Apologies if this has been posted elsewhere.
I say that this a good start!
I say that this a good start!
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Some Good news - Spammer sentenced to seven years in prison
- Thread starter ttmac
- Start date
- Status
I saw this story on Google news, and the rest of the day was like puppy dogs and sunbeams!
Latest spam filter stats:
73% of our incoming mail is SPAM
Who the heck is actually reading and buying stuff from these emails?
deletion mistake
no I can't recover that
you didn't save it
-Shrubble
Latest spam filter stats:
73% of our incoming mail is SPAM
Who the heck is actually reading and buying stuff from these emails?
deletion mistake
no I can't recover that
you didn't save it
-Shrubble
YellowOnline
Technical User
Shrubble>
It costs no money to send 1 000 000 spammails, so if only 0,001% of the spammed persons actually buy the product (or whatever is offered) you still make profit.
That's why ISPs are thinking about charging a very small fee per e-mail (like, €0,01), which wouldn't affect most users but does affect spammers (1 000 000 x €0,01 = €10 000).
I don't like that idea though. I'd rather like a decent, international law on spamming.
Peace,
Yellow
It costs no money to send 1 000 000 spammails, so if only 0,001% of the spammed persons actually buy the product (or whatever is offered) you still make profit.
That's why ISPs are thinking about charging a very small fee per e-mail (like, €0,01), which wouldn't affect most users but does affect spammers (1 000 000 x €0,01 = €10 000).
I don't like that idea though. I'd rather like a decent, international law on spamming.
Peace,
Yellow
onrdbandit
Programmer
Howdy,
I heard something a while back about reworking the whole method by which email is sent. I think is was about address verification to prevent spoofing, but I can't see how that affect spammers that run their own mail servers and such.
A phase-in of new technology at this point may be difficult, but something needs to be done. Of course the US tried to shift to the metric system a while back too, and look how far that has gone...
This could make for an interesting discussion. I bet there are many ideas bouncing around and I would love to hear any...
C-Ya,
onrdbandit
No! Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try. - Yoda
I heard something a while back about reworking the whole method by which email is sent. I think is was about address verification to prevent spoofing, but I can't see how that affect spammers that run their own mail servers and such.
A phase-in of new technology at this point may be difficult, but something needs to be done. Of course the US tried to shift to the metric system a while back too, and look how far that has gone...
This could make for an interesting discussion. I bet there are many ideas bouncing around and I would love to hear any...
C-Ya,
onrdbandit
No! Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try. - Yoda
- Thread starter
- #5
onrdbandit
The article Net Rivals Embrace to Fight Spam can be found at
It outlines efforts currently being taken by Microsoft and Yahoo to combat your favourite spam message.
As an aside, could the relay hosts not act as spam filters? Wouldn't this cut down on a lot of the internet traffic. I am speaking about legitimate relays and not compromised hosts.
If the first relay in a series of 4-5 relays blocks a spam mail from being delivered wouldn't that cut down on 20-25% of internet traffic?
Tom.
The article Net Rivals Embrace to Fight Spam can be found at
It outlines efforts currently being taken by Microsoft and Yahoo to combat your favourite spam message.
As an aside, could the relay hosts not act as spam filters? Wouldn't this cut down on a lot of the internet traffic. I am speaking about legitimate relays and not compromised hosts.
If the first relay in a series of 4-5 relays blocks a spam mail from being delivered wouldn't that cut down on 20-25% of internet traffic?
Tom.
The whole thing's a mess.
What blows my mind is when you look into the HTML source code of a lot of SPAM, the length that the coders go to to keep the stuff from being picked up by the text filters.
Sometimes you'll wonder why your filter is not picking up a mail about "Viagra", for instance. I mean after all, the body of the thing says "viagra" like ten times, it should pick it up, right?
If you open the email up in notepad (or any editor) you'll see something like the following:
So with that, the word "viagra" never appears in the body of the email, but the engine that your mail client uses to view the email throws out all of the undefined tags, and produces the word "VIAGRA". I've seen entire lengthy emails written using this technique, to the point where you would have to filter individual letters to stop it, and that's not really practical.
deletion mistake
no I can't recover that
you didn't save it
-Shrubble
What blows my mind is when you look into the HTML source code of a lot of SPAM, the length that the coders go to to keep the stuff from being picked up by the text filters.
Sometimes you'll wonder why your filter is not picking up a mail about "Viagra", for instance. I mean after all, the body of the thing says "viagra" like ten times, it should pick it up, right?
If you open the email up in notepad (or any editor) you'll see something like the following:
Code:
V<ewrkjrrr>I<sdkviuh>A<sldfhf>G<skd>R<siowsfhs>ASo with that, the word "viagra" never appears in the body of the email, but the engine that your mail client uses to view the email throws out all of the undefined tags, and produces the word "VIAGRA". I've seen entire lengthy emails written using this technique, to the point where you would have to filter individual letters to stop it, and that's not really practical.
deletion mistake
no I can't recover that
you didn't save it
-Shrubble
onrdbandit
Programmer
Seems to me, it would be entirely appropriate and rather simple to filter for inappropriatly formatted HTML. Similar to code validation, and should such tags be found, the sender is obviously either increadibly unlucky to accidentally create non-existant yet properly formatted HTML tags, or they are intentionally entering such tags to obscure the content.
Additionally, I dont see why scanning applications dont "skip" tagsb when scanning for content that a mail client would skip when rendering content. It would be simple to reconstruct the document without such tags. (similar to "Read As Text Only" option in Outlook).
But I am just ranting about something that frustrates me...
onrdbandit
No! Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try. - Yoda
Additionally, I dont see why scanning applications dont "skip" tagsb when scanning for content that a mail client would skip when rendering content. It would be simple to reconstruct the document without such tags. (similar to "Read As Text Only" option in Outlook).
But I am just ranting about something that frustrates me...
onrdbandit
No! Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try. - Yoda
I think that this cuts to the heart of the matter, though. Email(smtp) as a protocol needs to be much more homogized for effective scanning to really work.
For instance, if a user uses Microsoft word to compose emails, the source code (of the email) is full Microsoft's SGML-like schema tags (someone once opened one of my php scripts in Word and saved it, they're lucky to still be breathin!), I would imagine that many other editors add a mountain of their own proprietary tags that do god knows what.
Another issue is that as a Web developer myself, I find that I am always trying to strike a balance between what the "Newly expected" HTML/DHTML/CSS/WHATEVER tag standards are, and what tags you realistically have to use to expect the average web server to be able to view the page properly. So if you scan tags, do you scan for deprecated tags also? What if your sysadmin doesn't update the filter to accept new tags, or if XML DTDs work their way into the equation?
I, too, am very frustrated by all of this.
deletion mistake
no I can't recover that
you didn't save it
-Shrubble
For instance, if a user uses Microsoft word to compose emails, the source code (of the email) is full Microsoft's SGML-like schema tags (someone once opened one of my php scripts in Word and saved it, they're lucky to still be breathin!), I would imagine that many other editors add a mountain of their own proprietary tags that do god knows what.
Another issue is that as a Web developer myself, I find that I am always trying to strike a balance between what the "Newly expected" HTML/DHTML/CSS/WHATEVER tag standards are, and what tags you realistically have to use to expect the average web server to be able to view the page properly. So if you scan tags, do you scan for deprecated tags also? What if your sysadmin doesn't update the filter to accept new tags, or if XML DTDs work their way into the equation?
I, too, am very frustrated by all of this.
deletion mistake
no I can't recover that
you didn't save it
-Shrubble
- Thread starter
- #9
My initial thoughts on filtering at relay level did not include the scanning of body text. I was simply considering the possibility of filtering based on email addresses.
Personally I use Mailwasher, Spamweasel and, as a final check, Spambayes for Outlook. Mailwasher filters based on lists of known spam domain names and addresses as maintained by the likes of Spamhaus, Spamcop and Visicop. Additionally you can add to your own list of prohibited mail addresses.
Is there software available that could filter email addresses based on known lists of spammer addresses/domains at a relay level?
I'm not saying that filtering body text is bad but wouldn't filtering body text for known spam markers slow down the transmission of email unnecessarily? I suppose that if you consider the length of time it takes you to get to read the legitimate email that you receive, after wading through all the other rubbish, such a sacrifice in delivery speed may not be so bad.
Filtering might even speed up the delivery despite the additional checks. Legitimate email is not going to be held up by having to be queued behind spam.
To carry my thoughts a little further, couldn't relays also be used to filter/scan for virus's and render them harmless before they reach the end user?
Personally I use Mailwasher, Spamweasel and, as a final check, Spambayes for Outlook. Mailwasher filters based on lists of known spam domain names and addresses as maintained by the likes of Spamhaus, Spamcop and Visicop. Additionally you can add to your own list of prohibited mail addresses.
Is there software available that could filter email addresses based on known lists of spammer addresses/domains at a relay level?
I'm not saying that filtering body text is bad but wouldn't filtering body text for known spam markers slow down the transmission of email unnecessarily? I suppose that if you consider the length of time it takes you to get to read the legitimate email that you receive, after wading through all the other rubbish, such a sacrifice in delivery speed may not be so bad.
Filtering might even speed up the delivery despite the additional checks. Legitimate email is not going to be held up by having to be queued behind spam.
To carry my thoughts a little further, couldn't relays also be used to filter/scan for virus's and render them harmless before they reach the end user?
I use 2 levels of spam filtering on our Exchange server.
One is just a script that basically kicks out mails based on keywords (it's the second layer), but the other (top level) is a piece of software that actually works really well, called ORFEE.
It only costs $99.00 per server and intigrates nicely with Active Directory (or not, if you don't use AD). I was actually shocked at how well this simple (and CHEAP) software works. It automatically kicks back mail addresses to nonexisting users (freeing Exchange from the chore), has all of the usual black/white lists, and can be set up to query as many available Open Relay and SPAM sender global databases as you like (the more you choose, however, the slower the mail- 4 or 5 is usually enough, and has little no noticable effect on mail service).
You can download a free trial at
deletion mistake
no I can't recover that
you didn't save it
-Shrubble
One is just a script that basically kicks out mails based on keywords (it's the second layer), but the other (top level) is a piece of software that actually works really well, called ORFEE.
It only costs $99.00 per server and intigrates nicely with Active Directory (or not, if you don't use AD). I was actually shocked at how well this simple (and CHEAP) software works. It automatically kicks back mail addresses to nonexisting users (freeing Exchange from the chore), has all of the usual black/white lists, and can be set up to query as many available Open Relay and SPAM sender global databases as you like (the more you choose, however, the slower the mail- 4 or 5 is usually enough, and has little no noticable effect on mail service).
You can download a free trial at
deletion mistake
no I can't recover that
you didn't save it
-Shrubble
- Thread starter
- #11
More good News.
Hopefully this is the start of the end.
Perhaps we should be looking at other ways of stemming the flow of spam.
Al Capone, I believe was convicted for tax avoidance/evasion. Here in Ireland, criminals are being pursued for tax avoidance/evasion and are being presented with rather large bills for tax assessed on their illicit earnings. Property and assets are also being seized where it can be proven that they are the result of illicit earnings.
Microsoft and AOL's victory is a small one but it does prove that there are other routes that can be pursued to stop spammers.
At the moment I am examining EU anti-spam legislation to see if it could be used to force ISP's to prevent the transmission/relay of Spam. Sort of like shooting the messenger for bringing bad news! They are probably already covered but couldn't that give a spammer a loophole to exploit?
Tom.
Hopefully this is the start of the end.
Perhaps we should be looking at other ways of stemming the flow of spam.
Al Capone, I believe was convicted for tax avoidance/evasion. Here in Ireland, criminals are being pursued for tax avoidance/evasion and are being presented with rather large bills for tax assessed on their illicit earnings. Property and assets are also being seized where it can be proven that they are the result of illicit earnings.
Microsoft and AOL's victory is a small one but it does prove that there are other routes that can be pursued to stop spammers.
At the moment I am examining EU anti-spam legislation to see if it could be used to force ISP's to prevent the transmission/relay of Spam. Sort of like shooting the messenger for bringing bad news! They are probably already covered but couldn't that give a spammer a loophole to exploit?
Tom.
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