SPAM is one of those things that makes my blood boil worse than bank
service fees. It's right up there with Bell Canada Enterprises for a
total lack of ethics. :)
I suggest that there's two kinds of SPAM. There are those businesses
who are using their own resources to send out information via a medium
they feel is legitimate. Then there are pirates who spend almost no
money and cost others a huge amount of time and resources. Personally I
hate both kinds but I have a little more respect for former case because
they're just ill-informed. The latter knows damn well that they're
clogging the net pipes with no cost to themselves and high-jacking other
companies/organizations servers to do it.
In the case of a letter in the mail, you'll have a return address,
you'll have company brochure information, you'll have the cost of
stamps, phone numbers to find out more, etc. etc.
In the case of spam most often you have just a web URL to go to or some
anonymous 900 number. Any emails given are bogus, the sender isn't real
and any transactions they want you to enter into are usually at arm's
length via a e-commerce site. (Of course if it's one of those penis
enlarging spams my girlfriend's daughter seems to get all the time,
perhaps arm's length isn't a bad thing, eh? :)
Spammers (Unsolicited Commercial Email or UCE) usually look for mail
servers that have been incorrectly configured leaving open relays for
them to usurp. They constantly port scan looking for internal mail
servers that are vulnerable. In this way all the net bandwidth consumed
they don't have to pay for. They don't have to deal with the huge mail
spools of bounced messages that go on for days. They don't have to
suffer any degradation in their net connection as a direct result of
actions they've taken.
As the largest ISP in this region we have to constantly watch for
dedicated clients of ours who've left themselves vulnerable. Better to
look out for them then have to deal with a very upset client when they
see that they've singlehandedly consumed more bandwidth than all of your
other customers put together.
We used to run excellent anti-spam filters on our network such that in a
number of situations the offending mail messages wouldn't even enter our
network meaning that we didn't have to suffer any inbound traffic
either. The problem with this was that a large number of legitimate
mail servers on the net were badly configured with regards to their DNS
& MX records. I personally spent a lot of time contacting companies
like Dupont, Hallmark Cards, Excite and others to explain what needed to
be fixed. We had to finally throw in the towel on blocking on this
criterion because it would be a full time job (with no pay!) to consult
with everyone who didn't know how to setup their network correctly.
These lower life forms are getting trickier too. If someone sets up an
anonymous FTP site on a server that supports PHP it won't be long until
someone finds it and uploads some PHP code to allow them to spam through
the server.
I think that anyone who thinks SPAM is inoccuous and causes no harm has
no idea the very real costs that are incurred by everyone. Most
spammers are doing so from free accounts they have so if anyone actually
responds it is pure profit from a marketing costs standpoint.
I'll let you talk to clients who had to pay consulting fees for someone
to go onsite and fix their server because their whole network was shut
down by spam. The costs to have all these programmers sit on their
hands for hours was astronomical.
We've blackholed quite a few offenders when we could trace back
sufficiently to find the origin. If someone gets blackholed it's a
pretty rude awakening to the indiscretions they're allowing to happen
from their equipment.
If someone, like an RSP, were to send me UCE, stating legitimate email
addresses, phone numbers and URL's then it would make me a little
happier (but only a little ;) than the domain registrars that when you
look into them, have no phone numbers, no email handles on their domain
contacts that work, no means of moving domains away from them if you do
register with them and who basically prey on the uneducated.
It's too nice a day to get hot about SPAM any longer.
Just consider this:
A local company (large one) used to have open access to the photo
copiers. They found that when they started monitoring the usage they
saved over $70,000 (think of that as being two people's salaries) a
year. The culprit? Jokes that people would photocopy over and over to
pass around the building (as well as to other businesses)!
I can sit and watch the activity on our large SUN mail server and know
when JUNO.COM (for instance) has opened up the floodgates of SPAM aimed
at our userbase.
After we erradicate SPAM I want someone to write me a filter that only
allows me to receive ONE copy of every joke I'm sent! :) (I seem to be a
central hub for such things for some reason! :)
Cheers!
Jack Broughton
CanTech Solutions
Jeff wrote:
>
> And, IF it is the same company that I received one from,
> they may have a few legal problems coming their way..
> After all, on their letterhead they call themselves the:
> "World's most competitve REGISTRY"
>
> And, I can't seem to find them list as a Registry for
> ANY of the TLDs or ccTLDs..
>
> Rgds
> Jeff
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Jim Carey" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Saturday, June 30, 2001 8:24 AM
> Subject: SPAM (?)
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > I have, twice now, received snail mail (with prepaid reply envelope)
> letters
> > pointing out that a domain I own is set to expire in the near future and
> > that I could save "substantial" amounts by moving to their service. This
> > other provider is also an OpenSRS reseller.
> >
> > Now I actually consider this to be a legitamate marketing ploy and applaud
> > the "get up and go" of the other reseller.
> >
> > If this were sent as an email it would be considered to be spam - what do
> > ppl on the list think of this approach (ie snail mail solicitation)
> >
> > Jim Carey
> > www.OZbcoz.com discount domain registration
> > www.iluvoz.com affordable hosting services
> >
> >
> >
