pnh102
Reptiles Are Cuddly And Pretty
Premium
join:2002-05-02
Mount Airy, MD
 ·Comcast
|  Pyrrhic Defeat
For most people, spam has made email completely useless as a means of communication. Businesses have to invest significant amounts of money into blocking spam just so that email can function at all. I won't be surprised if many people simply stop using email altogether because of the volume of spam.
For me, it is about 99% of my personal email. I'm getting ready to just shut off the one email account altogether.
The "War on spam" is lost.
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Only SHATNER is Kirk. |
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Wills
join:2001-01-03
Port Charlotte, FL
| The war on spam is lost because it's being fought improperly. We aren't following the money and we aren't going after the head companies that are the end of the money train.
Ralsky doesn't make money sending spam for Norton Antivirus, Norton does. That's who we should be going after.
Just like every "War on X" the U.S. has waged, it will be a losing fight because we'll always do it wrong.
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I have a shaved head, a goatee, and tatoos. Don't you realize the rules don't apply to me. |
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pnh102
Reptiles Are Cuddly And Pretty
Premium
join:2002-05-02
Mount Airy, MD
·Comcast
| said by Wills  :The war on spam is lost because it's being fought improperly. Aside from shooting people who spam as well as people who buy spamvertised products and services, what else can we do?
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Only SHATNER is Kirk. |
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Mactron
el camino Real
Premium
join:2001-12-16
CM94sv
| reply to pnh102
said by pnh102 :For me, it is about 99% of my personal email. I'm getting ready to just shut off the one email account altogether. The "War on spam" is lost. Must be a Yahoo e-mail account... 
Mine is sure worthless. 
Hope they Nail this guys and all connected to, and like him. 
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If only the Verizon CSRs worked this well. |
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jvanbrecht
join:2007-01-08
Bowie, MD
| reply to pnh102
I run my own mail, and while I agree, 99% of what I get is spam, I atleast know where they are getting my email addresses from. ps, I also used to work IT Security (which included spam and abuse) for UUNET (ages ago) and Roadrunner, so I understand the costs involved with dealing with the stuff. |
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Wills
join:2001-01-03
Port Charlotte, FL
| reply to pnh102
Like I said, go after the companies that are the end of the money train.
Aside from phising, most spam is trying to sell you a product. Some company is benefitting from that and is the root cause of that.
THESE are the people we should be levying multimillion dollar fines and jail time at. Not people like Ralsky. Stop the companies doing this and there is no need for people like Ralsky.
Kill the head and the body dies.
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I have a shaved head, a goatee, and tatoos. Don't you realize the rules don't apply to me. |
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mindfrost82
join:2003-04-19
Cortland, IL
| reply to Wills
Spam and product emails are two different things IMO.
With your example of Norton, if an email comes from a company like that, there is usually a legit link to unsubscribe from the mailing list.
Before switching to Google Apps, I ran my company's email server and it was a full time job blocking spam. IMO, the worst spam (which makes up the majority of it), are emails like these stock emails, emails about replica watches, emails that don't make any sense, porn emails, etc.
If an email comes from a large company, they usually provide a way out of their mailing list, which usually works. |
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pnh102
Reptiles Are Cuddly And Pretty
Premium
join:2002-05-02
Mount Airy, MD
·Comcast
| reply to Mactron
said by Mactron :Must be a Yahoo e-mail account... Unfortunately this is a private email account with my own personal domain. My hosting company picks up about 90% of the spam and marks it as such. Maybe I can bug them to improve their filter. I'd rather they delete the spam before I have to deal with it.
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Only SHATNER is Kirk. |
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pnh102
Reptiles Are Cuddly And Pretty
Premium
join:2002-05-02
Mount Airy, MD
·Comcast
| reply to Wills
said by Wills :Like I said, go after the companies that are the end of the money train. Perhaps I am not understanding you. Are you suggesting that companies which make commercially available anti-spam solutions are part of the problem? Granted... I might need more coffee.
said by Wills :THESE are the people we should be levying multimillion dollar fines and jail time at. Not people like Ralsky. Stop the companies doing this and there is no need for people like Ralsky. Ralsky runs a huge business that makes its money by sending spam. He deserves to be taken down.
said by Wills :Kill the head and the body dies. Unfortunately, even if Ralksy is convicted and imprisoned, other spammers will quickly fill the void. I still believe that the volume of spam continues to increase because more people buy products and services that are spamvertised. Until everyone stops buying such products and services, we will never see an appreciable decrease in spam.
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Only SHATNER is Kirk. |
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N10Cities
SILENCE I Keel You
Premium
join:2002-05-07
Roland, OK
clubs:
1 edit | Wills is saying go after the makers of the product that the spam is ADVERTISING.... |
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Nightfall
My Goal Is To Deny Yours
Premium,MVM
join:2001-08-03
Grand Rapids, MI
 ·Site5.com
 ·AT&T Midwest
·Comcast
| reply to Wills
said by Wills :The war on spam is lost because it's being fought improperly. We aren't following the money and we aren't going after the head companies that are the end of the money train. Ralsky doesn't make money sending spam for Norton Antivirus, Norton does. That's who we should be going after. Just like every "War on X" the U.S. has waged, it will be a losing fight because we'll always do it wrong. Good luck making that work. I can see a bunch of Microsoft haters spamming advertisements from some Chinese server just to get Microsoft fined. The problem here is the email system itself. It hasn't changed in years and is flawed. A new system must be developed and implemented. Whatever this new system is, it will have to be more restrictive. |
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pnh102
Reptiles Are Cuddly And Pretty
Premium
join:2002-05-02
Mount Airy, MD
·Comcast
| reply to N10Cities
said by N10Cities :Wills is saying go after the makers of the product that the spam is ADVERTISING.... I told you I need more coffee!
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Only SHATNER is Kirk. |
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MrMaster
What If
Premium
join:2000-12-16
Austin, TX
clubs:
·RoadRunner Cable
| reply to pnh102
said by pnh102 :For most people, spam has made email completely useless as a means of communication. Businesses have to invest significant amounts of money into blocking spam just so that email can function at all. I won't be surprised if many people simply stop using email altogether because of the volume of spam. For me, it is about 99% of my personal email. I'm getting ready to just shut off the one email account altogether. The "War on spam" is lost. Since switching to gmail a few years ago I have had virtually no problems with spam. Even my rarely used hotmail account shows a significant drop in spam messages. |
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rmdir
join:2003-03-13
Chicago, IL
| reply to Nightfall
That's why if I work for Kapersky I'll be sending spam for Norton AV. It's much easier to fatally wound the competition that to make a better product. Plus when I get unsolicited e-mail (like the Circuit City cr** they send in addition to my monthly e-mailed bill) I'll make it a point to patronize their competitor to show my disapproval. |
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n2jtx
join:2001-01-13
Glen Head, NY
·Optimum Online
| reply to mindfrost82
said by mindfrost82 :Before switching to Google Apps, I ran my company's email server and it was a full time job blocking spam. I still run my firms server and yes it is a pain. I was also running my own private email server to host my own personal domains and that too was becoming a full-time job. I finally shifted my MX records to a paid forwarding service that provides SPAM filtering. That service then forwards on to my GMail account that provides another layer of SPAM filtering. Since doing that, managing my personal email has become much easier. Corporate is still annoying but it is manageable, especially with a DeepSix anti-SPAM box in front of it all.
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I support the right to keep and arm bears. |
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Nightfall
My Goal Is To Deny Yours
Premium,MVM
join:2001-08-03
Grand Rapids, MI
·Site5.com
·AT&T Midwest
·Comcast
| reply to mindfrost82
said by mindfrost82 :Spam and product emails are two different things IMO. With your example of Norton, if an email comes from a company like that, there is usually a legit link to unsubscribe from the mailing list. Before switching to Google Apps, I ran my company's email server and it was a full time job blocking spam. IMO, the worst spam (which makes up the majority of it), are emails like these stock emails, emails about replica watches, emails that don't make any sense, porn emails, etc. If an email comes from a large company, they usually provide a way out of their mailing list, which usually works. A full time job blocking spam? Thats nuts. We have postini here and it is IMHO the Cadillac of spam filtering. In over a year and a half of using it, we have had 5 reported false positives in the spam box. Whenever spam does sneak through, I am told about it and that only happened a couple times in the last year.
Sounds like the company you work for is a little cheap cause great services like postini are very inexpensive for the service they provide.  |
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Dogfather
Premium
join:2007-12-26
Laguna Hills, CA
·Cox HSI
 ·Verizon FIOS
 ·Cox VOIP
·ViaTalk
·RoadRunner Cable
·MegaPath
·Verizon west (ex G..
·Time Warner VOIP
| reply to pnh102
My business has. We've seen some of our largest customers like Alcoa go back to good old faxing and phone calls because of problems with email. Either their corporate filters filter too much or too little making email worthless. Or the filters remove needed attachments making faxing the better alternative. |
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jvanbrecht
join:2007-01-08
Bowie, MD
| reply to Wills
You appear to have some understanding of how spam works, but are incorrect in the assumption that it is all the fault of the products being advertised.
Here is the issue. Most companies offer an affiliate program, where by you sell the product, or get a user to connect to the products site (I am not talking advertising clickthru sites, more like, to use your example, www.symantec.com/blah/affiliate_id=34235 where the user with id 34235 gets a small chunk of change everytime someone clicks it and even more when a user purchases the product). Of course, this assumes that they (spammers/nefarious affiliate user) are selling legal versions, and not chinese fakes of the same product, which most spam does.
Now these affiliate programs are fine, if they are run correctly. In the past, atleast at UUNET (prior to MCI and Verizons involvement), we took down the spammer (if it originated from a UUNET pop, or notified the downstream customers if it was one of their users, if they do not respond, after numerous notifications and a discussion with UUNETs legal dep, that customer would have its line shut down, and yes, we did do it, even though it took a while sometimes). Additionally, we would go after the content of the email, sites advertised etc, and shut those down as well.
With regards to affiliate type deals, we notified the provider of that affiliate service (sometimes the vendor itself, sometimes third parties), and under ideal situations, they cancel that affiliates account and with hold any payments due to them. That worked great with larger companies, not so much with smaller ones who went from ISP to ISP after their accounts got canceled.
Basically, what it comes down to, the majority of spam now days seems to be hocking illegal pharmaceuticals, pirated software, fake products and porn. Now with porn, they actually do cancel affiliate accounts quickly for fear of losing their own access, which has happened, for the others, its illegal content in the first place, and going after Symantec for their spammed Norton AV which is probably a knock off in the first place will not resoilve the problem.
Spam is a complex problem, there is no simple solution... when you come up with a viable one, you will be rich, until then, just suck it up and do your part. |
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moonpuppy
join:2000-08-21
Glen Burnie, MD | reply to Wills
I have been saying the same thing for years. |
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IT Guy
Ow, My Balls
Premium
join:2004-07-29
Las Cruces, NM
clubs:
·Comcast
|  reply to n2jtx
Postini
I am managing my company's mail servers as well. The company I decided to use to host our servers has the most awful spam gateway software (MailBox Cop by Roaring Penguin), what a God awful piece of crap! I had to manually approve or deny at least 2000 messages in an 8 hour period for roughly 150 accounts. As you can imagine, this was damn near an impossible feat while simultaneously performing my other job functions.
MailBox Cop, despite their promise of no false-positives, was so bad with rejecting valid emails and not creating an incident so that I could add the sender/domain as trusted, that our company may actually be fined some big dollars because an email never made it to the recipient. Why some people put so much trust in e-mail for time-sensitive, important matters is beyond me.
What I did was sign up for Postini's spam filtering service and it has been awesome! I haven't had 1 report of a false positive yet and it allows each individual account holder to take action on messages instead of me going through everyone's email. It's a bit pricey but well worth it. I out Google Apps as well, and if it weren't for the $12,000 annual price tag, I probably would have migrated to them.
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My time is a piece of wax, falling on a termite, that's choking on a splinter. --Beck |
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