around on a daily basis.
Not My Bandwidth (Score:2, Interesting)
"But," you say to me, "local filters are much better because you might not lose legit email!" I ask you: why should my mail server accept their stupid junk and waste my bandwidth just to filter it out later?
I don't want to my server to accept it. I want it bounced outright with a nice little bounce message. In a happy shiny world, I'm hoping these SMTP rejects will send a message to someone out there. It probably doesn't make a difference, but I can dream.
Yes; some legit email has been blocked. In both cases I'm aware of, the person contacted me through a hotmail account and brought it to my attention. I altered my blocking policy at that point.
I'm open to any options out there for filtering/blocking that does not require me to download it and then filter it. If I wanted to just filter my mail, I can do that using my amazing human brain (better than any spam filter out there, I assure you) and click "delete" on the spams. But I want it rejected outright from known sources.
So until a better option comes along, that's the way it is.
~Seth
Re:Spam comes from unlikely places... (Score:3, Interesting)
adobe [trialware registration] or buy.com sells your addy to porn spammers. I've never actually gotten a nigerian money scam email, my dad is like "I get them all the time". Of course filtering html email and filtering the word "unsubscribe" in the body to trash tends to work really well for keeping yahoo free of spam.
About theft of service (Score:4, Interesting)
I support and believe the position that spammers or other unauthorized users of a system that I own are stealing services from me. I further believe it is OK to block their traffic from crossing my equipment.
Now, let's look at this from the telemarketing perspective...My phone at home is one of those models that has a wall wart. I believe when the phone rings, or is in use, it draws more current. So, when a telemarketer makes an unsolicited (and unauthorized) call to my phone, does that mean they're stealing my electricity? What about my most valuable resource, my time? Are they stealing my time?
I hate spam just as much as the next guy. And I don't believe ignoring people who cause a nuisance infringes their right to free speech. I do however believe the "telemarketing" lens will be used by the Judicial System when examining these issues. Sooner or later, these spammers will mount a constitutional challenge to anti-spam legislation. Well, if they are making that much money, anyway. They may not even need the money for such a battle, it seems the EFF just might take up their cause.
Re:Good (Score:3, Interesting)
And what would it have taken to confirm that address? Perhapse ensure that you weren't opening yourself, and some unwitting third party, to abuse?
loosen the floodgates (Score:3, Interesting)
Bet we'd see some real legislation and enforcement then, eh?
It's not only spam... (Score:2, Interesting)
Mostly the online polls are somehow connected to a company ("vote for your favorite petshop in your area") who are willing to pay for it. But... What are online polls worth after after that?
Alex.
Lower-level solution: A new protocal (Score:3, Interesting)
That could speed things up a lot.
And now a future timeline:
-Terrorist groups note that many routers are dropping "advert" spam before they reach the mail servers, start sending messages with the "advert" bit set, thus avoiding detection by bugs in mail servers
-Government catches on, starts paying close attention to posts with the "advert" bit set
-Advertising is outlawed after Bush calls the advert bit "evil"
Re:Hrm, isn't that John Gilmore's ISP? (Score:5, Interesting)
But they will sell to spammers.
Re:Where does the money come from? (Score:1, Interesting)
But not only did he have sex with strangers under only the thinnest guise of legitimacy... did you ever notice that he never recieved permission to build the temple? God only said to David "your son WILL do it."
I find it very interesting, especially in light of the fact that (1) David was specially favored, Solomon was not. (2) The temple was never called God's temple; it was called Solomon's temple (3) that temple attracted invaders from all over, and helped keep Israel and Judah in continuous warfare.
Of course, Solomon arguably learned *his* behavior from his father's behavior (consider Michal, his first wife, and Bathsheba, his favorite wife).
Some things (Score:3, Interesting)
As to your time, well, all sorts of things "steal" your time and and thus far that's not something that you have any recourse for. Besides, you waste plenty of people's time too, it's just how things go.
The big difference between telemarketing and spam is who pays the cost. When a telemarketer calls me, I don't pay a thing, even if I do choose to answer the phone. They pay all associated long distance charges, my line costs me the same amount no matter how many calls I recieve. With SPAM, it is other peopel that foot the bill. The spammers order mail servers to send out thousands of messages, which uses tons of bandwidth on their ISP, and all the recieving ISPs. I work at a university and the amount of bandwidth used to SPAM is not trivial.
This is why telemarketing is not allowed to a cellphone (in the US), you have to pay for all calls including those you didn't initate, so people aren't allowed to make sales calls that would cost you money.
Also telemarketers tend to be much less persistant and much less fraudlent than spammers. Every time I've asked to be placed on a do not call list, the telemarketers have complied (because I can sue them if they don't). Also, all the sales calls I get are really offering me a legit service. When Sprint calls me selling long distance, they will make good on the offer if I want. At least 40% of the SPAM I recieve is totally fraudlent, and spammers don't know when to quit. I have recieved over 10 SPAMs per day for the same thing, form the same company. The only telemarketer I know that tried that receantly is the Miss Cleo service, and they got shut down and fined millions for it.
Re:Breaking things is not fixing the problem. (Score:1, Interesting)
If the spammers knew what you wanted, they would just ruin the functionality of your mailbox with your preferred variety of spam. you do realize most people are getting so much spam, they are having difficulty using email to communicate with other people.
Your argument would have merit if email had been designed as a conduit for mass mailing advertisements. But in this world, email was designed for human beings to interact with each other.
Using that service for mass mailings degrades the service.
If people wanted a service which delivered advertisements(personalized or not), there would be demand for such a service. Do you know anyone besides yourself and those in the marketing industry, who would express an interest in paying for a service that delivered nothing but advertisements? The most annoying thing about marketers is they presume to know what people really want, and then go at great lengths that what is desierd are piles and piles of steaming shit. Not me, bucko.
HE.net included? Surprised! (Score:4, Interesting)
I do know that one of their employees handling spam complaints did give me a reason to pause once -- she initially accepted a spammer's response, but that action was reversed as soon as I challenged it, and the customer was terminated, and I was sent an apology making clear that this was a mistake, not a new spam-tolerant policy at the company. Later complaints were promptly and properly handled.
I believe that at least three he.net customers were terminated in the past year due to complaints I submitted. (And I was a lowly $200-per-month colo customer, and at least one of the terminated customers was much bigger.)
If he.net is leaving the door open to spam-cartels, despite warnings, then of course they should be blacklisted. I just find that harder to believe. In contrast, my experience has been than Verio is extremely spam-tolerant, even balking at terminating Spamford Wallace (they finally relented and cut him off, which resulted in his filing a frivolous lawsuit against me, costing me $5,000 to get the suit dismissed). All my more recent spam complaints to Verio have gone unanswered, and I know I have several Verio IP blocks already on my filter list, though I haven't blocked all their IP addresses.