another 1,000 spams later...
Feb. 7th, 2008 09:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miriam_eLogged in today to get my email and was deluged with almost 1,000 spam messages on my oldest account.
It is so annoying that so little is being done to stop spam. I listened to a talk recently by a security expert and he was asked about the spam problem. He said that we have to resign ourselves to it because the cost of email is so low that it becomes economically attractive to deluge the net with crap in the hope of a couple of payoffs. He also said that there is no easy solution because spammers have been taking over other people's machines through the net and getting them to do the dirty work. He said that if you hassle the owners of the subverted machines then those innocent people are hit instead of the malfeasants. The interviewer agreed, but I didn't. This is dumb! We don't tell people they are being misused??? We don't let them know that some dipshit has gained access to their machine and is shitting all over the net??? If it was my machine I'd rather know!
I've spoken here a few times of my feeling that if we simply verified the sending address of emails then we would almost eliminate spam overnight. The people whose machines were taken over to spam the net would be notified of that when the police called. It would be sufficiently embarrassing for them to do something about it instead of how things are at the moment: "You should use a firewall and consider chucking MSWindows." "Nah. I couldn't be bothered." So they continue to damage the net because we are too worried about their sensibilities to tell them to fix it, and THEY (we) continue to be the problem.
Blacklisting and filters have too great an opportunity for misuse. If Big Brother ever decides to crack down they will be the first to be used to isolate troublesome people. Anyway, blacklisting and filters don't stop the horse bolting, they adjust your glasses so that you can't see that it has -- they'll never stop spam because spammers will always know some people will receive the spam, and worse, it likely causes them to redouble their efforts because the filters necessitate them sending more in order to reach enough people who can be duped into replying.
Verifying sender addresses would cut the problem off at its source.
It is so annoying that so little is being done to stop spam. I listened to a talk recently by a security expert and he was asked about the spam problem. He said that we have to resign ourselves to it because the cost of email is so low that it becomes economically attractive to deluge the net with crap in the hope of a couple of payoffs. He also said that there is no easy solution because spammers have been taking over other people's machines through the net and getting them to do the dirty work. He said that if you hassle the owners of the subverted machines then those innocent people are hit instead of the malfeasants. The interviewer agreed, but I didn't. This is dumb! We don't tell people they are being misused??? We don't let them know that some dipshit has gained access to their machine and is shitting all over the net??? If it was my machine I'd rather know!
I've spoken here a few times of my feeling that if we simply verified the sending address of emails then we would almost eliminate spam overnight. The people whose machines were taken over to spam the net would be notified of that when the police called. It would be sufficiently embarrassing for them to do something about it instead of how things are at the moment: "You should use a firewall and consider chucking MSWindows." "Nah. I couldn't be bothered." So they continue to damage the net because we are too worried about their sensibilities to tell them to fix it, and THEY (we) continue to be the problem.
Blacklisting and filters have too great an opportunity for misuse. If Big Brother ever decides to crack down they will be the first to be used to isolate troublesome people. Anyway, blacklisting and filters don't stop the horse bolting, they adjust your glasses so that you can't see that it has -- they'll never stop spam because spammers will always know some people will receive the spam, and worse, it likely causes them to redouble their efforts because the filters necessitate them sending more in order to reach enough people who can be duped into replying.
Verifying sender addresses would cut the problem off at its source.
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no subject
Date: 2008-02-07 10:09 am (UTC)I get 300+ a day at my work account (the address is on the company website) and a trickle of my private (never used for anything ISP) mail, and even fewer (but increasing) to gMail.
*sigh*
no subject
Date: 2008-02-07 11:41 pm (UTC)In fact, looking at the times on the emails they were all sent within an hour of each other. They are all essentially identical except for their subject and forged sender address, and they all carry a 3KB payload. I haven't investigated what it is. It may be a virus or trojan, although 3KB is pretty small to be one of those.
None of my other email accounts received this because they all have strong spam protection, however I keep the old unprotected address because I can guarantee I'll receive emails sent to it, whereas I've had the unpleasant experience of perfectly legitimate emails to my other accounts being spuriously blocked.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-08 12:16 am (UTC)Who else but machines could whip up the phrase:
"Get your Giant Pilot into her C0ckpit".
Unless there really is a Promsak Kinmon.
The 3KB is most probably, based on what I have seen at work (some people here use Preview Pane in Outlook, a small jpg or gif promoting viagra or a picture of a very large penis and a very happy looking girl, tinted in an artistic blue.