Dutch Fine Spammers, AOL Reports Drop in Spam 277
teun writes "This morning the Dutch Telecom Authority, responsible for enforcing the anti-spam law in
the Netherlands, announced their first two fines for Dutch spammers: 25,000 and 42,500 euros. These fines are based on the anti-spam law that became
effective in May this year. Spamvrij.nl is very pleased with these results." gollum123 writes "According to AOL, its subscribers are getting less spam this year. There has been a reduction in both the number of daily email messages to AOL (from 2.1 to 1.6 billion) and in the number of customer complaints about spam." And finally, Saeed al-Sahaf writes "We hear so much about China being the source of spam. But a new study shows China and South Korea as distant second to the United States as the source of spam. Sophos, a leading anti-virus maker has released some findings, which claim that the good old US accounts for almost 42% of spam mails sent out this year, and they chalk it up to lack of security on most desktop computers."
This is good. But... (Score:5, Interesting)
Until we have a centrally-implemented system that tracks every spammer by IP and reports them to ISPs, we won't be making any real progress.
Wrong. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Thanks America... (Score:3, Interesting)
No doubt windows in Korea or China is just as insecure, but does the average housewife in Korea have a 3.6ghz P4 with a gig of RAM and 120 gig HDD?
Plus, most of Asia has been RBTL'ed by now, no point in spamming from compromised Korean box.
I think that given sheer amount of insecure PCs with respectable specs in US, that are connected 24/7, the list makes alot of sense.
PS, upon re-reading, Sophos also includes Worms and trojans in their statistic, many big email worms have exploited a bug only exists in the US version of OE, IIRC, so now the list makes even more sense.
Re:This is good. But... (Score:4, Interesting)
Would it matter if they were?
The real problem is the companies which are willing to pay spammers to spam. When advertising your product via spam is illegal, spam will be a thing of the past. Yes, there would be joe-jobs, but our legal system is quite capable of dealing with that sort of thing. They manage to deal with that problem for all of our other criminal laws, to give you an example.
Outlawing advertising via spam would mean that the company which wants your money, and has to be accessible to take orders, would face fines and jail time for officers if they spammed. Soon, only the outright frauds would be willing to take that kind of risk, and even the idiots would eventually stop sending money to spammers who never actually sent penis enlargement pills.
USA Computers users are uneducated? (Score:3, Interesting)
"...which claim that the good old US accounts for almost 42% of spam mails sent out this year, and they chalk it up to lack of security on most desktop computers."
So is this saying that there's a larger percentage of users in the USA than elsewhere, thus we are responsible for more unprotected PC's, just based on having more users?
Or is it saying that American users tend to be ignorant on security, and PC-education, as opposed to the rest of the world?
Re:USA Computers users are uneducated? (Score:2, Interesting)
As for Korea and China, Korean and Chinese fonts didn't make it into my blacklists for nothin' -- along with assorted Cyrillic alphabets. And for 0wn4ge, my office machine's SSH daemon gets probed an average of 5 times a day from around the world (a couple of probes from a Canadian machine today, a couple from Brazil, one from Hong Kong; and these are after black-hole-routing all of 61.*.*.*, 211.*.*.*, 219.*.*.*, 221.*.*.*, 24.*.*.*) -- a futile effort considering that it won't even allow a log-in attempt except from the local IP block.
AOL Reports A Drop in Spam? I Don't! (Score:3, Interesting)
Rape (Score:1, Interesting)
Ok. So what you're saying is that even when a woman says "Yes" it may mean "No" and if that's the case she may later bring up charges and I'll be convicted as a rapist?
What a wonderful world we live in...
Re:OBVIOUS. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Fucking shill (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not property.
"spending my time, money and effort. I should be able to do whatever I please with it"
No. You should not be allowed to bother me with it. Yours must be the uggliest website of 2004. I should not have been exposed to it. But since I have been exposed to it, I think that entitles me to one or two things.
Your works are yours until you publish them. Then they become public property. If you don't like those rules, I suggest you move to some planet where they care about what you like.
"and have it enforced in any legal manner I see fit."
Have what "enforced"?
You are making so little sense, that I suggest you ingest some of that intellectual property you're going on about. Perhaps you'll learn something.
"I should also be able to have it protected"
Surely you mean you should have your interests protected? Protecting a work can only be done by allowing as many people as possible to run with it. Information wants to be free. So far you seem to be arguing against that, so your application of the word "protect" in this case seems unfortunate.
"and since I am the tiny guy working out of my garage and do not have the money to do the research or enforce such a law - I ask that the government help protect me from the big mean people who would steal my work"
It's not stealing. Stealing means you cannot use it anymore.
"because they are too inconsiderate to respect my hard work."
There's no law that obliges anyone to respect another person's hard work. If ever such a law was passed, the makers should be taken out back and shot. And their newts too.
This is a free country--if you want to work hard, that is your prerogative. If you do not want to work at all, that's your choice too. If you push the products of your work onto my lawn, those products becomes mine.
Copyrights are a form of welfare--and although I am not opposed to them in principle, their current application causes more problems than they are worth.