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Spam Government The Internet Politics IT

China Signs Anti-Spam Pact 157

Posted by Zonk from the step-in-the-right-hammy-direction dept.
Iphtashu Fitz writes "The Chinese government has joined an international anti-spam effort started by the U.S. and UK. Over the weekend China stated that it would join international enforcement efforts against spam by adopting the London Action Plan on Spam Enforcement Collaboration. The London Action Plan was launched after a conference on spam enforcement hosted jointly by the UK Office of Fair Trading and the US Federal Trade Commission in London in October 2004. It was the first international forum to focus exclusively on spam enforcement. China is well known for being one of the biggest origins of spam, with as much as 20% of all junk e-mail originating from within its borders."
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China Signs Anti-Spam Pact More

China Signs Anti-Spam Pact

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  • China is only 4th (or so) (Score:5, Informative)

    by Greg Wright ( 104533 ) * on Tuesday July 05, 2005 @04:17PM (#12988350) Journal

    China is a very distant 4th place when it comes to spam. You want to know who leads the world in spam output; its the wealthy EU countries followed very closely by Japan-Korea and the US. I don't know where that 20% for china comes from. From a study done in March of 2005:

    1) Europe(*) 24.70
    2) Japan-Korea 24.24
    3) US 22.80
    4) Greater China(**) 14.45

    (*) European Union countries: 21.85%; Top spam-distributors: French, Spain, Germany, UK
    ** Including: China, Taiwan, Hong Kong.

    source: http://www.clickz.com/stats/sectors/email/article. php/3491796/ [clickz.com]

    Of course, I also see numbers like this from a slightly older article:

    "Sophos, Inc., an anti-virus and anti-spam company based in Lynnfield, Mass., reports that the U.S. -- sending out 42.53 percent of all spam -- sits far atop its list of the world's Top 12 Spam-Producing Countries."

    So, just depends on who you ask on how it breaks down, however, either way, it isn't China.

    • And what's more, given how well CAN-SPAM is working, the chinese aren't taking much risk joining this anti-spam posse. They'll just keep on spamming as long as they don't reach the top of the list.
    • the brutality of their human rights situation. While American spammers get off easy with a mere 9 years [slashdot.org] of taxpayer-subsidized television and weightlifting, we can expect Chinese spammers to receive the torture and hard labor they so richly deserve...
    • Per capita, China is a net saint (1/4 of the world's population, 1/7th of its spam). Per net user, it's pretty bad (China has about 40 million internet users; America has about 190 million). All in all, it is about what you'd expect for a newly-emerging net-connected nation (only about 2.4% of the population, last I checked, had net access).

      • Per capita, China is a net saint

        I hear the Amish are also very good about not polluting the internet. :)
    • China has one ISP effectively, the government runs it all. So in that light it can be seen as the single biggest spam ISP. Now previously they just blew off e-mails reporting spam hosts. Now, hopefully they'll start doign something about it.

      So it could make a major impact, at least so long as they maintain state control over the Internet in their country.
    • I could of sworn number 1 was Russia...

    • Would you really trust statistics on spam coming from an online marketing company (clickz.com)? Come on! To me, but that may just be me (I don't think so), this kind of marketing sites are responsible for a huge amount of spam... Figures coming from a respected computer security company: Sophos (sophos.com), which you mention, are in my opinion more to be trusted.

      Anyway, of course China is not the top spammer for now; and here is my hypothesis on that. If you closely look at the figures, you realize that t

    • Well, if you went on a percentage of spams per user, the percentages begin to change a little, I'd imagine... but interesting stats, none the less :)

      ===

      Why the US hasn't enacted stricter spam legislation is beyond me, I doubt congressmen are getting "spam kickbacks" (except perhaps from Hormel)... so the usual hold-up of 'greed' isn't in action...

      So... WTF?

    • European spam kings? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Savage-Rabbit ( 308260 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2005 @06:37PM (#12989522)
      You want to know who leads the world in spam output; its the wealthy EU countries ....

      Both the USA and the EU have approximately the same number of internet users (US 200 million vs. EU 215 million as of March 2005) and their share of the total spam generation rate (US 22.8% vs. EU 24.7%) roughly roughly corresponds to those numbers. This is not surprising since alot of the spam generators are zombie Windows boxen owned and operated by people with a very limited computer knowledge. It seems to me that all we can conclude from these statistics is that the level of 'computer-cluelessness' among the general public is about the same on both sides of the pond. Even so, I care fairly little about where the actual Spam Servers/Zombie PCs churning out the crap mail are located. What would be more interesting is a statistical analysis of where the people owning or controlling all these spam servers and zombies are located? Which countries are failing to deal with the spam companies causing the problem? Take a look at the top ten list at the bottom of this page [spamhaus.org] the USA claims no less than six of the top ten ROKSO spammers I don't see a single spam king from an EU country on that list.
    • It probably depends on where you dip your measuring stick in. My own numbers taken from abuse reports do not support their conclusions.

      I looked through my last 300 abuse reports and over 80% of mine go to...(drum roll) Korea! Most of them from Kornet. Does anyone know if Kornet has actual legit customers that aren't spammers/scammers? Or are these folks just a bulletproof hosting company?

      The second largest country of report is China, and after that the good ol' USA (most of them go to Comcast).
    • Most spam that I receive either wants a response sent to a disposable free email address (Yahoo/netscape/teenmail.co.za/whatever), or else wants you to connect to a website. The websites are usually in China. Occasionally they're in Korea or Brazil or elsewhere, but China's by far the dominant player.

      The Great Firewall of China has a lot of hype about preventing Chinese people from receiving politically incorrect information, but as far as I can tell, it puts entirely no effort into policing English-la

    • You want to know who leads the world in spam output; its the wealthy EU countries followed very closely by Japan-Korea and the US.

      Can I just point out that Europe is not one country!!! . I get a bit tired sometimes of all these comparisons (mainly by Americans) of the US or other countries with Europe, as if they are comparable entities...

  • now wheres the one for zombie pcs?
    • These are not zombie pc-s. These are Communist pc-s (running Red Flag Linux -- what else?), working together for the common good.
  • sign a pact to not spam? How does that work? The Chinese government is having enough trouble censoring normal internet traffic as it is. With 100 million internet users in the country, how big do those gateway mail relays need to be to be effectively blocking spam?

    Just think, SpamAssassin on a cluster of Crays.

    • Re:so the spammers.. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2005 @04:36PM (#12988522)
      > > so the spammers.. sign a pact to not spam? How does that work? The Chinese government is having enough trouble censoring normal internet traffic as it is. With 100 million internet users in the country, how big do those gateway mail relays need to be to be effectively blocking spam?

      It's even less than a "pact not to spam".

      Read between the lines of the "protocol" they've signed onto. It's basically an agreement between a bunch of bureaucrats to get together with fellow bureaucrats and gab at each other about how spam's bad, mmmmmkay. Not a damn thing on the list that could possibly result in the slightest hint of policy, let alone legislation or any other form of action.

      > 1. Designate a point of contact

      "which in the case of our country, happens to be /dev/null".

      > 2. Encourage communication and coordination among the different Agencies...

      "Hi Joe, how's things in your neck of the bureaucracy? Pretty cool too, huh? Great! Kthxbye!"

      > 3. Take part in periodic conference calls, at least quarterly, with other appropriate participants to...

      "See #2. Well, see #2 in 90 days. Reading this post out loud means we're already done for this quarter."

      > 4. Encourage dialogue between...

      "When we talk, we'll even say we'd like other people to talk to!"

      > 5. Prioritize cases based on harm to victims when requesting international assistance.

      "This guy pissed off a campaign contributor of a buddy of mine, so his folder goes to the top of the stack of papers in the disused lavatory at the bottom of the stairs with the sign on it saying 'Beware of the Leopard'. But it's due to get our attention faster than the ones at the bottom of the stack."

      > 6. Complete the OECD Questionaire on ...

      "If we can host one conference call per quarter, I suppose we can also approve funding for a #2 pencil."

      > Encourage and support the involvement of less-developed countries in spam enforcement cooperation.

      I could read that as...

      "J0IN N0W! MAKE L0BBY1ST FA$T! WOR-K IN UR OWN PVT GOVER|\|MENT OFF1CE! All u need is 2 fill out paper and be SITTING IN ON ONE FONE CALL EVRY 90 DAYS!"

      ...but you might think I'm cynical or something. *sigh*

    • The current firewall, AFAICT, doesn't seem to stop viruses or detect zombie sites, and the China Telecom and China Netcom ISPs don't seem to do anything about spammer websites, at least not about ones in English marketing to the foreign-barbarian market that are profitable for the quasi-monopoly internet services. Perhaps they do scan for Falun-Gong propaganda, and maybe even pr0n, but not spam.

      But the scalability problems are much different when you're a government bureaucracy looking for politically inc

  • Good (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mfh ( 56 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2005 @04:20PM (#12988372) Homepage Journal
    China is being really smart. This is not just a move to demonstrate they are against spam or limit liability; I think it's to show that they can be a lovable government. Would Mao care about spammers? China appears to be taking a page from Canada in how to be a liked country. They are ratifying a London anti-spam accord and that to me spells maybe some change in their normally opressive attitudes? How long before China starts ratifying UN human rights accords and the like? It could not be soon enough and this is a sign that they are moving in the right direction. I applaud this and only hope that it is as good as it looks. Please, China, keep progressing towards a free society. (and I could say as much for the USA, too)
    • China appears to be taking a page from Canada in how to be a liked country

      They're letting Americans slip into the country for cheap drugs and medical care?

    • China appears to be taking a page from Canada in how to be a liked country.

      I don't remember Canadian mounties shooting people at the Gate of Heavenly Peace square in Ottawa...
      • Yes, the Mounties don't massacre large bunches of students in big city squares, not that they're especially friendly to large anti-government protests. But the relationships with the First Nations have not always been good - you may remember the standoff in 1990 in Oka between the Akwesasne Mohawks and the various Canadian army, etc. forces.

  • In Communist China.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Alex P Keaton in da ( 882660 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2005 @04:21PM (#12988383) Homepage
    In Communist China, computers spam you...
    China can stop spam much more easily because the state has control over the internet... Sort of like how my parents used to have more control over me when I lived with them (what are these Kmart Brassiere Catalogs doing under your mattress) than they do now, when I live with my grandmother.
    • Are you tired of your current form of Government? Sick of being embarrassed by a flaccid system of ruling classes? Then try new Commu-vitae, the ancient Communist Chinese answer to all your problems...

  • How long until the US does the same? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mcrbids ( 148650 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2005 @04:21PM (#12988385) Journal
    It seems to me that a tremendous amount of SPAM comes from Florida, USA! So, when will the US decide to sign a similar pact to deal with it?

    • If you even read the summary, you'd see that this pact was started by the US and the UK.

      I know Slashdotters are famous for not reading the article...but geez.

    • The US is already in on the pact, along with the EU. But the plan doesn't say "Do not spam"; it's the beginning of a process for fighting spam.

      Yeah, you know spam when you see it, but it's a little harder when you tell a country to filter every outgoing email. What's required is a lot more complex: a mechanism for coordinating, tracking, and aggregating complaints; for tracking down offenders across countries without violating sovereignty; resolving problems with private individuals in foreign countries.

  • In Related News (Score:5, Funny)

    by DanielMarkham ( 765899 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2005 @04:21PM (#12988386) Homepage
    In related news, China will continue to be the world's leading supplier of hacked DVDs and CDS, they're just promising not to pester you about buying them.

    Screensavers as Corporate Message Boards? [whattofix.com]
    • What you said is true, but I'd like to say something in defense of this doing. It's not that Chinese don't want to follow the rules, it's simply because the "legal" ones are too expensive for common Chinese people. You talking about selling a $20 movie DVD to someone who makes that much money in a week (even in America I think it's too expensive). The ill-alligned marketing strategy creates a huge demand for illegal CDs and DVDs. It's no surprise that most of the piracy happen in countries where average sal

  • But what about the hosting of spammed sites? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by remmy1978 ( 307916 ) * on Tuesday July 05, 2005 @04:22PM (#12988387) Homepage
    China is well known for being one of the biggest origins of spam, with as much as 20% of all junk e-mail originating from within its borders.

    But what about the so called "bullet proof" hosting that you can get in China? A lot of the Viagra spammers have their ordering site in China and no number of complaints filed make any difference. I think that might be a bigger issue than spam originating *from* China.

    • But what about the so called "bullet proof" hosting that you can get in China?

      That's exactly what I was thinking when I read this. China isn't such a big problem with regards to the spam I see and report to SpamCop, it is the URLs within the spam. You'll see the same damn email address as the abuse contact for days, sub-domains off some site that has fairly non-contentious or spammy content, and it takes forever for them to get taken down.

      Honestly, sometimes rather than report the spammers to Spa

    • But what about the so called "bullet proof" hosting that you can get in China? A lot of the Viagra spammers have their ordering site in China and no number of complaints filed make any difference.

      Can you please back that statement up with a few examples? I'm having a hard time figuring out how capitalist scams are taking place in a communist country that isn't all that favourable to foreign business. IIRC you need government approval to do business in China as a foreigner. Which Chinese banks are transfe

  • I maen seriously, the US is in on it, but what are they doing to that lamer who makes a living by running spamming servers? I mean, isn't that considered a "spam zombie"?

    BTW, when will Nigeria join the anti-spam ring? I mean honestly, with the bajillion dollars that each citizen has over there that they are dying to get off their country, it's a surprise they don't agree to have better computer protection worldwide.

    ^_~
    • BTW, when will Nigeria join the anti-spam ring?

      As soon as you send their president $50 to put inside a bank account, in which $50 million will be deposited into the account, and you'll get 20% of it. He promises it.

      • Which president? They've had so many that have offered me the same thing. Sometimes it's Military Generals, and other times it's an american who visits there and ends up with a family.
  • I just had this weird idea and I can't imagine that it's a "new" idea by any means, but I would be curious as to why people think it wouldn't work:

    Make commercial emailing legal, but tax and regulate the hell out of it. Make rules that make it easy to block them where they are unwanted and all that... nothing new there (CAN-SPAM) but taxing it will give added muscle to encorcement since almost anything they do to skirt regulations might be twisted or spun into some form of tax evasion or another. (We kno

  • China signed = good. BAD for spammers :) (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Now that is cool. At least there we can hope for the death penalty for spammers. Go on, admit it - YOU want to wring their filthy necks every time your mailbox fills up. China will DO it, instead of the PC slap on the wrist the US/UK/Euro courts impose.
  • At least in China, it might be possible for spammers to get the death penalty.
    • That might solve their overpopulation problem. Very quickly, I might add.
    • At least in China, it might be possible for spammers to get the death penalty.

      They could extradite Ralsky and give him a bullet in the back of the head. The same way the US sends "terrorist suspects" to countries that have no qualms with torturing them.

  • Taxing commercial email??? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by flajann ( 658201 ) <fred...mitchell@@@gmx...de> on Tuesday July 05, 2005 @04:27PM (#12988440) Homepage Journal
    The last thing we want is for governments to take an even greater role in regulating us.

    Let's find better technological solutions to spam control, and less government-based solutions.

    After all, government never get it quite right. Moreover, there is the enforcement issue. It's just not workable. Anyone can purchase a web server in any other country other than the one they live in, so enforcement becomes a joke at best, or worse becomes so draconian that it will hurt hammers as well as spammers (or may not hurt spammers at all, since they can skate the loopholes in the system).

  • Ulterior Motives? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by twifosp ( 532320 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2005 @04:29PM (#12988459)
    I wonder how much of China's decision had to do with actual spam, rather than an additional form of information control.

    Spam could potentially provide China's citizens with additional knowledge the government doesn't want them to know about.

    It also cuts down on the amount of bulk China has to process to know what's happening with "its" internet. If China doesn't have to contend with spam, it can devote more resources to scanning their citizens software for disent.

    Hey, I just thought of something: Maybe spam isn't a malicious, egregious and unsolicited marketing technique after all! Maybe it's just those countries trying to clog the internet filters with junk so they can disguise their normal communications. Spam is freeeeedom! If you try to squash spam, you're just one of them!

    The revolution exists in penis enlargers and pain killers and we didn't even know it!

    • Spam could potentially provide China's citizens with additional knowledge the government doesn't want them to know about.

      How? Letting them know their penis size isn't up to snuff, so they better order some more viagra?
      • As laudable as it might sound, China doesn't want its citizens knowing about western technology. The less China's citizens know about the outside world, the less China has to explain, therefore the less China appears to be hiding from its Citizens.
        • Heh. Who would have guessed: freedom through spam.
        • As laudable as it might sound, China doesn't want its citizens knowing about western technology.

          More laughable than laudable! What a stupid thing to believe! What, do you think they censor out every gadget in the hollywood DVDs available everywhere in China? Why? It's POLITICAL thought they censor, not technology.

          We aren't much better ourselves, unpopular speach isn't exactly welcome and is likely to get you a one way ticket to camp xray.

  • In other news, Hitler signs non-aggression pact (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    And will attack in the morning.

    Mod this as troll, mod it as flamebait. Apply Godwin's law (which is nothing but a dodge anyway...).

    Then read about how Hitler signed a treaty with Joe Stalin saying the Germans wouldn't attack.
    • Actually, there is evidence that Stalin was planning an attack on Germany, but Hitler beat him to it (by just a few weeks). So they were both backstabbing pricks (which isn't really much of a surprise).

      On a related note, it turns out that Hitler may have been the inventor of the inflatable sex doll [ynetnews.com].

      • Actually, there is evidence that Stalin was planning an attack on Germany, but Hitler beat him to it (by just a few weeks). So they were both backstabbing pricks (which isn't really much of a surprise).

        Actually there is zero evidence showing that the USSR was planning an attack on Germany. Somebody once wrote a book claiming what your saying, but scores of military historians has failed to find anything that could support that thesis. OTOH there is tons of archives supporting the thesis, that the USSR di
        • Somebody once wrote a book claiming what your saying

          Vladimir Rezun, aka Viktor Suvorov. I've read some of his books, and i agree that most of the stuff he writes is bullshit. The only one of his theories that has, as far as i know, held water (might have something to do with the fact that it wasn't actually his idea), the only one that even his opponents agree with, is the one that USSR was planning an attack. But no matter how Suvorov tries to spin the facts (for him, Stalin was a genius of military stra

  • Use SKEM [virtual-estates.net] to automatically block IP-addresses, which your spam-filter(s) suspect of spamming.

    SKEM ( /usr/ports/mail/milter-skem [freshports.org] on FreeBSD) will not eliminate spam, but it will throttle the volume of it arriving from rogue servers and hi-jacked PCs, while the worst effect of a false-positive is delayed (rather than rejected) legitimate e-mail.

  • In Other News (Score:5, Funny)

    by jetkust ( 596906 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2005 @04:33PM (#12988496)
    Due to bad publicity, Hormel renames it's canned meat product back to its original name, Junk Mail.

  • Yeah, like China really cares about the rule of la (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ShatteredDream ( 636520 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2005 @04:33PM (#12988500) Homepage

    And how many extrajudicial executions still happen in China? How about the laogai [laogai.org]? Buy something at Wal-Mart lately? Well it could have been made with slave^H^H^H^H^Hprison labor. Tibet, the Uhigurs in Western China, the censorship of the internet, their bellicosity toward Taiwan, aborting babies because they're girls and more. Oh and they pretty much let their hackers take pot shots at the US' infrastructure with maybe a slap on the wrist.

    The US, EU and Japan aren't perfect, but they are a lot better than China. For my money, I blame it on the "middle kingdom complex." Let's be realistic, China doesn't even really pretend to care about any law other than what it creates, and even that is flimsy as there are numerous loopholes for the state to get out of trouble with. China isn't going to really do anything to stop spammers unless it means they might not get the 2008 olympics or they might lose their MFN status in the US and neither of those will happen over spam.

    Move on kids, this is just another feel good thing by the politicians. Nothing to see here that you couldn't see on C-Span.

    • just for your information, people in china can easiely recognize whether a product is made by prisioners since such products are usually branded as "XinSheng" which means "re-born". those kinds of products are very rare in the market now. years ago, about more than ten years ago, my mom boght a soap which is made by prisoners. before i left china five years ago, you can rarely find such products in the market and it is mainly because those products are very low-quality and nobody likes it. that is true the

    • Let's be realistic, China doesn't even really pretend to care about any law other than what it creates, and even that is flimsy as there are numerous loopholes for the state to get out of trouble with.

      In other words, it's a country with a big enough military to defend itself and a vibrant enough economy to risk pissing some of its partners off. Every country that has the power to do so follows that path at some point. China and the US are the current obvious examples but you don't have to look too far

  • The usual suspects are still up. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2005 @04:33PM (#12988502) Homepage
    The notorious Black Box Hosting [blackboxhosting.com] ("Our offshore bullet proof web hosting plans allow bulk email hosting, spam friendly web hosting and bulletproof host.") is still up. They claim to be in "some province in the highlands of China", and their netblock (219.148.32.234) comes up as "CHINANET HEBEI PROVINCE NETWORK".

    There's no indication on the spammer [spamforum.biz] forums [specialham.com] of any fears about China-based hosting yet.

    So, thus far, any crackdown is vaporware.

  • You'll know China is serious about spammers... (Score:3, Funny)

    by PapayaSF ( 721268 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2005 @04:36PM (#12988523) Journal
    ...when they shoot some in the back of the head and bill the family for the bullet. [asiaweek.com]

    And I won't shed any tears. If they're going to be a murderous dictatorship, they could at least kill some people who deserve it. (No, I'm not defending dictatorships, I just hate spammers.)

  • Made in China (Score:3, Funny)

    by m85476585 ( 884822 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2005 @04:39PM (#12988548)
    Even Spam is made in China! Is there anything that they don't make? Will they put those little gold stickers on spam?

  • What spam? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Julian Morrison ( 5575 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2005 @05:07PM (#12988797)
    Seriously, I haven't had a single spam get through my SpamBayes filter in months, and I rarely get any of my valid mail dumped in "unsure". I see no reason why anyone with a modicum of technical nous should even be caring about spam, unless they are paying for metered bandwidth.
    • I get around 250 emails a day. I've had the same email address for years at my own domain, and the address gets published in print multiple times a month, so that's why the number is so large.

      200 of them are spam. 30 are mailing lists, either digests or individual messages. 10 are press-releases (I'm a journalist.)

      That leaves 10 "normal" mails a day.

      Yes, I have SpamBayes for Outlook, which works great. Opera's M2 has a spam filter that works great too. Other desktop clients has various spam filters th

      • This is a generalization of how I recieve my own mails. I have a script set up that polls POP3, filters through SpamBayes and then into Courier maildrop with a .mailfiler file to sort them into maildirs. These are them made locally available to any mail client via Courier IMAP. They're remotely available too. For all it sounds complicated it's really just 2 programs (Courier and SpamBayes) and 5 minutes of perl mucking about with POP3.

        An arrangement like that could be set up on a rented box (you don't need

  • F China - too little, too late (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mabu ( 178417 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2005 @05:16PM (#12988879)
    I'll tell you why they're doing this. It's not just because almost all Chinese IP space is now RBL'd, it's because many ISPs like mine have gone beyond this and simply filtered all Chinese IP traffic of all types from ever hitting our servers. It's not just about spam. Chinese IP space is also responsible for the lion's share of system probes and DoS activity. I got tired of seeing 5000 connection attempts so we've just wholesale blocked their entire IP space at the router level -- it's not like there's any legitimate TCP activity coming from that space that any of my clients care about.

    Until these countries can regulate the illegal activity of their systems, they don't deserve to have unfettered access to the Internet IMO... not when the abuse-to-legitimate traffic ratio is 1000000 to 1.
    • Chinese IP space is also responsible for the lion's share of system probes and DoS activity.

      Care to back that broad, sweeping statement up with facts? Didn't think so, as you are talking nonsence. Most probes and DoS attacks come from zombie hosts, and out of the superpowers, China has the LEAST number of potential zombies, due to it having the least number of connected hosts. If the "lions share" of attacks come from there, then it would buck the trends that all the legitimate online security trackers ar

      • Care to back that broad, sweeping statement up with facts? Didn't think so, as you are talking nonsence.

        I can back it up with facts. I run three banks of servers in three different continents, and have been doing so since 1995. I menticulously monitor logs and most of the hardcore probes are coming from Chinese and Korean IP space... NOT from zombie PCs.

        I've wholesale blocked Chinese IP space from my networks at the router level and my server performance has dramatically increased. I'm not keeping tab
        • I menticulously monitor logs and most of the hardcore probes are coming from Chinese and Korean IP space... NOT from zombie PCs.

          So, the Chinese attacks aren't zombies? They are actually hackers actively probing? Interesting, I don't see either country cracking down on cyber attacks on their traditional enemies. But, if that's the case, then what I said is correct; most zombies are in the EU and USA.

          Who are you? Some Asian broadband user who has no experience in this area and thinks this is some kind o

          • So, the Chinese attacks aren't zombies? They are actually hackers actively probing? Interesting, I don't see either country cracking down on cyber attacks on their traditional enemies. But, if that's the case, then what I said is correct; most zombies are in the EU and USA.

            I don't know if they are zombies or a handful of servers that simply rotate their online address from a huge IP space pool. I always suspected it was the latter, but I don't know.

  • Enforcement Issues & Sleazy ISPs (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mabu ( 178417 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2005 @05:27PM (#12988959)
    According to Spamhaus, whom I completely agree with based on my own experience, 80% of all known spam originates from no more than 200 "spam gangs" [spamhaus.org], most of whom are in the United States. If China cooperates by providing U.S. Authorities with the missing logs to track the illegal activities of these groups so that law enforcement can prosecute them, that will be a good thing. But it still comes down to law enforcement going after the spammers, which is something that's not being done. If just a few of these 200 spam gangs were criminally prosecuted, we'd probably see spam levels drop dramatically. So everyone should contact their District Attorney and demand that they pursue and prosecute these cases.

    And then you have big corporations that are deliberately sabotaging anti-spam efforts. AT&T for example is hacking their nameservers to be authoritative for anti-spam RBLs [blitzed.org] so their users are unable to filter mail based on these services. That's unconscionable, and reason # 87,343 why you shouldn't do business with a provider like AT&T who is not only being ambivalent about spam, but actively interfering with their customers' own attempts to find superior solutions.
  • I'm sending the Chinese government all the Chinese language spam I've been getting. I don't read Chinese, and I'll leave it to them to find the people who sent it to me.

    I'm also sending a note to Vladimir about all of the Russian spam I've been getting. I do read Russian, and it's pissing me off.

  • I'd rather see less japanese spam (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Tuesday July 05, 2005 @05:58PM (#12989195) Journal
    I don't know why, but Gmail seem to be completely useless at filtering japanese spam. I don't know how many times I've told it "YES, this is spam!" and it keeps sending me. I'm sure a major part of the Gmail user base is doing the same. I rarely get English spam in my inbox nowadays, and it's very accurate there, but with japanese spam being such a common problem I can't see why Google isn't doing something about it. It's almost as if their spam filter don't even support unicode so it just let all those mails pass unchecked. :-p

    So then I tried to just block *.jp, but Gmail doesn't support blocking by the hidden "Received" header the mail server set, where I could clearly see it came from Japan, despite the "From" field OF COURSE being faked.

    Gmail is a great service, but it sure isn't perfect, and blocking on custom mail headers doesn't seem like a too hard work for their developers either, as all the headers are stored like regular text in the mails anyway.
  • but unless they force their ISPs to actually do something about complaints, other than redirect them to /dev/null, nothing is going to happen

    the issue is not the source of the spams (usually zombies), but the spammers sites hosted in china that need to be nuked. Kill the sites, and the spammers are fscked

    not done a hoster check on my domain block list in a while, but last time, about 70% where hosted in mainland china, with the rest spread over eastern europe and asia

    don't know about anyone else, but the
  • It was the first international forum to focus exclusively on spam enforcement.

    Why would anyone enforce spam?

  • The US is also a signatory to the international anti-torture laws, and the Geneva Conventions. The US has enacted its own national laws to put that treaty into effect. Yet the US tortures prisoners and violates the Geneva Conventions. Countries sign treaties to get diplomats off their backs. Then they abide by those treaties when it suits them.
  • China is fighting spam? Do they even get spam?

    I obviously don't get out much, does anyone else in the world except the United States get spam? Does spam even come in non-English flavors?

    Everyone talks about where spam comes from, does that mean we all kinda agree on where it's going? Maybe a little splashes up on some European shores, but China?

    Who sends spam to China? What are they advertising? Do they really get spam?

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