Spam for sites at spaces.live.com…who is to blame?

[wahnula]

Since there is no "spam" forum here I figured this was as good a place as any to discuss this issue and maybe find a solution. This isn’t really a security or virus issue, I feel it’s an ethical one. I guess it’s “in the workplace”, too, because spam is responsible for lots of wasted time every day. If the consensus is to post somewhere else I will do so.

There was a Major spammer bust recently and I had noticed a dip in my daily spam but now it's back and bigger than ever. I have noticed at least 10-20 a day pointing to sites located at spaces.live.com like this:

http://bmil61.spaces.live.com/

(harmless loan spam, safe for work...at least as of this moment)

They do have a "Report Abuse" link at the bottom of the site and I have been trying to report it, but it takes three days for them to acknowledge the abuse and then they ask for a description of the spam, when all they need to do is look at the stinkin' link! Probably some automated response system.

I was wondering how to escalate this issue to get someone (a real person) to pay attention to this new plague and maybe do something about it. I'm a student of spam and most of the spam I get (in the hundreds daily) points to private domains, this is the only site of its type being abused to this extent. I think Microsoft should take some responsibility for the ease in which spammers can put up their illegal crud, and they need to be held accountable. Any ideas?


Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[SimonDavies]

TBH I have found that it's when you publish your email address that you tend to have issues, my weekly spam count probably can be counted on two hands, it's because I don't put that email address on any websites, it's purely for email usage only. If I need to register an email account for somewhere that I think will cause me issues I use a seperate email address for that (TT being one of the few exceptions).

As a rule of thumb I NEVER register my work email address for any websites at all, product evals etc are all done on throw away accounts.

Simon

The real world is not about exam scores, it's about ability.

 

[wahnula]

Simon,

Believe it or not, I don't hate spam, I like having my finger on the pulse of the latest spam trends. I have a "honey pot" email address that was published on the Web from 1996 to around 2005 or so. I also have another address published on the web until earlier this year, so the damage has been done. I run SpamPal locally and SpamAssassin on my domain, so all my spam goes directly to my "Deleted Items" folder.

Most of the "Big Three" spammers use American, Russian or Chinese domains. They need to pay for these domains and supply some sort of information to ICANN. The abuse I've experienced from spaces.live.com is worse even than the abuse that used to happen at geocities.

To have a free website without stringent requirements to register and post is almost criminal, and THAT's what I'm upset about.

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[Opieo]

Tony,

The site may perhaps have very little required to register, but in reality, how many of their users are sending you spam? Is it over 50% of the spaces.live users? Probably not. Blaming the site I feel is directing the blame at the wrong party. The real problem here is the people who register with an intention of sending spam. Just because the site hoster is an easier target and larger, that does not make them at fault. They are hosting a valid service that many people use without the intent of sending spam for advertising.
Reporting the abuse is a good thing (in some cases). In this case it may just be easier to set up a small filter that says any email containing spaces.live.com goes straight to the trash bin.

My simple answer to your overall question of who is to blame, I will always point to those responible for any given action. In this case, the spam senders.

~
“Your request is not unlike your lower intestine: stinky, and loaded with danger.” — Ace Ventura.

 

[wahnula]

Yeah, the "who is to blame" is not the real question, it's more like "shouldn't the hosts be more accountable for what's done with their site?". In fighting this spam plague everyone needs to harden their defenses, but especially those that enable spammers to easily attack folks.

Like I said, I have defenses against this stuff, I'm not really worried about myself, more so the Internet and Internet users in general. This stuff takes bandwidth, time and resources to deploy and defend against, and I believe spaces.live.com is making it too easy, or they need to change their sign-up system.

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[brettuthius]

I guess the only good side is that as more spam hits the web, the filtering software gets better and better. For instance, I use Gmail and I only get one spam message in my inbox every few months. At work we we use a provider that runs their own spam filter - I still get 3 or so spam messages in my inbox each day which isn't bad considering I get about 50 emails a day.

I need to see if it will work with our provider, but I would like try an antispam product out - probably check out MailWasher's product first which has been touted as the best free spam blocker tool. Has anyone ever tried it or anything similar?