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| 8/1 |
| 2002/12/24 [Computer/SW/SpamAssassin] UID:26895 Activity:very high |
12/23 Spam: A thousand times worse than you imagine:
http://www.internetwk.com/story/INW20021219S0003
\_ Sigh. The guy's a fool. Put quotas on mailspools, and make
\- barry shien has a pretty long history of not being a fool.
from you comments, i'm inclined to continue to give him
he benefit of the doubt here. --psb
your end users learn to filter their own. Then you won't be
up to 3am putting in dumbass filters that block your user's
mom's email. And for GOD'S SAKE, don't use EXCHANGE!
\_ And when the customers' mailspools fill with spam, do they all
have the time and expertise to use a filter or do they drop
your service for someone who will do it for them?
\_ I don't know, I'm living in my parents basement still
I'll get a job someday.
\_ something I don't understand about spam. It must originate from
somewhere, so why don't the ISPs just pull the plug on people who
spam? Some ISPs MUST be making a lot of money carrying spam,
otherwise the spammers would be shutting down one by one.
\_ Decent companies _will_ shutdown spammers, and do it quickly.
There are, unfortunately, many unscrupulous ISPs out there
that pocket the money and ride right along.
\_ still doesn't make sense. there are not that many tier 0
or 1 ISPs. Smallers ones that cater to spam still buy from
Qwest, ATT, etc. So I think this is a problem that the
big ISPs don't want to solve because it affects their
cash flow. The article should be about why ATT or Qwest
sells to smallers companies that produce spam.
\_ Its not that easy. Theres lots of places that spam can originate
from. In many cases its very well distributed, so that it does
not appear to be coming from a concentrated site. Or it is
coming from poorly secured sites, like open wireless points, or
even some starbucks' net.
\_ Troll harder. Spam has been a problem long before starbucks'
net and open wireless points.
\_ Quick get this guy a soda account, he's uttered the magic phrase:
"it is a total tragedy of the commons"
\_ go back to russia, imposter faking as a jew.
\_ go back to russia, imposter slav mobster faking as a jew.
\_ you must be a republican, since you like to sieze an idea and
deride it without regard for its meaning. like "liberal" or
"military-industrial complex".
\_ you must be a democrat since you can't understand
simple concepts like jokes. (I have no interest in
arguing about the "tragedy of the commons" with
you or anyone else since it has been repeatedly
demonstrated that this concept rests on several
invalid assumptions about human nature and human
motivations)
\_ demonstrated by who?
\_ Just look through the motd archives.
\_ Search for "my brother-in-law with an AA
in economics" on FreeRepublic.
\_ You know the guy who invented the concept won
a nobel prize in economics for his work, right?
\_ Yeah, and Yasser Arafat won the *peace* prize.
\_ So what? Just because someone wins the nobel
prize doesn't make the concept correct. It
may be a good approx. of general human behavior
in certain circumstances but it doesn't work
in all cases. As far as the span thing is
concerned, the internet isn't a "commons". |
| 8/1 |
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| www.internetwk.com/story/INW20021219S0003 Shein is president of The World, a small, 10,000-user Internet service provider in Boston. Founded in 1989, The World was a pioneering commercial Internet service. It has survived competition from the telecoms and weathered the dot-com meltdown, but Shein is worried that it won't survive spam. I surmised, correctly, that the e-mails were bouncing because of the spam blacklists that The World has in place. I called The World's tech support and the guy at the help desk couldn't do anything for me. He's a friend of mine, I've quoted him many times over the years and we've had dinner a few times. One of the reasons I use The World as an ISP is for its great tech support. I tried to get in a question, but Shein was angry and on a roll. People are in deep denial, but it's completely collapsing before your very eyes," Shein said. While some disagree with Shein's dire predictions, saying the problem will eventually be solved, e-mail watchers are in agreement that spam is a crisis. Matt Cain, an analyst with the Meta Group, said technology will likely solve the spam problem before it takes down Internet e-mail. Bruce Schneier, founder and CTO of Counterpane Internet Security, agreed with Shein's dire prediction for the future. He said Internet e-mail won't go away, but the current economic model -- where we pay a relatively small charge for an Internet connection, which includes, at no extra charge, all the e-mail we can send and receive -- will be replaced by e-mail tariffs. Get off your duff and implement one of the many vendors' anti-spam solutions, and/or program your e-mail reader with some rules-based filtering, and get back to work! But a bit of perspective here -- so are telephone solicitors. TV commercials and other conventional advertisers pay for the programming that carries their ads. Even surface junkmail is paid for by the sender -- indeed, surface junkmail subsidizes some of the cost of sending a First Class letter. But ISPs and enterprises aren't paid for carrying spam, indeed, the spammers steal resources from ISPs and enterprises to send their messages. The real cost of spam is not borne by the end-user, who utters a choice curse word, hits the delete key, and moves on. Shein estimates that about 30 percent of staff expenses at his 20-person company is now spent either putting in spam filters, or talking to customers on the phone about spam, or about false positives -- legitimate e-mail that gets erroneously tagged as spam and blocked. If we all go down in blazes, I don't care any more," Shein said. He said the big multinational Internet service providers and telecoms are experiencing the same problems as his company, but won't discuss them because it would be bad for public relations. Not until people get their heads out of the sand and start admitting to the problem will anything get done," he said. Shein said he believes much of what's labeled as spam is, in fact, a denial-of-service attack. He even speculates that the motive behind spam isn't advertising and profit -- it's cyberterrorism. At one point, The World was under attack by 200 servers simultaneously "spewing the same spam at us," Shein said. That's a nice feeling -- your business is being pounded into dust by criminals, and people say, Live with it,'" Shein said. Click to try and ask for our white paper - PC Management for the Internet Age. MessageLabs is the global leader in managed email security. |