Is there a technical solution to SPAM?

[Michael . Dillon]

Anyone who believes that SPAM can be solved by technical means should try 
googling one of the following:

sms spam
i-mode spam
IM spam

It should be clear that spam is really a social problem, not a technical 
one and therefore the solutions will be found in the social, political and 
legal spaces, not in network engineering. Some combination of education 
and training, new laws, arrests and public trials will be needed to get 
rid of it. 

I'm betting that we get the biggest bang for the buck out of education and 
training. Part of it will come from teaching people network etiquette, 
part from teaching them that spam is not a way to make money, and part of 
it from teaching website owners how to provide effective advertising so 
that website ads can dominate the cheap mass advertising space and 
displace the spammers.

In any case, I suggest that we should ban all future discussion of SPAM 
and spammers from this mailing list since it is not related to network 
engineering or operating an IP network. 

---
Michael Dillon
Capacity Planning, Prescot St., London, UK
Mobile: +44 7900 823 672Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Phone: +44 20 7650 9493Fax: +44 20 7650 9030

RE: Is there a technical solution to SPAM?

[Bob German]

I disagree.  While you're right that it is a social problem, it is also
a technical problem in that those of us charged with protecting our
networks and equipment need to be able to discuss methods of engineering
our networks to counteract SPAM while the social, political and legal
issues are being played out in their arenas.

And I doubt that career spammers give a rat's ass about proper network
etiquette.  Education may help prevent newbies and brick-and-mortar
converts from becoming spammers, but it will take some combination of
legal and technical measures to deal with the career spammers.  Laws
alone won't work, because laws have loopholes.

Bob German

-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2003 9:24 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Is there a technical solution to SPAM?



Anyone who believes that SPAM can be solved by technical means should
try 
googling one of the following:

sms spam
i-mode spam
IM spam

It should be clear that spam is really a social problem, not a technical

one and therefore the solutions will be found in the social, political
and 
legal spaces, not in network engineering. Some combination of education 
and training, new laws, arrests and public trials will be needed to get 
rid of it. 

I'm betting that we get the biggest bang for the buck out of education
and 
training. Part of it will come from teaching people network etiquette, 
part from teaching them that spam is not a way to make money, and part
of 
it from teaching website owners how to provide effective advertising so 
that website ads can dominate the cheap mass advertising space and 
displace the spammers.

In any case, I suggest that we should ban all future discussion of SPAM 
and spammers from this mailing list since it is not related to network 
engineering or operating an IP network. 

---
Michael Dillon
Capacity Planning, Prescot St., London, UK
Mobile: +44 7900 823 672Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Phone: +44 20 7650 9493Fax: +44 20 7650 9030

Re: Is there a technical solution to SPAM?

[Valdis . Kletnieks]

On Tue, 29 Jul 2003 14:24:29 BST, [EMAIL PROTECTED]  said:

> training. Part of it will come from teaching people network etiquette, 
> part from teaching them that spam is not a way to make money, and part of 

Ralsky apparently has a $700K house.  I don't.  Now explain to me again
the part about spamming *not* being a way to make money?




pgp0.pgp
Description: PGP signature

RE: Is there a technical solution to SPAM?

[Austad, Jay]

Make it more of a hassle for them.  Ralsky apparently gets *bags* of
junkmail everyday because mad people signed him up for everything under the
sun.  If everyone faxed a 600 page document of why spam is bad to any fax
numbers in the email, maybe some places would start to get the point.

Fill out their web forms with contact info of someone at the FTC.  Obviously
laws aren't going to stop it, and people are making money off of it.  If it
gets to the point where the harrassment just isn't worth it, some spammers
will stop.

> -Original Message-
> From: Bob German [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2003 8:45 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: RE: Is there a technical solution to SPAM?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I disagree.  While you're right that it is a social problem, 
> it is also
> a technical problem in that those of us charged with protecting our
> networks and equipment need to be able to discuss methods of 
> engineering
> our networks to counteract SPAM while the social, political and legal
> issues are being played out in their arenas.
> 
> And I doubt that career spammers give a rat's ass about proper network
> etiquette.  Education may help prevent newbies and brick-and-mortar
> converts from becoming spammers, but it will take some combination of
> legal and technical measures to deal with the career spammers.  Laws
> alone won't work, because laws have loopholes.
> 
> Bob German
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On 
> Behalf Of
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2003 9:24 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Is there a technical solution to SPAM?
> 
> 
> 
> Anyone who believes that SPAM can be solved by technical means should
> try 
> googling one of the following:
> 
> sms spam
> i-mode spam
> IM spam
> 
> It should be clear that spam is really a social problem, not 
> a technical
> 
> one and therefore the solutions will be found in the social, political
> and 
> legal spaces, not in network engineering. Some combination of 
> education 
> and training, new laws, arrests and public trials will be 
> needed to get 
> rid of it. 
> 
> I'm betting that we get the biggest bang for the buck out of education
> and 
> training. Part of it will come from teaching people network 
> etiquette, 
> part from teaching them that spam is not a way to make money, and part
> of 
> it from teaching website owners how to provide effective 
> advertising so 
> that website ads can dominate the cheap mass advertising space and 
> displace the spammers.
> 
> In any case, I suggest that we should ban all future 
> discussion of SPAM 
> and spammers from this mailing list since it is not related 
> to network 
> engineering or operating an IP network. 
> 
> ---
> Michael Dillon
> Capacity Planning, Prescot St., London, UK
> Mobile: +44 7900 823 672Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Phone: +44 20 7650 9493Fax: +44 20 7650 9030
> 
> 

Re: Is there a technical solution to spam?

[Richard Cox]

(Subject line & quotes adjusted to avoid infringing Hormel's trademark!)

On 29 Jul 2003 13:24 UTC [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

| Anyone who believes that spam can be solved by technical means


is missing the point completely.

Social controls placed on spam by some network operators, and by
recipients, have led the senders to adopt techniques that challenge
the security of the parts of the internet that we have to manage.

An obvious example is the compromising of user machines by viruses
such as Jeem, SoBig-E, etc: by compromising these machines, some of
which are connected (almost) 24/7, with the intention of their being
used to send untraceable spam, has prepared those same machines for
other nefarious use, such as Distributed Denial of Service attacks.

| the solutions will be found in the social, political and legal
| spaces, not in network engineering.

The solutions may well be found there but will be unimplementable
without much needed support from the operators - particularly the
major backbones - who currently turn a blind eye to protect their
revenue.  To see which these operators are, read:

http://groups.google.com/groups?dq=&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=vi1vl24ue5hm72%40corp.supernews.com&rnum=1

| Some combination of education and training, new laws, arrests
| and public trials will be needed to get rid of it.

None of which will be possible without adduceable evidence.  This will
lead to onerous compliance and logging requirements being imposed on
all operators as a result of past non-cooperation by a small subset.
Had that subset co-operated from the start, the extra duties that are
likely to cause us all extra work would never have become necessary.

| In any case, I suggest that we should ban all future discussion of
| spam and spammers from this mailing list since it is not related to
| network engineering or operating an IP network.

That's already the case, but discussion of the security issues that
result from the activities of spammers still seems to be unavoidable.

-- 
Richard Cox
RC1500-RIPE

Re: Is there a technical solution to spam?

[Bohdan Tashchuk]

> The solutions may well be found there but will be unimplementable
> without much needed support from the operators - particularly the
> major backbones - who currently turn a blind eye to protect their
> revenue.
Bingo. There's the crux of the problem. It needs to be elaborated on and 
emphasized, because most engineers have a blind spot about the business 
aspects of their industry (no matter what that industry is).

There's a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth, a lot of soul searching, 
a lot of angst here. All for naught.

Many big network operators are selling bigger and bigger pipes to 
everyone so they can keep up with more and more spam. They make money on 
the increased traffic, even as they have these solemn terms and 
conditions in place about how they won't tolerate spam.

The big network operators don't need to allow spammers to connect 
directly to their backbones. They make money by selling transit to other 
networks who sell transit to still other networks who then allow 
spammers to connect.

Network operators are such a naive bunch of engineers. There's lots of 
money to be made just in transit for spam, and quite often the people 
who sign the paychecks for the engineers who post to this list are the 
very people who benefit. They understand this, why don't you?

Every network operator should first try to get their own company to get 
serious about stopping spam. Top management has to be willing to do what 
it takes. E.g. de-peer, stop selling transit, etc. Until that happens 
the spam problem will keep getting worse.

And if top management isn't interested, or won't agree to do anything 
meaningful, ask yourself why. And keep that in mind the next time you 
get paid.

Re: Is there a technical solution to SPAM?

[Matthew S. Hallacy]

On Tue, Jul 29, 2003 at 02:24:29PM +0100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> 
> Anyone who believes that SPAM can be solved by technical means should try 
> googling one of the following:
> 
> sms spam
> i-mode spam
> IM spam
> 

[snip]

AOL Instant Messenger has a 'warn' function, I wrote a nifty little plugin
for GAIM (A multi-IM-client available for various platforms) that simply
drops messages from unknown people with a warning level >10%.

If only everything else had a 'warn' function. (Although, to a degree razor
serves this purpose along with a whitelist in spamassassin)

-- 
Matthew S. HallacyFUBAR, LART, BOFH Certified
http://www.poptix.net   GPG public key 0x01938203

Re: Is there a technical solution to SPAM?

[Dave Crocker]

Michael,

MDrc> I'm betting that we get the biggest bang for the buck out of education and
MDrc> training. Part of it will come from teaching people network etiquette,
MDrc> part from teaching them that spam is not a way to make money, and part of
MDrc> it from teaching website owners how to provide effective advertising so

"Accountable" Spammers are willing to work within the rules. In the
absence of rules, they are aggressive. These are the folks of the DMA
and the rest of the real, commercial marketing world. They have, so far,
been entirely resistant to the many, vigorous efforts to pursue
discussion-based education. For these folks, legislation-based
"education" is more promising.

Unfortunately, there is another set of folks that I call "Rogue
Spammers".  For various reasons, they cannot be held accountable.  Some
work form unaccountable environments.  Some are simply crazy or nasty,
so they don't care about making money.

Spammers are like roaches.  They are here to stay.  They are aggressive.
They adapt.

We need to respond with a variety of mechanisms, preferably coordinated
to maximize the aggregate effect.


d/
--
 Dave Crocker 
 Brandenburg InternetWorking 
 Sunnyvale, CA  USA , 

Re: Is there a technical solution to SPAM?

[Paul Vixie]

> Spammers are like roaches.  They are here to stay.  They are aggressive.
> They adapt.

spam is a drug, and spammers will do anything, anything at all, for a fix.

> We need to respond with a variety of mechanisms, preferably coordinated
> to maximize the aggregate effect.

i still disagree.  we need to call smtp a total loss and start over, from
the basic question: how can mutual consent be prerequisite to communication?

the difference between spam and ddos is a matter of statefulness -- but the
motives for sending it are essentially the same: asymmetric benefit to the
sender, and without consent of the recipients.

watching the growth of the anti-ddos and anti-spam industries makes the
internet look like a grade school science fair project run amok.
-- 
Paul Vixie