WLANs As Spam Conduit

Saint Aardvark writes "According to this article, a honeypot was recently set up on two wireless LANs. 25% of the connections observed were deliberate, and 71% of those were to send spam. Even more reason to take care of your ether." These statistics should be taken with a salt lick...

How about...

[ilduce]

...public vigilante executions of spammers? Kinda like a citizens arrest, but more permenant. Just a thought.

Please, keep the internet free

[Anonymous Coward]

Block all ports except 80 if you have to... just don't take away my free access!

tequila

[Entropy_ah]

These statistics should be taken with a salt lick...
Does spam go well with tequila?

Oh, take heed!

[interstellar_donkey]

Remember folks, there are surly looking spammers driving through your surburbian neighborhood right now just looking to abuse your DSL connection through your unsecured access point to send spam.

So if your router gives out a DHCP address in the middle of the night, run outside in your pajamas with a baseball bat. There are spammers you need to teach a lesson.

Get-rich-quick scheme

[xintegerx]

I just received in e-mail..

1) Sue for "Cable Theft" (if cable ISP)

2) Sue for "Denial of Service Attack" (since the intent of spam is to fill up your mailbox, causing you to give up real e-mails.)

3) Sue for "Espionage" if you both received a 'viagra' spamvertisement and the e-mail says it's not commercial spam, because if it's non-commercial, they were watching you through a window and wanted to notify you of viagra!

4) Is the spam for an ergonomic peripheral, like mouse or keyboard or computer chair? Or maybe, the company offers you pills to decrease your hormonones? In either case, this means they think you might have repetitive stress syndrome from using your... tool. This is either "Espionage" (they saw it), or "Intent of Deliberate Harm" (they e-mail you so much shit, they KNOW you are guaranteed to have RSS in your wrists....

5) ???

6) Profit

Re:Oh, take heed!

[buss_error]

How long until we see:
Make money FAST crusing your neighborhood! Annoy millions of people with unrelenting spam!

Intelligence

[rf0]

This is showing spammers are intelligent and learning. That can't be right can it? :)

Rus

Re:Those stats don't seem that off to me.

[chunkwhite86]

I've read repeatedly that some percentage of all email is spam. I think the number that usually gets thrown around is 40%.

Well that sure as hell isn't my inbox. I'm lucky if one in twenty message is NOT spam.

I really should get some friends though... ;-)

Re:Um...no.

[zapatero]

So two security companies set out to do "research" on WLAN access and the results of their findings conclude that security is needed. These are staggering results. Who woulda guessed.

It's ground breaking research. It ranks up there with Philip Morris' discovery that lung cancer is cuased primarily by cat dander. And McDonald's dietary discovery that low cholesterol leads to depression and suicide.

Counterplot

[Julian Morrison]

Wireless spam? I'm thinking that's not necessarily such a bad thing. (1) wireless broadcasting objects are locatable in 3D using the proper detection tools (2) a wireless enabled laptop is deliberately radio-permeable and structured so as to pick up radio energy.

Solution: directional high powered radio emitters on the 802.11b wavelength. Target the suckas and zap the bejeezus out of 'em.

Mmmm, fried spam.

Re:How about...

[Kj0n]

What about a flamewar?

With *REAL* flamethrowers, of course!

Idea

[use_compress]

Step 1: Purchase private island Step 2: Make private island autonomous country Step 3: Cover island with free Wifi Step 4: Implement secret anti-spam laws with Singapore-style penalties Step 5: Wait for spammers to come

Re:Serious?

[doorbot.com]

Then again, as Mark Twain said, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."

As "they" say, torture the data until it confesses.

Re:Idea

[Anonymous Coward]

6. ????
7. PROFIT
8. Buy lots of computers
9. Build Beowulf cluster
10. ?????
11. More PROFIT!
repeat the cycle ad infinitum

Re:Oh, take heed!

[ColdGrits]

Actually, what I do for any emails some scumbag sends unauthorised through my WLAN is as follows -

If they are obviously spamming (sending email to loads of people), deny access (the first few may get through but the rest would not as soon as spamming was detected).

Otherwise, accept their email and send it on to the destination.

Oh, I forgot to mention that all email sent this way is first run through "pornalizer".

Don't like your emails being pornalized that way (I *DO* hope it is an email to your Mum)? Tough shit. You use my bandwidth, you accept the consequences.

Bad, spammer, bad.

[Vodak]

How can we as a society have our cake and eat it too in regards to public wireless networks? The answer is simple... Allow people to shoot spammers on site. No long would being a repo man be the most dangerous line or work. =]

On a more serious note spammers using these open wireless networks to send spam kind of negates the whole black list mail server things doesn't it.