Spam, Milord 342
Your daily dose of spam... rjwoodhead writes "Hansard, the official journal of the UK parliament, reports on a recent discussion of spam in the House of Lords which not only mentions Monty Python, but reads like one of their skits." A New York spammer has been arrested. One account isn't scientifically representative, but it's a grim picture when you're showing a spam-doubling every 42 days. And an article in New Scientist suggests solving a puzzle, which is essentially the same idea as hash cash.
Puzzles = Waste of CPU cycles? (Score:4, Interesting)
Earthlink Abuse Department Rejoices (Score:5, Interesting)
The people pictured are from the Atlanta team, there's also a Pasadena team that is putting a picture together. From left to right they are: Tom Tatom, Kate Trower, Bobby Arnold, Beth, Milliken, Larry Fine, and Louis Rush. People in Atlanta not pictured include our team lead Erich Hablutzel, Brian Greer, and the departmental manager, Mary Youngblood. The Pasadena crew includes Laura Truchon, Kenn Wilson, Brad Patton, Brian Majeska, Jesse Kolbert, Kevin Phillips.
Today is a good day for all anti-spam activists!
Not arrested for spamming (Score:3, Interesting)
Techincal Lords... (Score:5, Interesting)
Monty's House of Lords (Score:5, Interesting)
Well sheesh, where do you think Monty Python drew their inspiration from? Your nostril?
The HoL discussions are pretty odd from an American standpoint (Hey! It's rude to interrupt! So quit it with your booing and hissing and here-hereing!), but at least most of the house is present during the debates. In the States, it's not uncommon to see a Congressman debating in front of a mostly empty congressional hall.
I always wondered... (Score:2, Interesting)
a)They are seeing an increase in profit with the more spam they send.
b)They are spamming more because of black lists and the such.
c)More people are just getting in on it.
or are their other reasons. As a side note...does anyone actually know a person who purchased something from a spammer? Not I.
reverse checking on senders address (Score:5, Interesting)
http://lucifer.intercosmos.net/index.php?display=
And yes, it does store known "good" emails in shared memory so that all child processes can have access and know which emails are already allowed to send email.
The project is called honeymail as you can set it to "honeymode" so that when a spammer finds it and thinks it is an open-relay they start sending and everything just gets forwarded to spamcop, Occams razor etc..
Would love any ideas anyone has on honeymail.
Re:These spam laws are a waste of time (Score:3, Interesting)
Isn't that what they do with other forms of computer crime anyway?
Hell, a search warrent alone would put a spam business down and out pending trial.
The best parts (Score:5, Interesting)
Lord Sainsbury of Turville: My Lords, I am afraid that I have not been able to find out why the term "spam" is used, but that is the meaning it now has. It is a matter that should be taken very seriously because it not only clutters up computers but involves a great deal of very unpleasant advertising to do with easy credit, pornography and miracle diets. That is offensive to people, and we should try to reduce it.
Lord Faulkner of Worcester: My Lords, I can help the Minister with the origin of the word. It comes from aficionados of Monty Python, and the famous song, "Spam, spam, spam, spam". It has been picked up by the Internet community and is used as a description of rubbish on the Internet.
So, at least some in the House of Lords:
wish to be protected from having an email
equate easy credit with pronography with miracle diets
have heard of Monty Python.
I'd say that they compare quite favorably with the US Senate, so far.
[big snip]
Lady Saltoun of Abernethy: My Lords, do the Government have any plans to restrict unsolicited faxes? My fax paper is always being wasted by people who send me faxes I do not want. I do not know whether they could be called "corned beef" or something, but I have had enough of them
Clueless humor, I suppose, but humor.
[big snip]
Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, can the Minister think of a name for the enormous amount of unsolicited ordinary mail we receive?
I wonder whether this was sarcasm or more clueless humor?
Lord Sainsbury of Turville: My Lords, when I have a moment I shall bend my mind to that question.
Definitely sarcasm.
Re:These spam laws are a waste of time (Score:3, Interesting)
The real issues are the international issue and then the sheer magnitude of the problem. The individual States are strapped for cash. No AG office or law enforcement agency needs more work. Call a state communications commission and ask what they hear about... They will tell you that ALL they hear about all day long is telemarketing complaints. They are completely swamped by that alone, which is mostly legal. Just think how up to their necks they will be in spam complaints. I sure don't want to pay more a lot more taxes to fight spam, keep spammers in jail, or pay for the syringe to put them away for good.
I'd have to agree that the answer to spam is in the technology. We need to re-engineer the email system. We all knew it was open for abuse from day one. If someone suggests a good effort that is taking place in that direction, let me know so I can toss some money their way. Now there is something I'd rather throw money at.
warm... (Score:4, Interesting)
$1 million in bandwidth (Score:5, Interesting)
If you generously figured 1$ per gig (in reality prices are a fraction of that), they're saying each e-mail was 1.21megs. If you go by more realistic prices, (25c/gig), you come up with 4.8 megs per message.
If you want to work the numbers the other way, earthlink is saying it costs them 1.21 cents in *bandwidth alone* to send an e-mail.
I'm calling bullshit on earthlinks "cost" of spamming. In reality I'll bet he didnt "steal" enough bandwidth for grand theft. (At my web host, 500$ would buy me 1.3TB of transfer).
Wether or not spamming is legal -- THEIR network allowed him to do it. They didnt notice a million dollars worth of bandwidth being pissed away ? Earthlink Buffalo didn't notice they were a million dollars less profitable this month/year and go WTF? Of course they didn't, they're lying through their teeth.
Re:These spam laws are a waste of time (Score:5, Interesting)
Furthermore, the justification of a War on Spam is of a totally different nature than that of the failure that is Prohibition II. Almost all the problems usually attributed to drugs stemp only from their illegality. But Spam has until recently been quite legal and is now, as the Lords put it, 'choking the Internet'. Spam requires that the spammer be deceitful and intrusive to _everyone_ and actively waste their time, effort, and money. Plus the only people who get any enjoyment out of it are the ones directly making money off it, or think they are by hiring spammers. Drugs at least have the potential to be win-win for everyone involved.
My only real worry about arresting spammers is, like any other law, that it's going to be used entirely on the innocent or small fry and the schmucks actually clogging my inbox get off scot free. Or that even if we clear it up at home, we'll just get swamped by spammers from Asia (moreso than already, anyway) or whatver.
Re:Mod Parent of Parent UP (Score:3, Interesting)
As far as creating a system where only authorized people can send e-mail... well lots of luck... how do you determine who's authorized or not? Perhaps we *could* weed out any-old joe setting up a sendmail server on his local ISP, but what's to stop someone from using what is considered to be a legit authorized server to send spam?
I can see a system where an authorized MX record is required to accept e-mails, but I can't see a system that can "predict" what someone *will* do with a legit mail domain.
But I'd rather law enforcement actaually enforce spam laws and jail spammers. It has a higher chance of being a sucessess as spamming isn't so common place as domestic drug use, it's a hell of alot more public, and the evidence is available in the inboxes of millions.
As far as stopping spam from sealand, well the spamhaus project probally would have a greater chance of gaining success.
Spam -- it's the volume (Score:3, Interesting)
BUT -- when you look at the volume, the size of the message traffic, I was very surprised to see that my valid messages were only 3% of the volume -- 97% of the bytes sent to that hotmail account during April were either Spam or viruses!
May looks about the same!
Namaste-
When will it be on C-SPAN? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Not to be a wet blanket, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
well, if a spammer suses a fake return email address, a common paractice, and that address belongs to someone, they have committed identity theft. So it is spam related. I think its cool. this lets us trackdown spammer who are 'legitimate' , and thus filter them, and give the authorities a tool in which to capture the others.
Does the owner of abc.com own all the possible email address at abc.com? if so, just typing random garbage at abc.com is still identity theft.
Re:Gotta love british humor (Score:1, Interesting)
IT IS STILL SPAM.
My spam filter blocks "enlargement" as well as "have you found jebus yet ?"
Puzzles and CPU speeds (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Hilarious! (Score:3, Interesting)
Think of it this way: Image the Senate populated by people who are all about the age of Strom Thurmond.
Some, despite thier advanced age are very knowlegeable of thier topic. Some are becoming increasingly bewildered in thier old age.
Re:These spam laws are a waste of time (Score:2, Interesting)
What really stuck out to me (Score:2, Interesting)
(italics are mine for emphasis)
money and politics speak (Score:2, Interesting)
Just because some comments seem slightly in awe of the house of Lords, Lord Sainsbury is the owner of a large national supermarket (my local one enjoys gouging the prices under the auspices of being an 'express' store, but that's another matter).
Lord Sainsbury is a major benefactor or the current governing party (the Labour party) and as a result is the UK science minister, which I'm sure doesn't cause a conflict of interest for GMO food, which his shops don't sell.
He's also part of the government who's education secretary wants to cut funding of [bbc.co.uk] purely academic study whilst increasing reaserch into "baltic studies". Lucky he's already done his tour of two of the best universities in the country.[sorry, rant, being paid less than minimum wage for research sucks.]
Not to be a conspiracy theorist but a general election and possible euro referendum will be coming soon,the Labour party is in debt in fact and have passed exemptions based on donations in the past (some have been refunded and exemptions rescinded (sp?)) so watch for the donations..
Lord Mackie is the Liberal Democrat spokeperson for Scotland (a bit like Canada, cold), other than beind old and a career politican he seems ok.
On the subject of junk faxes, this was discusse in June 98 [bbc.co.uk], probably as a result of an EU directive (yay EU) 97/66/ec [spamlaws.com] , as a result the telephone preference service TPS [tpsonline.org.uk] was created, which IIRC is a not a law-enforced scheme but is an advertising industry creation.
Anyway, it ain't over till the fat wallet sings, and I can see this being tacked on to the national I.D card scheme or privacy/piracy laws to pacify us.
42 eh. so that's what the human race was created for by the mice, to find the critical doubling speed of spam :)
BB
as much as I hate reality TV... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Puzzles = Waste of CPU cycles? (Score:3, Interesting)
Ah, but if the problem to solve were simply to verify the computation of an already completed packet you would be solving a computationaly intensive problem *and* adding to the trust for a completed packet (assuming the same answer were obtained).
This would be two birds with one stone.