Posted on 08/26/2004 4:15:06 PM PDT by solicitor77
CHICAGO, Aug. 25 (UPI) -- Russian underworld figures and Nigerian e-mail scam artists are no longer responsible for most of the spam arriving in U.S. e-mail inboxes. The latest research indicates most spam on the Internet in the United States is now generated domestically -- not overseas.
"American spammers are the driving force," Phyllis Schneck, vice president of CipherTrust Inc., an Internet security firm in Atlanta, said. Experts say that is not just an interesting tidbit. It is explosive information, because it means legislation passed by Congress last year to curtail spam has not worked, and many Internet marketers who mass-mail commercial messages increasingly are employing illegal methods.
A study released this week by Sophos Inc., an anti-spam software developer in Lynnfield, Mass., -- a copy of which was provided to UPI -- indicates 42.53 percent of the world's spam is now produced in the United States. The second-biggest spam producer is South Korea, with 15.42 percent of all unwanted commercial e-mail. Third is China and Hong Kong, which combined to produce 11.62 percent of all spam, according to the Sophos study
That lawlessness decreases the productivity of millions of workers at the office, who must contend with false or misleading e-mail messages, and spend work time deleting them, experts said.A report by Nucleus Research indicates as much as 90 minutes of productivity is lost, per day, at a typical company because of spam. "Spammers are motivated by one thing -- quick, easy money," Kraft said. These senders of e-mail -- which tout everything from freaky sex shows via Web cams to low-cost mortgages -- are also apparently collaborating with criminal hackers, who know many tricks to bypass conventional computer security, and get a message to your desktop PC.
Gene Koprowski covers telecommunications for UPI Science News. E-mail sciencemail@upi.
(Excerpt) Read more at upi.com ...
Since I don't stand a change in getting a thermonuclear device to lob in the direction of spammers, I am using the next best thing..SpamPal.
Interesting! I hadn't realized the spam was mostly coming from inside the US now. Though I've heard that many providers block whole networks coming out of China and other third-world countries that produce more spam than real mail, so that could be part of the picture.
Sort of a cheap shot at John Ashcroft at the end, though. The guy does have limited resources, and I'm willing to keep getting a few mortgage spam messages if it means he uncovers a terrorist plot instead. Also, I saw something recently that he's going to be cracking down in the next few weeks on porn spam, which really is a different thing entirely.
My computer accepts only genuine Nigerian spam. I've found so many lost relatives who died in Africa leaving me money.
But isn't that the problem with all anti-spam programs? Don't you wind up still going through the deleted folder to make sure a message you wanted hasn't been unintentionally discarded? So you don't really wind up saving any time. I've just given up. I don't try to filter it out; I just delete it when it arrives.
PS: an atom bomb isn't painful enough. I'd like to get up close and personal with these spammers.
The real solution is 'Challenge/Response' see http://tmda.net. Unfortunately that's only Linux and I am not ready for that just yet.
It always was, if one follows the money. At first, China was running so many unsecured mail relays they had no clue what was going on. Then they found out spammers would PAY for mailings and "Bulletproof" web hosting. Regardless of whether it traceroutes to cn,hk,sg,kr,etc., when you process the credit card or have the mortgage company call you, etc., it's always here, eventually, unless it is a Nigerian-type scam.
We all knew the law was a fraud, because it was watered down so much by bribes from the Direct Marketing Association. Looking for a place to run amok with a Street Sweeper? Start there.
Using SpamPal I block IP addresses from China, Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Brazil, Nigeria and Russia. I don't know anyone in any of those countries. This single option knocks out a lot of spam. But it's only a small part of SpamPal's bag of tricks.
Pass a law that if anyone is charged with any crime against a spammer, the defense shall be allowed to present evidence to the jury of the defendant's spamming activities and the judge shall inform the jury that they have the right to acquit the defendant if they decide that his "crime" served the public interest.
"The jury finds that the deceased sent defendant 147 'you've been approved for a 3.5% mortgage; 122 'the viagra that last all weekend,' and 241 'guaranteed to increase your size by 3 inches' spam mails."
Judge: "Case dismissed!"
Most spam comes from machines that are compromised, and the population of compromised machines, changes with time. The source of viruses and attempts to hijack computers, remains from overseas.
Ooh, there's a big, freakin' surprise.
It probably depends on how you set up your filters.
I still use the old (unintelligent) keyword-type filters that I manually define, so I set my program not to have any false positives (since I don't use possibly overzealous keywords like .jpg, html, unsubscribe, or "click here"). The tradeoff is that it misses some spam. I don't have to delete as many emails manually, and I don't review for false positives.
I have a spam folder, but I only use it for testing new keywords. Otherwise, the offending emails get deleted automatically, and there's nothing to check.
There are 1,300,925,111,156,286,160,896 ways to spell Viagra.
No way to keep them all at bay.
http://cockeyed.com/lessons/viagra/viagra.html
The link to the calculations.
I've been rather annoyed that my work ISP had been added to spam filters because of compromised computers of other customers. That has been a true bummer to work around. Removing the ISP from the filters is the ISP's responsibility, but they only respond to customers who bring something to their attention.
Interesting. So you set filters based on specific words appearing in the messages? Couldn't you wind up missing messages from friends who use those words?
I don't think standard grep regex syntax will quite do the job with one expression, but I think eight expressions could do it (the one difficulty would be with the \/ and /\ "V" and "A" characters). So I think the regular expressions:
[Vv].?[Ii1l|ïì:ÌÎÍÏ!].?[Aa@áàâãäåæÀÁÂÃÄÅ*].?[Gg6].?[Rr®].?[Aa@áàâãäåæÀÁÂÃÄÅ] [Vv].?[Ii1l|ïì:ÌÎÍÏ!].?/\.?[Gg6].?[Rr®].?[Aa@áàâãäåæÀÁÂÃÄÅ] \/.?[Ii1l|ïì:ÌÎÍÏ!].?[Aa@áàâãäåæÀÁÂÃÄÅ*].?[Gg6].?[Rr®].?[Aa@áàâãäåæÀÁÂÃÄÅ] \/.?[Ii1l|ïì:ÌÎÍÏ!].?/\.?[Gg6].?[Rr®].?[Aa@áàâãäåæÀÁÂÃÄÅ] [Vv].?[Ii1l|ïì:ÌÎÍÏ!].?[Aa@áàâãäåæÀÁÂÃÄÅ*].?[Gg6].?[Rr®].?/\ [Vv].?[Ii1l|ïì:ÌÎÍÏ!].?/\.?[Gg6].?[Rr®].?/\ \/.?[Ii1l|ïì:ÌÎÍÏ!].?[Aa@áàâãäåæÀÁÂÃÄÅ*].?[Gg6].?[Rr®].?/\ \/.?[Ii1l|ïì:ÌÎÍÏ!].?/\.?[Gg6].?[Rr®].?/\would catch all of the enumerated forms with very few false hits.
Great article...
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