For every legitimate e-mail I get, including newsletters, reports and other such automated mailings, I get another twenty consignments of spam, at the very least. Who is sending all of this stuff?
I mean, seriously, who does? Can you name anyone who partakes in sending proper spam? I'm not talking about those who perhaps send you a promotional e-mail, just this once, about a really attractive deal that you, even though you technically didn't ask for it, perhaps might be interested in anyways, and it's only a one-time mailing anyway, so where's the harm? Not that kind, the real kind. The kind of spammers which actively try to circumvent precautions taken to block it out, the kind of spammers which know, for a fact, that their spam is aggressive and intentional spam.
Do these people ever come out of their dungeons? Do they at all socialize with other people? Because, from the top of my head at least, I've never heard anyone ever mention that they know this really evil spammer which is probably responsible for a great deal of the crap that clog up your inbox. I've never heard anyone say that, this guy they know, or this guy a friend of theirs know, is sending millions and millions of obnoxious pieces of spam every day.
I have acquaintances, ex-school mates, friends of friends, I know people who know people, and so forth, who are into seriously criminal shit, drugs, real evil stuff. However, I do not know one person, nobody, in real-life or on the net, who is into sending spam by the millions, or know someone who knows someone, who is.
Whoever is sending this shit must be operating from a supremely secret base, off on a secluded island somewhere, surrounded only by his private army of henchmen as he plots to take over the world, one spam at the time.
Somebody call Mr. Bond.
Comments
If you check out The Spamhaus Project - at the bottom of that page you can see the top countries to blame, the top ISPs, and the top single individuals that are doing it.
THe process of getting the addresses doesn't confuse me. The process of sending them doesn't confuse me (although I'm amazed that ISPs are out there that don't prosecute them).
The part that confuses me is when people pay for these services - how are they paying? How are these people advertising? What bank accounts are they putting this into? Is it all cash transactions?
I imagine it varies depending on the country that it is based out of.
Comment by Eric Smith at 01:14, 30 Mar, 2004 #
I love to hate spammers. (In case people haven't noticed when I write about it.)
Comment by Johan Svensson at 04:44, 30 Mar, 2004 #
Spam is a lucrative business. That's why it still exists. If a spammer sends out 100 000 mails - and gets 10 people who buy the thing he's spamming about, well, then it's ten new customers for the cost of sending out bulkmail. It's a really cheap way of getting people to buy your product.
Some spam is actually quite funny. Like the ones that wants you to buy their anti-spam program. Hilarious.
I use mailwasher. It's easy and you limit the amount of spam that you're receiving.
Comment by talisyn at 09:16, 30 Mar, 2004 #
I use SpamAssassin 3.00cvs (and technically 2.70 on some of the accounts) on my mailserver and then whatever gets through that then gets filtered by Mail.app on my local computer.
That setup is crucial for me since I am on a slow connection (at least while at work), so downloading 100 messages only to find out 99 of them are spam is not something I can afford in time/money.
Comment by Eric Smith at 14:12, 30 Mar, 2004 #
User TMDA, and you will regain the knowledge of what spam looks --and tastes-- like: canned ham. Zero spam/junk (that is 0) since I started using it on my personal and work accounts. Can't get better than that!
Comment by David Collantes at 14:45, 30 Mar, 2004 #
In the case of rule based and bayesian filtering, I'm worried about false positives.
But, I still prefer that option over challange/response based whitelists; while they block 100% of spam, they also block all those who don't want your spam problems shoved on to them.
Comment by Tomas at 15:13, 30 Mar, 2004 #
There are a few challenge-response type services available, some free, some not.
We were considering using SpamArrest here on my network (I am a Windows network admin unfortunately - programmer, but have to do the net admin as well here). While we were considering it, I questioned if our clients would be unhappy with the challenge-response system (or possible unable to figure it out, even though it is incredibly basic).
Sure enough, one of the owners of our company complained later that day that someone he was dealing with used the service and he couldn't figure it out.
Morons are everywhere, at all levels, and the challenge-response doesn't play nice with morons.
The Bayesian classification products - like SpamAssassin - do have false positives. That said, I have been running various versions of SpamAssassin and it doesn't give me too many false positives.
The things that it tends to mislabel are:
1) my mom's forwards (proper labeling, but I don't want it to learn that she is bad)
2) mailing lists, such as the HP tech support (I actually let it eat these since I don't use that list anymore and it won't let me unsubscribe)
3) PayPal "informational" e-mails - all of the ones that are important, such as notification of payment and the like, those get through no problem - the ones that come out to let me know of some new thing that they are offering (and which I don't want), they get blocked (I consider this a feature).
SpamAssassin does quite well. I have used CloudMark SpamNet, SpamBayes, Mail.app, SpamAssassin, and a few others over the years and SpamAssassin is by far the best IMO. At least in terms of server side apps.
In terms of client side apps, Mail.app and SpamBayes seem fairly similar in skill.
SpamNet was useless. It would block about 80% which sounds good at first glance, but not when you are getting 150 spam a day.
Comment by Eric Smith at 16:47, 30 Mar, 2004 #
"But, I still prefer that option over challange/response based whitelists; while they block 100% of spam, they also block all those who don't want your spam problems shoved on to them."
How do TMDA block valid people? I do not see how, since the one time confirmation email is very clear and easy to follow (my mother had no problem, and she is 76 years old). Also, I do not believe "my spam problems" to be only mine, everybody is suffering from spam today. I can not see how a simple confirmation message which, I can not stress enough, it is a one time only can bother anyone.
I guess the challenge/response method used by TMDA is just for "...the few, the proud..." ;-)
OT: Your preview and error templates are still the old one's...
Comment by David Collantes at 17:05, 30 Mar, 2004 #
David: Read the comment above yours for an explanation.
No, everybody doesn't get them. Some even refuse them, since they consider your spam problem to be your spam problem. I read this on someone's weblog just a couple of days ago, unfortunately I can't find it now.
Third, those challange/responses can very well be filtered out by other spam prevention systems, if for no other reason because they clearly state that it's a one-time mailing.
Comment by Tomas at 17:16, 30 Mar, 2004 #
The question isn't who is spamming and why, but it's who are the idiots who buying products from spammers? They are the fools to go after because they feed the problem.
Comment by beerzie boy at 21:45, 01 Apr, 2004 #
The discussion has been closed on this entry. Thanks to everybody who participated.