SPAM-the end of the internet?

[Bender]

I received a SPAM message from a "search engine".
I normally do not even open spam messages, but I made a mistake this time.
They sell a database of 500 million email addresses for $400.:dead:
Giving the huge quantity of SPAM that travels every day over the net, and the accesibility of email addresses for new spammers, I'll say we have to worry about that.
Imagine if they have 10.000 buyers for that 500 millions emails db and each buyer send 1000 emails....

 

[Edwin]

Such products have been sold for years and years - it's nothing new, so nothing to worry MORE about that you were worrying before.

 

[Anthony Ng]

Yes, this is not news, and you could guess that a lot of those 500 million addies are not exactly very useful. Spam only works with novices or people with no real e-mail to read. The more Internet savvy are able to delete spam on sight (from the title, even if they slip through the filter). The only thing I don't quite understand is that there are actually people who actually click on the link and go visit those websites or even BUY from them.

 

[Honan]

So what is the best way to fight back?
Every spam I get has a fake return email and presumably a real URL
What really bothers me is the number of bounce back emails that I get, because the spam was sent to an incorrect email addy and the spammer has used my real email as the fake return email addy.
Obviously the registrars and hosts couldn't care less because they are profiting
My ISP only cares about selling me filter software
Is there not somewhere where the URL in the body of the spam msg can easily be reported as promoting spam and then presuure applied to the registrar to cancel the DN ?

 

[Bender]

I am worried about the unnecessary traffic caused by the spammers.If more and more spammers are attracted into this "business", the amount of traffic generated by them can lead to serious problems...real serious.

 

[Anthony Ng]

I don't have the numbers at hand, but spam traffic IS already a HUGE problem. But my personal take is not to waste time fighting back, unless they are actually spoofing your domains. The bottom line is: if people do not visit those spamvertised websites and/or buy products from them, what's the use of sending spam? We have to kill spam in their roots.

 

[Honan]

I don't have the numbers at hand, but spam traffic IS already a HUGE problem. But my personal take is not to waste time fighting back, unless they are actually spoofing your domains. The bottom line is: if people do not visit those spamvertised websites and/or buy products from them, what's the use of sending spam? We have to kill spam in their roots.

IMHO the ever increasing numbers of people reading email for the first time ensures the spammer will always have customers.
Personally, I would love to spend the time to copy/paste the spammers URL and send it somewhere, I just don't know where to send it
Capital punsishment is a novel approach, NS, I am just not sure why the spammer's gf has to be involved

 

[mole]

The end of the Internet? hmmm... its only just beginning the last time I checked in the broadband industry I help promote, and new namespace is the future.

 

[stevey]

In early 2003, the oft-cited estimate of e-mail considered spam was approximately 40 percent; by early 2004 this figure had jumped to 60 percent. At the start of 2005, some sources estimate spam comprises as much as 70 percent to 80 percent of global e-mail traffic. 30 billion Emails are sent over the Internet each day

where does spam come from?

1. United States (35.7 percent)
2. South Korea (24.9 percent)
3. China and Hong Kong (9.7 percent)
4. France (3.1 percent)
5. Spain (2.7 percent)
6. Canada (2.6 percent)
7. Japan (2.1 percent)
8. Brazil (1.9 percent)
9. United Kingdom (1.5 percent)
10. Germany (1.2 percent)
11. Australia (1.2 percent)
12. Poland (1.2 percent)

50 percent of this spam is sent from “zombie” PCs, computers being used as relays without their owners knowing about it.

 

[MediaHound]

JOEMART, you should implement SPF into your domains.
http://spf.pobox.com

 

[JMJ]

Spammers have been spoofing clients on my server for some time now. It's become a daily issue now with so many emails bouncing back they are taking down the server almost every day. What sucks is there's not much we can do about it . :veryangry

 

[MediaHound]

Have you implemented SFP, Mogul?

 

[JMJ]

Since I personally have no idea what SFP is I would have to say I don't know..lol My admin might have an idea of what it is or if he has or not?

 

[seeker]

dumb question of the day.
what is SFP?

 

[MediaHound]

http://spf.pobox.com/howworks.html

 

[seeker]

excellent link as usual!!!

 

[Restecpa]

The end of the Internet? hmmm... its only just beginning the last time I checked in the broadband industry I help promote, and new namespace is the future.

New namespace is the future? :huh:

 

[seeker]

.seek

 

[Honan]

JOEMART, you should implement SPF into your domains.
http://spf.pobox.com

Wow!!
Thank you kindly, MediaH
Regards
J

 

[labrocca]

Spam is a HUGE problem for me ever since I became a sys admin. I have 200 of my domains on one box and it gets about 10GB per month of bandwidth of spam. It's about 100,000 email per day!!! It's just junk thrown at my domains....they just guess at names and send emails at me. I use filters, virus checkers and anything I can at server level. It's really frustrating. The worst is when I buy a name and throw it on my server and suddenly it gets 10,000 emails to the inbox! ARGH! I just want to beat a spammer down. I am sure the major ISPs are ticked off. They spend a lot of resources trying to combat spam. It requires a lot of equipment, knowledge, and man hours. And we are losing too.

The best thing I see is what Bill Gates proposed (I hate MS too but it's a good idea). He thought to have any incoming email verified with the sender. It works...I have seen earthlink using it for their clients. I hope this becomes more the norm as I wish to implement this when I know that all the users are comfortable with this type of system. I would hate for important registrar email to get bounced because the email wasn't verified.


Anyways....spam sucks and they should start arresting these people.