> Questions:
> 1) How do we smack some sense into spews?Very difficult.... we had a similar problem. One bad customer and SPEWS
blackholes not only our corporate LAN but also my HOME address range,
and that of my home ISP, who was not even peripherally involved.We just had to sit it out, as SPEWS is not accountable, or contactable.
Eventually the listing decayed, but it was a real problem for us while
it lasted.
There is no technical solution to spam.
Regards,
Neil.
Nor is there a legal or political one...
Deeann M.M. Mikula
Director of Operations
Telerama Public Access Internet
http://www.telerama.com * 412.688.3200
Looking at this from another angle, what RBL set are people using that
works well?
This is our current set:
blackholes.mail-abuse.org, dialups.mail-abuse.org, relays.mail-abuse.org,
dynablock.wirehub.net, inputs.relays.osirusoft.com,
socks.relays.osirusoft.com, formmail.relays.monkeys.com,
proxies.relays.monkeys.com
We were using spamcop until I found out about the 7-day timeout for
delisting. We get some complains about the formmail relay blocking, but
that just seems to be for customers trying to get email from web hosting
companies that don't care to clean their servers of old copies of
FormMail.pl.
Ralph Doncaster
principal, IStop.com
The only solution for eliminating spam is a radical change in social behavior of those whom are causing, allowing and facilitating it. All reasonable attempts to do so have failed, mainly due to commercial interests. Thus only a primitive and for some painful interference helps. Though few want to admit it, as long as all the backbones - unanimously - are not seriously addressing this problem, and factually accept the financial consequences of cut off's, and forcefully propagate those policies to whomever is connected to them, only the hard way remains. I advocate that spews and others are tough, but apparently necessary means. The more spam, the harder the action-pack to combat it.
The problem is not necessarily only Korea, Nigeria, Costa Rica, etc. We, in the US are a significant source of this activity ourselves, probably the biggest. Painfully enough we lack the initiative to set a standard for the rest for the World.
best,
Bert
hostmaster@nso.org
The only solution to spam is to start charging for email (perhaps with
reasonable included minimums if that calms you down for some large set
of "you") and thus create an economic incentive for all parties
involved.
Face it folks, the party is over, the free-for-all was a nice idea but
it simply did not work. See "The Tragedy of the Commons".
Barry Shein wrote:
The only solution to spam is to start charging for email (perhaps with
reasonable included minimums if that calms you down for some large set
of "you") and thus create an economic incentive for all parties
involved.Face it folks, the party is over, the free-for-all was a nice idea but
it simply did not work. See "The Tragedy of the Commons".
Sure, because charging for postal mail has certainly stopped the deplorable
practice of junk mailing.</sarcasm>
As long as spamming is legal, people will do it, period. You cannot solve
administrative problems with technical solutions. The key is for ISPs to
form a political lobby (with the same power as the DMA) and push for
reasonable laws to protect consumers. Until then, we're all pissing in the
wind.
S
This discussion is very familiar!
... and that will stop for example the nigeria scams how? or the asian porn
sites how?
Steve
Ok on a serious note can we not try to solve the spam problem here? its a
never ending loop (tech problem or social problem who cares.. its a problem
and we all know it, be a good operator and kill anyone who wants to spam on
your network).
On a not-so-serious note maybe if we just assigned spammers 69.0.0.0/8 ip
space the problem would take care of itself.
-Scotty
The only solution to spam is to start charging for email (perhaps with
reasonable included minimums if that calms you down for some large set
of "you") and thus create an economic incentive for all parties
involved.
Absolutely unrealistic... micropayments never got off the ground for a
number of good reasons - some of them having to do with unwillingness of
national governments to forfeit financial surveillance.
Even if e-mail will cost something, you'd still be getting a lot more spam
than useful mail. Check your snail-mail box for empirical evidence 
I'd say strong authentication of e-mail sources and appropriate sorting
at the receiving end should do the trick. When I give someone e-mail
address, I may just as well get their fingerprint and put in my "allowed"
database.
The question is, as always, convinience and useability - with a good
design that doesn't seem unsurmountable.
Face it folks, the party is over, the free-for-all was a nice idea but
it simply did not work. See "The Tragedy of the Commons".
Linux does not exist, science disappeared long time ago, etc, etc. Those
are commons, too.
In fact, the prevailing myth is that property system is the primary driver
of progress. As if. It existed for several millenia (in fact, all higher
animals exhibit behaviour consistent with notion of property, usually
territory and females) and not much happened most of that time, aside from
endless wars. Then the decidedly anti-proprietary "gift economy" of
science comes along and in couple hundred years completely changes the
world.
The free-for-all is a nice idea. Should be preserved whereever possible.
Spam is not "tragedy of commons" (i.e. depletion of shared resources
because of uncontrolled cost-free accessibility) - the spam traffic does
not kill the network, last I checked (in fact, TCP's congestion control
provides a basic fairness enforcement in the Internet - which explains why
the backbones aren't really prone to the "tragedy of commons", even when
demand is massively larger than supply).
Spam is theft (i.e. unauthorized use of private resources), and should be
fought as such - by prosecuting perps, by installing locks, and by
checking ids before granting access.
--vadim
When something is illegal in the US, it does not necessarily be illegal in
Europe or Asia. Or do you really expect Pakistani police to track down and
convict a spammer who has offered you A Larger Penis[tm]?
What I'm trying to say is that 'the solution' will probably have to be a
combination of legislation and technical measures.