-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> ____/ ed on Friday 23 November 2007 12:04 : \____
>
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> Hash: SHA1
>>
>> Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>>> Despite filters, tidal wave of spam bears down on e-mailers
>>>
>>> ,----[ Quote ]
>>> | "Two years from now, spam will be solved."
>>> |
>>> | — Microsoft's (MSFT) Bill Gates, 2004, World Economic Forum in Switzerland
>>> |
>>> | [...]
>>> |
>>> | "I never said it would be solved," Gates said in an interview with USA
>>> | TODAY last month. "I said it would be substantially reduced, and in fact
>>> | it has been reduced a lot."
>>> `----
>>>
>>>
> http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technology/2007-11-22-spam_N.htm?csp=N008
>>> Nope. Journalists wrote down what he said. More Bill Gates lies below.
>> Yeah, we all remember laughing are asses off when he said that. Has it
>> been two years already?
>>
>> This is what happens when there's no community to check and verify the
>> cathedral approach that big businesses take.
>>
>> Well, could have been worse I suppose. He could have said that the chair
>> ground to air ratio would be solved.
>
> Mind the fact that he didn't just contradict his own quote. Oh, no; he said
> that SPAM has been reduced... "a lot".
>
> You're in the network admin biz. How much has SPAM increased between 2004 and
> 2006? Like 10 times?
Yeah, I don't have exact figures. I wish I did keep them, perhaps I will
start, there's a lot of factors to include.
What I can say without any question is that it's much more complex now.
We have to do a lot of detailed checks on mail as it arrives before
storing in the clients maildir.
It's just one huge CPU/RAM hog. Back in 2001 the main worry was attached
viruses, getting around that was easy enough, just pass the attachment
through AV. Job done.
Spam is just a huge pain in the ass. We can do some things, but one that
I'm not very keen on is using OCR to scan images. I'd rather not
contribute further CPU to the problem. And I really dread the day that
we have to run MP3 attachments through FFT and decoders to identify pump
and dump.
Currently though my bayes filters are failing to identify the spam as
the spammers are being more careful with what they're sending. The bayes
is only really working with the header checks.
I'd really hope that we can fix the situation. Spamhaus has a very good
PBL idea, ask the ISPs to list their mail servers and IP blocks that
should not send mail. Although this requires co-operation with the
various tiers. Our LIR on one of our blocks was kind enough to list all
their customers as though who should not send mail ... lovely, takes
about a month to get the PBL to verify things. But the idea is right.
Maybe they should go to the RIRs directly.
Various RBLs are good for different things, not accepting mail from
dynamic IPs cuts a lot of crap out. At times hotmail becomes listed in
RBLs but does very little to solve the problem and the end user ends up
complaining to the RBL about the problem - knowing that hotmail is more
difficult to moan at.
Overall the "quality" of spam (it's ability to pass checks) has
certainly increased. ISPs do more to try and prevent it. But certainly
it's increased on all fronts.
Legally things have improved also, if you can put a name to the
bastards, then you can probably do something legally - if you can prove
the offence took place in the right state. The UK should be prosecutable
too under the computer misuse act (1998? - I think it was updated since
then).
> Microsoft also lies _as a company_, as usual. The article says that Microsoft's
> estimate is 20-10%/80-90% (ham/spam ratio). Now, watch this:
>
> Hotmail still riddled with spam
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | Microsoft has admitted that up to 98 per cent of messages sent to
> | ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> | Hotmail addresses are spam.
> `----
>
> http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2188226/hotmail-riddled-spam-admits
>
> Has Microsoft contradicted itself, just like the CEO?
>
> Microsoft and OOXML: when lies become a (ISO) standard.
Billy should really be more careful, Ballmer stated at some point that
there is a WHOLE DEPARTMENT tasked with keeping Bill Gates' mail box
clean of spam... What a dung scraping job.
Hotmail is perhaps the biggest contributor (next to gmail/yahoo) of 419
scam call back addresses.
What's funny though is that time and time again, spam originates in ARIN
netblocks, which also happens to be the biggest consumer of MS products.
Look over the sea at RIPE, APNIC, where it's a little more expensive for
a license and the rate of spam drops. Coincidence? (Certainly < 1% of
spam originates in AfriNIC).
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
iD8DBQFHRtd54dyr7s6PRYgRAjeiAJ4gecB6YKBTW+iRqgz3rTUHCsDdfQCfRjPh
BAFUR44d6NOu3NNC/pgoKHI=
=8lbc
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
|
|
