 markopoleo
join:2003-04-02
Bonne Terre, MO | If people are still getting spam.. They deserve it.
In this day and age, no reason you should be getting spam still. I think all that spam is filling empty email accounts long forgotten. | |
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 | 
MooJohn
join:2005-12-18
Milledgeville, GA
 ·Windstream
| Re: If people are still getting spam.. It's not the people receiving spam that we should care about. It's the idiots that are responding to it and buying whatever it's got for sale who are perpetuating the problem.
If nobody bought from a spam or even clicked on it, it'd cease to be a useful tool. Instead, there are just enough dumbasses willing to click on an "enhancement" advertisement, stock tip, or replica watch ad that the spammers are willing to keep at it. | |
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cableties
Premium
join:2005-01-27
Levittown, PA
| Re: If people are still getting spam.. You don't have to respond, you just have to have an image load or HTML embed load, and that let's them know what IP (and domain) to hammer, troll, scan...
Yes, computer buyers (major %) have no idea that:
-The PC they just bought has OS that is 6 months behind in patches.
-The PC they bought a few years ago needs updates and not jsut to the OS
-Just because you are on the net, doesn't mean you shouldn't own a router w/firewall
-Have no clue about BCC lists, forwarding or email procedures
-Don't supervise their children that do have net access
So ISPs take the passive route (aka cheapest) and leave it to the user to filter.
"Spammers need to be executed. And posted on YouTube." -some facist | |
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| | | james1
join:2001-02-26
antarctica
| Re: If people are still getting spam.. But they dont just spam for the hell of it. They do it because it makes them MONEY, so if idiots stop buying the crap there will be no MONEY in it for the spammer. This would not apply to virus propagation of course however, since they dont care if you buy any penis enlargement pills or not. | |
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| | Time4aNAP
Premium
join:2007-04-09
Des Plaines, IL
·Speakeasy
 ·Comcast
| said by MooJohn  :It's not the people receiving spam that we should care about. It's the idiots that are responding to it and buying whatever it's got for sale who are perpetuating the problem. That would appear to be sound reasoning. And it is the prevailing school of thought on the matter. However I have good reason to believe that in fact, the biggest dupes are the spammers themselves, and that few if any spam solicitations are taken seriously.
Anybody who has monitored spam activity over the years has noticed that spam sent to Americans has shifted away from domestic get rich quick schemes, towards increasingly isolated foreign sources. What's more, the pitches are gaining a distinct bumpkin quality that indicates a trend away from spammers being familiar with their targets. Heck, most of the spammers that I see today can't even manage to get the right character set, much less a single word of english!
Back when there was a majority of native US spammers, I had several occasions to engage in conversation with a few who stumbled into mailing lists. Any illusions that I had held about spamming being a slick corporate marketing tool were quickly dashed. They were genuinely baffled as to why a single e-mail address could generate so much retaliation; they were so clueless that they had no idea that a legitimate use for mass mailings even existed. And these were the Americans, the ones who look downright sophisticated in comparison to the current crop!
One common excuse emerged: "I bought this CD that was guaranteed to be full of e-mail addresses of (suckers)." Anyone who has browsed the back pages of computer magazines has seen the ads for these lists. It became pretty obvious to me who the biggest suckers were. These CDs were being sold at prices ranging from several hundred to several thousand dollars apiece! It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to realize what happens when the would-be direct marketing mogul finds out that he's been taken. It's nothing more than a new twist on the old "plans for guaranteed income, send $1 to..." scheme.
So what happens when every shady character in America knows about the latest grift? The last suckers who still want to recoup their losses must look abroad for a fresh crop of dupes. Of course, news travels fast in the Free World, so the next targets, and therefore sources of spam, tended to be ex-Soviet-Bloc countries that have been isolated from the news of the world until just recently, and to third world areas that are flush with drug money, but still mostly illiterate.
The final frontier is Communist China. And, as the chart clearly shows, there's a gold rush going on there. China is the perfect market for peddling spam schemes to. It's still isolated from reality by a well-entrenched totalitarian government. And the same government is fighting the Cold War with a clever new strategy: beat the West at its own game, namely capitalism. Here we have the world's most populous nation that is now wealthy enough to build a large-scale Internet infrastructure that is engineered to keep the truth from flowing in, but allow the BS to spew outwards unfettered, through huge new backbones.
The totalitarian regime in Communist China has the power of censorship, so it will be a long, long time before all six billion Chinese subjects learn that sending spam is a sucker's game. In the meantime, that leaves a whole lot of people with hopes and dreams to be unwitting soldiers in a massive passive-aggressive virtual invasion of the USA for many years to come. | |
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DaSneaky1D
one wall to block them all
Premium,MVM
join:2001-03-29
The Lou
·Charter Pipeline
| Re: If people are still getting spam.. I thought the news post is stating just the opposite.
Apparently, the outbound bandwidth is the least of Verizon's concerns since the symmetrical connection is mostly inbound, rather than outbound.
--
:: my trivial ramblings :: | |
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| moonpuppy
join:2000-08-21
Glen Burnie, MD
·Verizon Online DSL
| said by markopoleo :They deserve it. In this day and age, no reason you should be getting spam still. I think all that spam is filling empty email accounts long forgotten. Wrong as usual, thanks for playing.
I did an experiment. A blank comcast email and a blank Google gmail account. Both had spam in less than a week. Not one thing was sent from either account nor was it used anywhere to sign up for anything. These were entered and left.
Try again.  | |
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| | internetspec
join:2007-04-19
Calgary, AB | Re: If people are still getting spam.. So what you are saying is that Google & Comcast are selling your e-mail address? Sorry, I'm not buying it. I think it's more likely that your machine is compromised. | |
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| | | moonpuppy
join:2000-08-21
Glen Burnie, MD
·Verizon Online DSL
| Re: If people are still getting spam.. said by internetspec :So what you are saying is that Google & Comcast are selling your e-mail address? Sorry, I'm not buying it. I think it's more likely that your machine is compromised. Wrong again. Where did I say that Google and Comcast sold my email info?
Spammers will use dictionary type attacks when looking for emails.
aaaaa@aol.com
aaaab@aol.com
and so on.
Machine is not compromised and all AV software is up to date. | |
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| | | | Time4aNAP
Premium
join:2007-04-09
Des Plaines, IL
·Speakeasy
·Comcast
| Re: If people are still getting spam.. said by moonpuppy :Spammers will use dictionary type attacks when looking for emails. aaaaa@aol.com aaaab@aol.com and so on. Actually that's the "brute-force" technique, not dictionary. Dictionary attacks are used most often to guess passwords. The most sophisticated spam engines use a combination of dictionary and brute-force methods, with dictionaries containing more family and given names, and using permutations based on people's names. For example, the traditional first-initial, last-name username, and the more recent first-name dot last-name e-mail prefix are common targets.
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| | | | | rmdir
join:2003-03-13
Chicago, IL | Re: If people are still getting spam.. Or they try names likely to be in use such as mail@, webmaster@, sales@ etc. I've disabled my catch all account for now, but I've seen countless spam using all the above when it's turned on. | |
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| | | | | | Time4aNAP
Premium
join:2007-04-09
Des Plaines, IL
·Speakeasy
·Comcast
| Re: If people are still getting spam.. I see surprisingly little spam in my administrative (abuse, hostmaster, postmaster etc.) accounts. It is amusing to see the nonexistent addresses that they do try to reach, though. Reading the bounce logs can be downright entertaining at times.  | |
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| | | | | | | moonpuppy
join:2000-08-21
Glen Burnie, MD
·Verizon Online DSL
| Re: If people are still getting spam.. said by Time4aNAP :I see surprisingly little spam in my administrative (abuse, hostmaster, postmaster etc.) accounts. It is amusing to see the nonexistent addresses that they do try to reach, though. Reading the bounce logs can be downright entertaining at times. Same thing happens here. | |
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| | MacTire
join:2007-06-22
| It has a lot to do with easy to guess email account names. I have had an Yahoo account for 3 years and have had only 2 spam messages in this time. It is the same with picking names as it is passwords; don't use word or word-number combo. Use a phrase instead. | |
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| | markopoleo
join:2003-04-02
Bonne Terre, MO
·Charter Pipeline
| said by moonpuppy :said by markopoleo :They deserve it. In this day and age, no reason you should be getting spam still. I think all that spam is filling empty email accounts long forgotten. Wrong as usual, thanks for playing. I did an experiment. A blank comcast email and a blank Google gmail account. Both had spam in less than a week. Not one thing was sent from either account nor was it used anywhere to sign up for anything. These were entered and left. Try again. Try again? Sure. How come out of 10 email accounts I have (3 are gmail), zero spam with 8 years?
Do do try again. | |
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| | | moonpuppy
join:2000-08-21
Glen Burnie, MD
·Verizon Online DSL
moderated:
June 23rd, @10:53PM
| Re: If people are still getting spam.. said by markopoleo :Try again? Sure. How come out of 10 email accounts I have (3 are gmail), zero spam with 8 years? Do do try again. Sure, I believe you like I believed your statement about Europe using DC power instead of AC.
In fact, at my work, spam tries to get through and these accounts are not even a week old. Our filter gets most of them and they are taken care of but the fact that these emails are new and never been used tells me that spammers are using some sort of sequential system for email addresses. | |
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| | | Time4aNAP
Premium
join:2007-04-09
Des Plaines, IL
·Speakeasy
·Comcast
edit:
June 23rd, @11:56PM
| said by markopoleo :Try again? Sure. How come out of 10 email accounts I have (3 are gmail), zero spam with 8 years? Ah...gmail hasn't been around for eight years, for starters.
Frankly I don't believe your claim. I've already shown one reason why it's not true, so it's not even a matter of whether. That leaves "why". Why would you make such a ridiculously bogus claim? Well, you might be one of the suckers who bought a very expensive CD containing e-mail addresses, and now you're using the same quality of judgment to somehow "make a right" by increasing the number of "wrongs". Maybe you're just lonely and crave attention. [CENSORED by "System"]
I personally don't care what your motives are. It's enough that there are many likely motives, and, as I mentioned before, you haven't had three gmail accounts for eight years, period. Neither has your recent Charter Pipeline account been active for eight years, per your own review.
Now, do you want to get real, and join the discussion? Or do you want to persist, in which case many of us will treat your posts like so much spam... | |
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| | | | | moonpuppy
join:2000-08-21
Glen Burnie, MD
·Verizon Online DSL
| Re: Dear "System" Agreed.
I made the same comment before about mods who will not identify themselves when "moderating" posts.
And before we here anything from phantom system again, I am a mod on another board and I NEVER moderate anyone without identifying myself. | |
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| 
pog
Premium
join:2004-06-03
Kihei, HI
·Hawaiian Telcom
| said by markopoleo :They deserve it. ... End user inboxes are only the tip of the iceberg. What about the resources required by mail servers that have to receive all mail and then filter out the spam? The signal to noise ratio has got to be very low... I don't have current stats but I remember a few years ago where Hotmail reported over 80% of mail was filtered out as spam upon reception. This is mail that doesn't even make it into a user's spam folder.
Comparing senderbase's list (all mail) with trend micro's...
»www.senderbase.org/senderbase_queries/main Verizon sits at the top of both... but it appears RR does a much better job of restricting outgoing spam.
Another interesting article (perhaps a little dated?) is at »spam-filter-review.toptenreviews···ics.html Most disturbing is:
Users who reply to Spam email 28%
Users who purchased from Spam email 8%
--
My Site | |
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| Time4aNAP
Premium
join:2007-04-09
Des Plaines, IL
·Speakeasy
·Comcast
| said by markopoleo :They deserve [spam]. ... I think all that spam is filling empty email accounts long forgotten. Do you seriously mean to imply that you yourself get zero spam? If that is the case, then I humbly submit that you must be the world's #1 pariah if even spammers don't send you mail.
I myself do use my various e-mail accounts, several of which were created back in an age when robots.txt files were honored 99% of the time, and we didn't think twice about posting e-mail addresses online. My decade-plus accounts do get more spam. They also get more important mail from contacts that I've cultivated over the years. By the same token, the hometown snail-mailbox that I maintained for 25 years after my father's death was usually stuffed full of junk mail. But it also yielded a handful of personal communications from old friends, for whom this was the last known mailing address for my family. In both cases, the few gems warranted the hassle of dealing with unsolicited garbage. | |
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| NormanS
Premium,MVM
join:2001-02-14
San Jose, CA
·Pacific Bell - SBC
| said by markopoleo :They deserve it. In this day and age, no reason you should be getting spam still. I think all that spam is filling empty email accounts long forgotten. So explain this one:
That account has never existed for my domain, yet the spammers regularly attempt delivery to the account. I have seen about four, or five spammer creations on my domain; email addresses that the spammer made up on his own.
--
Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum | |
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| | moonpuppy
join:2000-08-21
Glen Burnie, MD | Re: If people are still getting spam.. Don't ask him to explain it. He never will.
Fact is spammers try all sorts of ways to send out their crap hoping something gets through. | |
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computerman0
join:2006-07-19
Houston, TX | LOL What else could one do with that much bandwidth | |
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FicmanS
Premium
join:2005-01-11
Brownsburg, IN
clubs: | Holy Smokes... Ouch...
Now there's some bandwidth that could be put to better use... | |
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Doctor Four
My other vehicle is a TARDIS
Premium
join:2000-09-05
Dallas, TX | Verizon may be King of Spam But look who's in 2nd and 3rd places: TTNet.tr and
TPNet.pl, two of the ISPs with the greatest number
of botnet zombies (and thus clueless users). | |
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expert007
join:2006-01-10
Buffalo, NY | Upstream vs Downstream (or the other way around) Any educated guesses on what the percentage of upstream traffic to downstream traffic might be? Just what might 'overwhelmingly downstream" be? | |
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| Time4aNAP
Premium
join:2007-04-09
Des Plaines, IL
·Speakeasy
·Comcast
| Re: Upstream vs Downstream (or the other way around) said by expert007 :Any educated guesses on what the percentage of upstream traffic to downstream traffic might be? Just what might 'overwhelmingly downstream" be? My own definition of "overwhelmingly downstream" is a down:up ratio of 8:1 or more. Any service that boasts megabit download rates, but is hobbled by a 125 kbps upstream rate would apply. That includes the bulk of cable and DSL packages.
Although the severely limited upstream rates are ostensibly to prevent customers from operating "servers" (an undefined term that seems to encompass p2p as well as client/server networking), the severely capped upstream rates effectively limit the downstream rates for all TCP transactions. This includes all of the most popular Internet services, such as HTTP (web), FTP, POP/SMTP (mail), and many more.
Because TCP traffic utilizes two-way communications to guarantee the delivery of all packets, any sloth on one side of the conversation inevitably causes sloth on the other. When the ratio reaches a certain point, the upstream link can become saturated with ACK messages, compounding the problem with additional latency. IME, 8:1 is the practical limit. Beyond that, the downstream rates become increasingly hypothetical. Claiming larger numbers for downstream traffic that the uplink cannot support is false and misleading advertising. | |
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Jim Gurd
Premium
join:2000-07-08
Plymouth, MI | Major improvement I noticed that Comcast was number 45 on that list. Considering the number of users they have they seem to have really cleaned up a lot of the problem customers. In the past I know they were in the top 10 of spam sources. | |
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Eric Martin
join:2005-06-19
66308
| Same reason phone& mailing companies loved telemarketers & Junkmail.
THOSE F*CKERS MAKE MONEY OFF OF IT.
The phone companies loved telemarketers.
The reason Verizon gets away with it is because they MAKE MONEY from it.
If the organizers of the internet would have some BALLS they would threaten to BAN verizon from the internet alltogether.
The telephone companies are fuc*ing EVIL. | |
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brooklynman4
join:2004-09-07
Brooklyn, NY | Re: Same reason phone& mailing companies loved telemarketers & In tresting how this story didnt come out when they got the pc world award lol. | |
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tmc8080
join:2004-04-24
Floral Park, NY
| another reason Another reason why Verizon can't raise broadband rates to their customers. Spam is something on balance Verizon profits from. Although it need be said again and again..
DO NOT FEED THE SPAMMERS!! DO NOT BUY ANYTHING THEY SELL OR SOLICIT WEBSITES WHO SELL ADVERTISING!! That they spammers will shrivel up and die. This is directed at the .01% of morons who actually are their customers. | |
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| Time4aNAP
Premium
join:2007-04-09
Des Plaines, IL
·Speakeasy
·Comcast
| Re: another reason Have you ever met even a single person who placed an order in response to spam? I sure haven't! Neither have I ever so much as heard about a "friend of a friend" who has. The notion that spam actually generates business is a myth. And I for one have good reason to believe that the myth is unfounded. See my post above.
You're barking up the wrong tree.
I know that it's not very satisfying to know that all of that spam is nothing more than a side-effect of the real scam, and that as a 3rd party victim, you're virtually powerless to stop it. But there is something concrete that you can do to at least not encourage the spammers: stop answering spam.
That's right, way too many of you are unwittingly answering spam mail every time that you do so much as preview spam, using the most popular e-mail clients. since you must first select a spam mail before you can delete it, you're letting your e-mail client answer that spam. Every time you do, you're telling a spammer that you exist. And that in and of itself is enough to help convince the spammers that big money is right around the corner. And that is what helps out the purveyors of the scam that the spammers are falling victim to.
So if you're making holier-than-thou admonitions about "feeding the spammers" whilst using Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, Mozilla Thunderbird with HTML enabled, or any of the big webmail services (gmail, Yahoo!, MSN/hotmail etc.), then you are the very same problem which you decry.
Get a clue first, then take action. | |
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| | 
respondingtospam
@inehome-server.com
| People do respond to spam You haven't heard of anyone who bought something advertised in spam? Read this article: »www.businessweek.com/magazine/co···4064.htmCraig Schmidt fell victim to questionable Internet medicine in April, 2004. The Chicago plastics salesman, then 30, was feeling the stress and back pain of long workweeks often spent on the road. Checking his e-mail one day, he noticed ads for Xanax and the painkiller Ultram. He placed $400 in orders without ever speaking to a doctor. | |
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| | | Time4aNAP
Premium
join:2007-04-09
Des Plaines, IL
·Speakeasy
·Comcast
| Re: People do respond to spam said by respondingtospam :
You haven't heard of anyone who bought something advertised in spam? Read this article... Huh. Well, now I have.
There's got to be more to that story, though. I don't mean to imply that nobody is that stupid; I've seen way too many people who are all too ready prove that there are plenty of imbeciles out there. It's just that anybody with real pain would go to the doctor, get a prescription, and be done with it. When you're in pain, you don't feel like waiting around for a foreign shipment to clear customs...or not.
Even someone with zero insurance can have pain medication in a matter of hours by visiting a medical clinic and filling the prescription for $200 total. Who would risk $400 and wait for a mail shipment? A drug abuser, that's who.
So when you look at it in that perspective, was Craig Schmidt really a spam victim? Or is he a drug-seeking abuser, taking the same chances that any drug abuser takes, only over the Internet?
I will grant you that at least one person has in fact placed an order with a spammer though. | |
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| | | |
respondingtospam
@inehome-server.com
| More than one I can't believe you really thought absolutely no person on planet earth has ever purchased something advertised in spam e-mail. You are naïve at best. If you hadn't noticed, there is a lot of people with computers around the world and a lot more spam e-mails. Did you really think with all that spam out there (or any other unsolicited commercial advertisement, including telemarketing) that not even one person has ever responded with a purchase? Anyone can tell you it's more than one person. Have a look at some of these articles:
»www.dmnews.com/cms/dm-news/inter···093.htmlFor example, anti-spam software company Mailshell released a study in 2003 indicating that 8 percent of the online population had purchased from a spam message. »www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stori···87&EDATEWhy do the spammers go to so much trouble to get their message across? The answer is simple; many people still buy from spam. A recent survey by toptenreviews.com stated that 8% of spam recipients buy from spam email--making it very profitable! | |
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| Time4aNAP
Premium
join:2007-04-09
Des Plaines, IL
·Speakeasy
·Comcast
| Re: Here, Try this. said by NJxxxJon :I am on verizon DSL and I dont use the verizon.net address. Simple. Gmail and Fotki FT frickin Win. The problem is that, ironically, you've made the loser's decision. You would have been better off using the Verizon DSL e-mail account by itself. See above. | |
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alchav
join:2002-05-17
Palm Desert, CA
|  Web Mail & ISP Blockers!
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| Time4aNAP
Premium
join:2007-04-09
Des Plaines, IL
·Speakeasy
·Comcast
| Re: Web Mail & ISP Blockers! said by alchav :I don't use computer based eMail clients anymore, like Outlook. ... Everything else goes to a Suspect Folder on the ISP Server [sic] where I can Report, Delete, or Accept... When you select the e-mails to "Report, Delete, or Accept", are you viewing the HTML content of those e-mails? If so, precisely what are you bragging about? See above. | |
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| | alchav
join:2002-05-17
Palm Desert, CA |  Re: Web Mail & ISP Blockers!
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DSLdewd
join:2004-06-05
Denver, CO | Well that settles it..... The biggest idiots use Verizon...good to know. | |
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raye
Premium
join:2000-08-14
Orange, CA
| Actually, Roadrunner is king If you look through all 4 pages and add up all the ASNs that are roadrunner's, RR comes out on top. It is close though; verizon and RR run neck and neck. RR's top ASN is in NYC; with that kind of volume every one of their client's machines must be bots... | |
|
ispjournalist
@vzavenue.net
| what about spam per capita? If the Verizon network cited in the study includes MCI's UUNET, (I don't know whether or not VZGNI-TRANSIT - Verizon Internet Services Inc. does include UUNET) then Verizon's network may be as much as one fifth of all internet traffic. In that case, it would rank number one because it has the most traffic on the internet.
Similarly, I'd praise Cogent, which also has a large volume of traffic, for not making this list.
Finally, some ISPs may be getting away with better ranking than they deserve because
»https://nssg.trendmicro.com/nrs/reports/rankinfo.htm
"Some ISPs may have multiple ASNs and therefore appear more than once on the table." | |
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DSLdewd
join:2004-06-05
Denver, CO | ok apparently only a few people in this thread realize that this is about zombie PC's not controlling incoming spam. | |
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| Time4aNAP
Premium
join:2007-04-09
Des Plaines, IL
·Speakeasy
·Comcast
| Re: ok apparently only a few people in this thread said by DSLdewd :realize that this is about zombie PC's not controlling incoming spam. Based on the eWeek article, it appears that one infected web server can do a lot more damage than a whole town full of personal computers.
I'd amend that to say "it's all about the HTML". | |
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batterup
I Can Not Tell A Lie.
Premium
join:2003-02-06
Netcong, NJ
clubs:
·Verizon Online DSL
| How stupid can people be. As P.T. Barnum said a sucker is borne every minute.
Verizon attempted to control spam and the blood sucking leech spammers and there hired intellectual prostitutes sued Verizon for their effort and made millions.
»www.theregister.co.uk/2005/01/21···_action/
That is the typical CLEC/spammer/TeleTruth way of life, make money off the effort of others. You people are dragging the US of A into the toilet.
Why don't you people get a job and learn the ways of the real world? | |
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MilldogginU
@comcast.net | spam king nice to see Cumcast isn't on the list. Yippee! | |
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| NormanS
Premium,MVM
join:2001-02-14
San Jose, CA | Re: spam king Even so, I report a lot of Comcast spam, and I see a lot of Comcast IP addresses hitting my gateway mail servers.
--
Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum | |
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ricep5
Premium
join:2000-08-07
Jacksonville, FL | Verizon and spam This report may be reporting that Verizon is the top spammer, but it may be that it comes from its international peerings in NY and NJ.
They could be sourced from Europe and AT&T may just do a better job of blocking them then Verizon does. | |
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Rob A
Jets 19 - Steelers 16
Premium
join:2005-01-17
Pompton Plains, NJ | Who cares... About spam, they can spam me all they want if they bring me fios! | |
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Lineage
join:2006-10-19
USA | heh.... CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! - Your inbox | |
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Verizon: King of Spam
Dear "System"
They don't care and that's the way it is. 
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