| reply to fAcEtIOUs
Re: Follow the money... You can make a difference! cableties wrote:
"Result: they spend virtually no time at all on zombie PCs on their network. "
Actually, I think a difference can be made. I put in place the following web page, after learning that my ISP had been put on black lists for spam, due mainly to the large number of zombie PCs that were running rampant:
»pages.infinit.net/filmore/educateYourISP.htm
Then, I began to "mass report" the zombies on my ISP's network, using the report forms on their abuse site. I mentioned that such-and-such IP had a likely trojan horse infection, and that it was likely sending out spams according to senderbase.org - that because of the black-listing for spam my own emails were being refused by certain recipients.
These reports create a sort of "back log" in the ISP customer-support "cost-center". I would follow-up with phone calls from time to time.
Why go to all this trouble? Well, the lovely thing about Montreal, Canada is the lack of competition for ISPs. There are two: Videotron and Sympatico. Both had (have?) terrible reputations for hosting spam zombies.
I never thought it would work, but my ISP *did* eliminate a fair number of zombies. The problem *does* still exist, but the numbers of zombies is in the tens, as opposed to the thousands over a year ago when I began my "campaign".
The problem with the numbers reported today, however, is that the senderbase.org reports are based on volume of email. The assumption is that high-volume cable-modem (or dynamic IP addressed) sites are likely spam-bots.
Spammers have since gotten smarter, and zombies are exploited less. This means that the spammers try for greater numbers in their bot-net armies, but the individual soldiers do less "evil" work to keep under the radar. |
