Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
In article mailman.837.1251890913.2854.python-l...@python.org, Tino Wildenhain t...@wildenhain.de wrote: SNIP Here is another idea: for spam senders pointing to servers under=20 jurisdiction, size the server and check all incoming requests from users - if they try to do a deal, prosecute a few of them in the public for supporting a crime. (And of course if possible get hold of the spammers too). Sure there would be corner cases where for example a competitor might try to discredit a company, but in most cases, cui bono should be the spammer after all. You know what that is: terror. Those in power just picks just somebody, punish them in a way that is beyond reason, to scare the crap out of everybody. This is what the western justice system is supposed to prevent. This is the exact opposite of what the Free West is supposed to mean. Terrorised by government, or by interest groups, is as bad as terrorised by Scientology Church or street punks. Think about it. Hitler came legally to power, and was able to transform Germany in a police state based on laws that were very liberal compared to what we have today. (Only later he went far beyond that.) Of course a lot of Jewish business men weren't honest. (No business men is.). So being Jewish is probably criminal. Were does it end? Groetjes Albert -- -- Albert van der Horst, UTRECHT,THE NETHERLANDS Economic growth -- being exponential -- ultimately falters. alb...@spearc.xs4all.nl =n http://home.hccnet.nl/a.w.m.van.der.horst -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
On Thu, 03 Sep 2009 23:07:48 -0400, Terry Reedy wrote: Suppose that all over the world, people coordinated so that one in three households paid ISPs while a neighbor on each side piggybacked (and perhaps paid the paying househould their one-third share). Do you really think that would have no effect on the pricing and availability of internet service? Are the accounts unlimited downloads, or are are they capped? Does the ISP charge for excess downloads, or do they slow the connection down to modem speed? Or even disconnect the account until the end of the month? Does the ISP offer only a single plan, or are there multiple plans with different caps? Can people cancel their accounts without notice, or are they locked in for 12 months? How many ISPs are there? If only one, does the government enforce laws against anti-monopolistic behaviour, or is it happy to look the other way? There are far too many variables to give a definitive answer to your question, but I'll try... Consider a typical set of neighbours, Fred, Barney and Wilma, all with a 10GB monthly cap, and each use 8GB of that cap in an average month. Barney gets wi-fi, and leaves it open. Fred and Wilma immediately cancel their accounts, and piggyback off Barney, and in fact increase their usage to 10GB because its not costing them anything. What the ISP sees is that their total usage goes from 24GB used out of 30GB paid for, to 28GB out of 10GB paid for. If they're charging for excess usage, they'll rub their hands with glee -- excess usage fees tend to be brutal, and pure profit. No matter how altruistic Barney is, he'll surely soon upgrade his cap to 30GB (or more). If the ISP has done their sums right, their profit on a 30GB cap will be more-or-less equal to 3 x their profit on a 10GB cap -- and very likely larger. Why? Because of fixed, per account, costs. The ISP's fixed costs (administrative costs) depend on the number of accounts, which has just dropped by two thirds. Their variable costs depend on the amount of downloads, and have increased by one sixth -- but the transmission costs themselves are quite low. It's not unreasonable to hypothesise that the decrease in per-account costs more than makes up for the increase in transmission costs. Essentially, Barney is acting as a middleman between his neighbours and the ISP. (The fact that Barney may not collect any money from Fred or Wilma is irrelevant -- he's just making a monetary loss from the deal.) Suppliers often, but not always, love middlemen, because they can palm off the least profitable and most expensive parts of their business to somebody willing to work for a smaller margin. In this case, the ISP gets to supply three customers for the administrative and help-desk costs of supplying one (Barney). It's not unreasonable for this to be a win to the ISP. Sometimes you get multiple layers of middlemen, e.g. in Australia it's not unusual to have ISPs like Telstra who deal direct with the end consumer but also sell bandwidth to smaller ISPs like Internode, who also sell to the consumer as well as selling bandwidth to tiny ISPs with a few hundred customers. Would this be viable with thousands of (effectively) nano-ISPs with two customers each? I don't know, but it could be. -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
And I would kindly appreciate it if you fellas wouldn't go solving this little spam problem! Selling Anti-Spam industry leading appliances has managed to put me in a rather nice house and I'd hate to lose it just because you fellas went and solved the problem! ;) On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 11:24 PM, rrt8...@gmail.com wrote: *ahem*! You guy's do remember this thread (?at one time in history?) was about spam on this list, right? Not internet connection fees. ;-) -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list -- We are all slave to our own paradigm. -- Joshua Williams If the letters PhD appear after a person's name, that person will remain outdoors even after it's started raining. -- Jeff Kay -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
Steven D'Aprano wrote: On Wed, 02 Sep 2009 15:22:08 -0400, Terry Reedy wrote: the conclusion you do. But I read your argument as being that having an open wi-fi connection was prima facie evidence of intent to commit crime regardless of whether you were a public advocate or not. Perhaps I misunderstood. Yes, as you realized later. So it's the *advocacy* (for the purposes of alibi) which is evidence of wrong-doing? I said 'reason for me to be suspicious' rather than 'courtroom evidence'. Not the open windows themselves? Correct. The vast majority of open WiFi is due to ignorance or insufficient motivation to jump through the hoops needed to add units to a closed network. (I believe this can and should be easier, but that is another topic.) The other advocated reason is basically to 'stick it to the corporation', under the delusion that it is possible to hurt the fictitious 'legal person' rather than the real people how are owners, workers, and other customers. ISP's price residential service based on average fixed cost and average usage. Multiple homes using one connection push those averages up. Terry Jan Reedy -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
Steven D'Aprano wrote: On Thu, 03 Sep 2009 04:01:54 -0400, Terry Reedy wrote: ISP's price residential service based on average fixed cost and average usage. Multiple homes using one connection push those averages up. Is that meant to be a problem? When people buy more, the unit price they are paying falls, but the total price they pay generally goes up. E.g. we've recently upgraded our business link from AUD$150 per month for 60GB to $190 for 100GB. The per GB price is less, but the total we pay is more -- and the ISP doesn't have to do much extra work for that extra money. The difference is that you *upgraded* your service and so incurred a greater total cost. If my neighbor lets the rest of the neighborhood use his wireless, while I do not, yet my prices go up because on average more usage is happening, I am paying more but not getting more. ~Ethan~ -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
On Thu, 03 Sep 2009 12:19:48 -0700, Ethan Furman wrote: Steven D'Aprano wrote: On Thu, 03 Sep 2009 04:01:54 -0400, Terry Reedy wrote: ISP's price residential service based on average fixed cost and average usage. Multiple homes using one connection push those averages up. Is that meant to be a problem? When people buy more, the unit price they are paying falls, but the total price they pay generally goes up. E.g. we've recently upgraded our business link from AUD$150 per month for 60GB to $190 for 100GB. The per GB price is less, but the total we pay is more -- and the ISP doesn't have to do much extra work for that extra money. The difference is that you *upgraded* your service and so incurred a greater total cost. If my neighbor lets the rest of the neighborhood use his wireless, while I do not, yet my prices go up because on average more usage is happening, I am paying more but not getting more. Incorrect -- you are getting all the downloads you make yourself, plus the warm fuzzy feeling of happiness from the knowledge that other people are making downloads you have paid for. Of course, if you've *unintentionally* left your wi-fi open, perhaps cold feelings of dread and horror would be more appropriate, but we're talking about the situation where folks deliberately leave their wi-fi open for whatever reason. -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
Steven D'Aprano wrote: On Thu, 03 Sep 2009 12:19:48 -0700, Ethan Furman wrote: Steven D'Aprano wrote: On Thu, 03 Sep 2009 04:01:54 -0400, Terry Reedy wrote: ISP's price residential service based on average fixed cost and average usage. Multiple homes using one connection push those averages up. Is that meant to be a problem? When people buy more, the unit price they are paying falls, but the total price they pay generally goes up. E.g. we've recently upgraded our business link from AUD$150 per month for 60GB to $190 for 100GB. The per GB price is less, but the total we pay is more -- and the ISP doesn't have to do much extra work for that extra money. The difference is that you *upgraded* your service and so incurred a greater total cost. If my neighbor lets the rest of the neighborhood use his wireless, while I do not, yet my prices go up because on average more usage is happening, I am paying more but not getting more. Incorrect -- you are getting all the downloads you make yourself, plus the warm fuzzy feeling of happiness from the knowledge that other people are making downloads you have paid for. Of course, if you've *unintentionally* left your wi-fi open, perhaps cold feelings of dread and horror would be more appropriate, but we're talking about the situation where folks deliberately leave their wi-fi open for whatever reason. Read a little closer, Steven -- *my* wi-fi is *closed*, it's my neighbor (in theory) who has his open, and all that extra usage is making *my* rate go up -- no warm fuzzies, only irritation. ~Ethan~ -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
On Thu, 03 Sep 2009 16:01:26 -0700, Ethan Furman wrote: Steven D'Aprano wrote: On Thu, 03 Sep 2009 12:19:48 -0700, Ethan Furman wrote: Steven D'Aprano wrote: On Thu, 03 Sep 2009 04:01:54 -0400, Terry Reedy wrote: ISP's price residential service based on average fixed cost and average usage. Multiple homes using one connection push those averages up. Is that meant to be a problem? When people buy more, the unit price they are paying falls, but the total price they pay generally goes up. E.g. we've recently upgraded our business link from AUD$150 per month for 60GB to $190 for 100GB. The per GB price is less, but the total we pay is more -- and the ISP doesn't have to do much extra work for that extra money. The difference is that you *upgraded* your service and so incurred a greater total cost. If my neighbor lets the rest of the neighborhood use his wireless, while I do not, yet my prices go up because on average more usage is happening, I am paying more but not getting more. Incorrect -- you are getting all the downloads you make yourself, plus the warm fuzzy feeling of happiness from the knowledge that other people are making downloads you have paid for. Of course, if you've *unintentionally* left your wi-fi open, perhaps cold feelings of dread and horror would be more appropriate, but we're talking about the situation where folks deliberately leave their wi-fi open for whatever reason. Read a little closer, Steven -- *my* wi-fi is *closed*, it's my neighbor (in theory) who has his open, and all that extra usage is making *my* rate go up -- no warm fuzzies, only irritation. Okay, that makes zero sense at all. If your neighbour left his wi-fi closed, but just downloaded twice as much stuff, would you be irritated? What if he gets a roommate and they share the same account? What's the difference between my neighbour is personally downloading twice as much stuff and my neighbour is letting other people to download stuff, doubling total usage on his account? Your argument supposes that open wi-fi will lead to increased average usage, which in turn will lead to higher prices, neither of which are obviously true. If I'm leaching off my neighbour's open network, chances are that I'll be using my own account less, so the average will tend to remain about the same. Even if I download more than I otherwise would have, because I'm not paying for it, the difference will be offset due to inconvenience: I can't control when my neighbour has his account on or off, or bounce the router if there's a problem. If I have to pick up my laptop and physically walk outside and park in the street to access his open wi-fi network, forget it, I'll use my own account. According to the theory increased usage leads to higher prices, we should be paying more for Internet access now than we were in 1999, and hugely more that from the early 90s when there were hardly any Internet users. That's nonsensical. I don't know about you, but I'm paying about the same for ADSL access now as I would have paid for dial-up access in the late 90s. The explosion of Internet use has lead to more competition, lower prices and lower costs. In the late 1990s, I was paying something like AUD$35 a month for dial-up access just for myself. With inflation, that's about equal to $45 in today's prices. Now I'm paying $60 for ADSL access, for two people, that is, about $30 per person -- less than I was paying for dial-up in 1999. Even though the total amount I'm paying has increased, the cost per person, or per megabyte, is lower than it was in the 90s. My total cost has increased because my circumstances have changed, not because the service is more expensive. That contradicts the prediction more usage leads to higher prices, and as far as I'm concerned, pretty much refutes the hypothesis. -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
Steven D'Aprano wrote: According to the theory increased usage leads to higher prices, we should be paying more for Internet access now than we were in 1999, and hugely more that from the early 90s when there were hardly any Internet users. You are confusing historical changed with contemporaneous alternatives. Suppose that all over the world, people coordinated so that one in three households paid ISPs while a neighbor on each side piggybacked (and perhaps paid the paying househould their one-third share). Do you really think that would have no effect on the pricing and availability of internet service? tjr -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
*ahem*! You guy's do remember this thread (?at one time in history?) was about spam on this list, right? Not internet connection fees. ;-) -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
Steven D'Aprano wrote: I have read more that one person advocating leaving one's wi-fi base open for anyone to use as the 'neighborly' thing to do. That's a different kettle of fish. You don't do anybody any harm by paying for Internet access for your neighbours (and anyone driving down the street with a laptop and wi-fi). Unless the 'neighbor' is your friendly local spam or malware merchant ;-) The rationale I have seen is this: if one leaves the wi-fi router open and illegal activity is conducted thru it, and there is no residual evidence on the hard drives of on-premises machines, then one may claim that it must have been someone else. On the other hand, if the router is properly closed, then it will be hard to argue that someone hacked trough it. There are, of course, flaws in this argument, and I take it as evidence of intention to conduct illegal activity, whether properly so or not. tjr -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
On Wed, 02 Sep 2009 02:16:27 -0400, Terry Reedy wrote: Steven D'Aprano wrote: I have read more that one person advocating leaving one's wi-fi base open for anyone to use as the 'neighborly' thing to do. That's a different kettle of fish. You don't do anybody any harm by paying for Internet access for your neighbours (and anyone driving down the street with a laptop and wi-fi). Unless the 'neighbor' is your friendly local spam or malware merchant ;-) Since they're sending spam through your account, it's the same as you sending the spam, and you're responsible for it. The rationale I have seen is this: if one leaves the wi-fi router open and illegal activity is conducted thru it, and there is no residual evidence on the hard drives of on-premises machines, then one may claim that it must have been someone else. On the other hand, if the router is properly closed, then it will be hard to argue that someone hacked trough it. There are, of course, flaws in this argument, and I take it as evidence of intention to conduct illegal activity, whether properly so or not. So, if somebody leaves their car unlocked, is that evidence that they were intending to rob a bank and wanted a fast getaway car? If you leave your window open on a hot summer's night, is that evidence that you're planning to fake a burglary? If you leave your knife and fork unattended in a restaurant while you go to the toilet, is that evidence that you intended to stab the waiter and blame somebody else? I assume you would answer No to each of these. So why the harsher standard when it comes to computer crime? -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
Steven D'Aprano wrote: On Tue, 01 Sep 2009 20:48:19 +0200, David wrote: Il Tue, 1 Sep 2009 11:50:14 +0200, Andre Engels ha scritto: What about mailing lists? There exist well-functioning mailing lists with thousands of subscribers. Being a posting member of those will significantly increase your internet bill under your proposal. It's an implementation issue, it doesn't touch the sense of proposal. One possibility is register the mail list to official registers and mail from a subscriber to other subscribers will be excluded from taxation or will have a lower tax rate. An excessive mailing from a single or few subscribers can be easily detected, traced, filtered and, if the case, prosecuted. This can be done already, without the need for an email tax. ISPs could easily detect spammers, if they cared to. There are a few things that can already be done to cut the spam problem to manageable size: (1) Why aren't ISPs blocking port 25 for home users by default? My home ISP does, I can only send email through their mail server unless I ask them nicely, in which case I'd be responsible for any spam that leaves my home network. If I send spam, I'll be breaking my terms of service. (2) Why aren't ISPs cutting off detected spam bots? Owners of zombied PCs are menaces to society. ISPs are in the best position to detect PCs which are spamming, and alert the owner. If no action is taken in a week, warn the owner that they're in breach of their terms of service, and if the behaviour persists, cut the owner off until they clean up their PC. Repeat offenders should be banned. The preferred option these days is to slow down net access of the offenders, not cut them off completely. I'm not sure how many ISPs actually do that yet. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
On 2009-09-02, Terry Reedy tjre...@udel.edu wrote: Steven D'Aprano wrote: I have read more that one person advocating leaving one's wi-fi base open for anyone to use as the 'neighborly' thing to do. That's a different kettle of fish. You don't do anybody any harm by paying for Internet access for your neighbours (and anyone driving down the street with a laptop and wi-fi). Unless the 'neighbor' is your friendly local spam or malware merchant ;-) A spam/malware merchange who can't afford/arrange other internet access? How is net access on the critical path? -- Grant Edwards grante Yow! I haven't been married at in over six years, but we visi.comhad sexual counseling every day from Oral Roberts!! -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
On 2009-09-02, Steven D'Aprano ste...@remove.this.cybersource.com.au wrote: On Wed, 02 Sep 2009 02:16:27 -0400, Terry Reedy wrote: Steven D'Aprano wrote: I have read more that one person advocating leaving one's wi-fi base open for anyone to use as the 'neighborly' thing to do. That's a different kettle of fish. You don't do anybody any harm by paying for Internet access for your neighbours (and anyone driving down the street with a laptop and wi-fi). Unless the 'neighbor' is your friendly local spam or malware merchant ;-) Since they're sending spam through your account, it's the same as you sending the spam, and you're responsible for it. Nobody said anything about allowing anybody to send spam through your account. -- Grant Edwards grante Yow! ! Everybody out of at the GENETIC POOL! visi.com -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
On Wed, 02 Sep 2009 06:20:39 -0700, Emile van Sebille wrote: On 9/1/2009 9:22 PM r said... On Sep 1, 10:16 pm, Steven D'Aprano Took me two weeks of elapsed time and around 30 hours of effort to remove those suckers from the machine. Now I run Linux, behind two firewalls. Takes me less than one hour to rebuild my system If that's your job (as it's sometimes mine) then that sounds about right. Otherwise, you must have a lot of practice rebuilding! I could have nuked the machine and rebuilt it from scratch, but I couldn't find my WinXP original media. Besides, when I started the process, I had no idea it would take so long. I learned one thing though. System Restore sounds like a good idea, but in my experience it's only good for restoring malware when you reboot. (I won't tell you how many times I deleted the same spyware apps before I worked out what was happening. Grrr arrg.) -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
Il Wed, 02 Sep 2009 10:22:50 +0100, MRAB ha scritto: The preferred option these days is to slow down net access of the offenders, not cut them off completely. I'm not sure how many ISPs actually do that yet. If they do, it doesn't look like it's working that much. D. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
Steven D'Aprano wrote: On Wed, 02 Sep 2009 02:16:27 -0400, Terry Reedy wrote: The rationale I have seen is this: if one leaves the wi-fi router open and illegal activity is conducted thru it, and there is no residual evidence on the hard drives of on-premises machines, then one may claim that it must have been someone else. On the other hand, if the router is properly closed, then it will be hard to argue that someone hacked trough it. There are, of course, flaws in this argument, and I take it as evidence of intention to conduct illegal activity, whether properly so or not. So, if somebody leaves their car unlocked, is that evidence that they were intending to rob a bank and wanted a fast getaway car? If you leave your window open on a hot summer's night, is that evidence that you're planning to fake a burglary? If you leave your knife and fork unattended in a restaurant while you go to the toilet, is that evidence that you intended to stab the waiter and blame somebody else? I assume you would answer No to each of these. So why the harsher standard when it comes to computer crime? Your cases are not at all analogous or parallel. First, I did not say 'computer crime'. I said 'illegal activity, whether properly so [illegal] or not'. The latter is much broader, sometimes including the viewing of non-sexual pictures of undraped young adults. Second, I was talking about advocacy of 'open windows' by someone who knows how to close and lock a window. So the analogy would be someone who advocates leaving your living room window open so that if the Feds come knocking on your door about 'illegal' materials being sent to or from your home, you can claim that the within-house sender or receiver must have been a stranger that came in through the window. H. [Of course, with unlockable street-side mailboxes, a stranger would not need an open window to do such.] Terry Jan Reedy -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
On Sep 2, 12:33 pm, Steven D'Aprano st...@remove-this- cybersource.com.au wrote: (snip) I learned one thing though. System Restore sounds like a good idea, but in my experience it's only good for restoring malware when you reboot. System restore is a joke! and a complete waste of HD space even if you have TB's to spare! Actually i can do with almost very piece of built- in software on this stinking windows platform. Microsoft's whole system of security is a joke as evidenced by Stevens experience. Windows ships with back doors wide open just begging for an infection! - BS Packaged software - Windows Mail - virus magnet/backdoor use gmail Internet Exploder - virus magnet/frontdoor, use Chrome|Mozilla Windows Calendar - only slightly useful Windows Media Player - complete bloatware Windows Media Center - bloatware built on bloatware Windows sync center - what a joke! Windows Movie Maker - yea for kids and housewife's! Windows Photo Galley - only slightly useful. Windows Update - well i don't like hosting viruses so...? My meeting place - worthless junk Windows Games - *puke* *Dangerous and annoying services and settings from the factory* -Remote Resitry - completly moronic! -Remote assistance -hide known filetypes - Donde es destroy useless bloatware button -UAC - what a nagging POS! -Menus are hidden by default in explorer -Ready Boost - *puke* -Internet Connection Sharing -NET Tcp port sharing -Secondary Logon -Terminal Services -Windows BackUp -Windows remote managment -Routing and Remote Access -All Peer * services -all Windows Media center/player network services -- Accessories crap! -- Calculator - POS, use the python shell instead CMD - What else ya gonna use? Notepad - What a useless POS, only one undo! COME ON! Paint - are you jokeing M$ -- Glorified etch-a-sketch! sidebar - Yes i love wasting memory just to see an analog clock! sound recorder - very slightly useful, needs more functionality WordPad - no thanks, OO will suffice! charactor map - only slightly useful defragmenter - too slow disk cleanup - obviously made for morons! Internet Explorer(no add-ons) - polish a turd, still a turd! Windows Experience index - useless bloat Computer Management - horrible UI Task Manager - The worst UI i have ever used! (Vista) Windows Help - maybe for complete morons! --- misc bloat --- Desktop backgrounds - crap! use a solid color (black is my fav!) Sceen savers - crap! ohh...look at the pretty colors! Windows Transparency - crap! vanity run muck! Themes - crap! adolescent accessorizing! Sadly none of these built in memory robbing hard space eating annoying POS bloatwares can be uninstalled. The only advancement (if you could call it that) with Vista is the search from start menu is much better than the previous puppy dog search of XP. Short of that Vista is just lipstick on a pig! Thanks M$ for bending us over yet again! -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
On Sep 2, 4:22 am, MRAB pyt...@mrabarnett.plus.com wrote: The preferred option these days is to slow down net access of the offenders, not cut them off completely. I'm not sure how many ISPs actually do that yet. That seems to be the case with ISP and good users also in the form of quotas ;-) -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
On 9/2/2009 7:07 AM Unknown said... A spam/malware merchange who can't afford/arrange other internet access? How is net access on the critical path? Mailbots (a significant source of spam IMHO) thrive on net access -- for them, is there anything _more_ critical? Emile -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
On 2009-09-02, Emile van Sebille em...@fenx.com wrote: On 9/2/2009 7:07 AM Unknown said... A spam/malware merchange who can't afford/arrange other internet access? How is net access on the critical path? Mailbots (a significant source of spam IMHO) thrive on net access -- for them, is there anything _more_ critical? A mailbot which would otherwise not have network access is going to come park itself outside my house if I leave my AP open? There are open APs at all sorts of libraries, coffee houses, restaurants, auto dealers, book stores, etc, etc. I don't see how net access is an issue for somebody who wants to send spam. -- Grant Edwards grante Yow! Now I am depressed ... at visi.com -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
Il 02 Sep 2009 00:17:05 GMT, Steven D'Aprano ha scritto: This can be done already, without the need for an email tax. ISPs could easily detect spammers, if they cared to. There are a few things that can already be done to cut the spam problem to manageable size: (1) Why aren't ISPs blocking port 25 for home users by default? My home [...] (2) Why aren't ISPs cutting off detected spam bots? Owners of zombied PCs [...] (3) ISPs who won't cut off spam bots are either incompetent or have a financial incentive to do business with spammers. Therefore, responsible ISPs should cut them off. If this means the email universe divides into two halves, the Wild West where 999 emails out of every 1000 are spam, and Civilization where only one in a thousand is spam, I'm okay with that. I don't know ISP's internal dynamics so I can't imagine what kind of financial incentive they have with spammers, AFAIK ISPs must sustain costs to augment their infrastructures to face this huge amount of traffic, costs charged on the subscribers monthly bill. At first this conduct can appear convenient but higer fares lead to reduced competitivity on the market. There are opposing forces that I can not interpret, so can not give an answer for that. As for the argument that home users who send spam are the victim, that's true up to a point, but not very far. Here's an analogy: suppose that terrorists sneak into your house after picking the lock -- or in the case of Windows users with no firewall or anti-malware, stroll through the unlocked front door -- and spend the next six months camped in your spare bedroom, using your home for their base of operations while they make terrorist attacks. When the FBI kicks your doors down, don't you think you would be arrested and would have to prove that you couldn't be reasonably expected to know they were there? If millions of spam emails are coming out of your PC, that's prima facie evidence that YOU are spamming. You would need to prove that you're an innocent victim who couldn't *reasonably* be expected to know that your machine was hijacked -- you would need to prove that the spam bot was so sophisticated that it infected your PC despite the firewall, that you didn't install it yourself in order to get some stupid game, that no commonly available anti-malware program detects it. Anything less than that is *at least* negligence, and possibly willful negligence. Mmh, sounds like a presumption of guilt. I wouldn't go so far on this way. The metaphor of terrorists in the bedroom applies up to a point. While it's evident that you can not be unaware of people living in your home, modern malware is made to be silent to the infected computer, so it's a hidden menace and not so evident. You are depicting a situation where the owner is perfectly aware of whats happening on his machine, but this is not always the case. I agree that ignorance is not an excuse but I wouldn't use the harsh manners at first. I think that the owner of the infected computer should be warned by his ISP, who can easily monitor the amount of traffic, and being induced to take countermisures. If that warning is an amount of maney to pay proportional to mail generated, I'm confident that it would be 'inducing' enough. After that the situation can develop only in three possible ways: 1) the owner takes appropriate countermisures proving his innocence (but he must pay the mail-tax for the period of infection!) 2) the owner takes no countermisures and pays the tax: it's very likely he is a spammer and we can start the assault with tanks 3) the owner takes no countermisures and doesn't pay the tax: well, It's up to you to choose the action to take towards him. [...] Yes, I'd like to see the criminals, the malware authors and the spammers punished, but I'd be satisfied to see them put out of business. The weak link is the zombie PCs -- fix the home users' PCs, or block them, take them off the Internet, and spam becomes manageable again. you got the crux of the matter. regards David -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
On Wed, 02 Sep 2009 21:53:15 +0200, David wrote: As for the argument that home users who send spam are the victim, that's true up to a point, but not very far. Here's an analogy: suppose that terrorists sneak into your house after picking the lock -- or in the case of Windows users with no firewall or anti-malware, stroll through the unlocked front door -- and spend the next six months camped in your spare bedroom, using your home for their base of operations while they make terrorist attacks. When the FBI kicks your doors down, don't you think you would be arrested and would have to prove that you couldn't be reasonably expected to know they were there? If millions of spam emails are coming out of your PC, that's prima facie evidence that YOU are spamming. You would need to prove that you're an innocent victim who couldn't *reasonably* be expected to know that your machine was hijacked -- you would need to prove that the spam bot was so sophisticated that it infected your PC despite the firewall, that you didn't install it yourself in order to get some stupid game, that no commonly available anti-malware program detects it. Anything less than that is *at least* negligence, and possibly willful negligence. Mmh, sounds like a presumption of guilt. I wouldn't go so far on this way. The metaphor of terrorists in the bedroom applies up to a point. While it's evident that you can not be unaware of people living in your home, modern malware is made to be silent to the infected computer, so it's a hidden menace and not so evident. Presumption of innocence doesn't apply when it comes to breaking of terms of service. If an ISP wants to treat customers as guilty unless proven innocent, the market will decide whether that's acceptable behaviour. As for criminal charges against people sending spam, it's not presumption of guilt. The prosecutor still needs to prove you were sending spam. But if spam is coming from your machine, that's prima facie (in the face of it) evidence that you are sending spam, or at least, that you were aware of it and did nothing to stop it. In the same way that if you are found standing over a corpse who has been stabbed to death, the murder weapon in your hand, blood to your elbows, that's prima facie evidence that you stabbed the victim. You still have the opportunity to refute the evidence, say by arguing that the blood is on your arms (but not splattered all over your face and clothes) because you tried to save the victim's life, and you had just picked up the knife. The burden of reasonable efforts to avoid sending spam isn't high. Are you using a platform which is resistant to malware (Mac or Linux, say)? If you are using a platform prone to malware, do you have at least one each of industry practice anti-virus and anti-spyware programs? Do you run them regularly? Are they regularly updated? Do you have a firewall enabled, blocking the usual ports? Are you blocking outgoing port 25? Do you avoid installing random software and games (including Flash-based games) from untrusted web sites? If your computer starts playing up, with unexpected slow-downs, popups, crashes and so forth, do you take steps to have it serviced? If you answer No to more than one of the above, then you should be taking extra efforts to ensure you're not sending spam, and failure to do so is negligent. If you can answer Yes to all of the above, and nevertheless have been infected, then you have done pretty much everything the random non-expert computer user should be reasonably expected to do. You are depicting a situation where the owner is perfectly aware of whats happening on his machine, but this is not always the case. I agree that ignorance is not an excuse but I wouldn't use the harsh manners at first. At first??? Viruses and malware have existed on computers for thirty years, if not longer! Spam has been a huge problem for a decade or more. How many more warnings do people need before they will do something about the spambots on their computers? We don't let people play load music at 3am disturbing the neighbours. Regardless of whether they were aware of what they were doing or not, we make them turn their stereo down, and if they don't, they can be charged with disturbing the peace. Why should sending out millions of spams be treated more lightly? At the moment, the only incentive people have to remove spambots from their computer is if it causes performance problems or extra ISP charges. It's time to hold computer users responsible for what their computer does. -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
On Wed, 02 Sep 2009 15:22:08 -0400, Terry Reedy wrote: Steven D'Aprano wrote: On Wed, 02 Sep 2009 02:16:27 -0400, Terry Reedy wrote: The rationale I have seen is this: if one leaves the wi-fi router open and illegal activity is conducted thru it, and there is no residual evidence on the hard drives of on-premises machines, then one may claim that it must have been someone else. On the other hand, if the router is properly closed, then it will be hard to argue that someone hacked trough it. There are, of course, flaws in this argument, and I take it as evidence of intention to conduct illegal activity, whether properly so or not. So, if somebody leaves their car unlocked, is that evidence that they were intending to rob a bank and wanted a fast getaway car? If you leave your window open on a hot summer's night, is that evidence that you're planning to fake a burglary? If you leave your knife and fork unattended in a restaurant while you go to the toilet, is that evidence that you intended to stab the waiter and blame somebody else? I assume you would answer No to each of these. So why the harsher standard when it comes to computer crime? Your cases are not at all analogous or parallel. I disagree, obviously, otherwise I wouldn't have posted them. First, I did not say 'computer crime'. I said 'illegal activity, whether properly so [illegal] or not'. The latter is much broader, sometimes including the viewing of non-sexual pictures of undraped young adults. You're talking about *crimes* (illegal activity) committed via *computer*. Having an open wi-fi connection isn't going to be an alibi if you're caught with a scrapbook full of such photos, or if you have a meth lab in your bathroom. Second, I was talking about advocacy of 'open windows' by someone who knows how to close and lock a window. If you're known to advocate open windows *for the express purpose of being an alibi*, then some people might (improperly, in my opinion) draw the conclusion you do. But I read your argument as being that having an open wi-fi connection was prima facie evidence of intent to commit crime regardless of whether you were a public advocate or not. Perhaps I misunderstood. The distinction you seem to be making between people who known how to lock windows (lock their wi-fi network) and those who don't is irrelevant. The question we're debating is whether or not the deliberate decision to leave your windows (your wi-fi network) open is prima facie evidence of intention to commit crime. You say it is. I say that such a conclusion would be seen as ridiculous if applied to common everyday situations, and wonder what's so special about wi-fi that it is treated more harshly than analogous situations involving non-computer crimes? The only other example I can think of is that now that mobile phones are so ubiquitous, and since they can be tracked so easily by police, leaving your mobile phone at home can be treated as prima facie evidence that you were committing a crime during the period you were untrackable. So far this outrageous conclusion has only been applied to Mafia bosses accused of murder (as far as I know), but how long will it be before people are arguing that if you've got nothing to hide, why would you object to being tracked by police 24/7? So the analogy would be someone who advocates leaving your living room window open so that if the Feds come knocking on your door about 'illegal' materials being sent to or from your home, you can claim that the within-house sender or receiver must have been a stranger that came in through the window. H. So it's the *advocacy* (for the purposes of alibi) which is evidence of wrong-doing? Not the open windows themselves? What do you make of those who advocate for open windows but don't have illegal materials in the house? Or those who have open windows, and illegal materials, but have never spoken about the use of open windows as an alibi? How would your answers change if we lived in a world where strangers did routinely drop illegal materials into people's houses (or at least to their front door), and police frequently treated the recipient as a de facto criminal? We live in such a world: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berwyn_Heights,_Maryland_mayor's_residence_drug_raid This sort of episode -- a botched, probably illegal, paramilitary raid by police against innocents -- is only unusual because the victim was white and the mayor of the town. There's an interesting parallel here. Many patent lawyers recommend that you never search the patent records for technology before attempting to market something you've invented, because if *don't* search, and infringe, you are liable to damages, but if you *do* search, fail to find anything, and then nevertheless infringe inadvertently, you are deemed to have willfully infringed and therefore are liable to triple damages. Given the difficulty
Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
On Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 11:18 AM, David71da...@libero.it wrote: Il Sat, 29 Aug 2009 17:18:46 -0700 (PDT), casebash ha scritto: So much of it could be removed even by simple keyword filtering. I think there is only one final solution to the spam pestilence: a tiny tax on email and posts. Spammers send hundreds of thousands of emails/posts a day and a tax of 0.0001$ each does not harm normal users but discurages spammers. This tax should be applied when a message is routed by a ISP server, this saves mails/posts internal to a LAN. What about mailing lists? There exist well-functioning mailing lists with thousands of subscribers. Being a posting member of those will significantly increase your internet bill under your proposal. -- André Engels, andreeng...@gmail.com -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
Il Sun, 30 Aug 2009 19:13:38 +0100, Nobody ha scritto: Apart from the impossibility of implementing such a tax, it isn't going to discourage spammers when the tax will be paid by the owner of the compromised PC from which they're sending their spam. I don't agree. Each computer connected to internet is phisically connected to a carrer's hub. Each carrier can easily count smtp packets of each user as they can detect, filter and in some nations prosecute, p2p users. The owner of compromised PC should be responsible of his computer like the owner of a car is responsible of damages caused by its car. That owner should keep his computer clean as he *must* keep his car functional and safe. Today most of the people consider cyber security an optional, but all of us pay for their negligence. Those people are externalizing to the rest of the world their costs in terms of SO updating, antivirus, firewall and knowledge. This is unfair. This is mainly a matter of sensibility and culture: in '50/60s active and passive car safety was an optional, today is a must. I think it's time to switch to responsible computing and the mail-tax would charge each person of its own costs and annoyances without affectig the rest of the world. If you want to avoid usenet spam and don't want to filter it yourself, find a provider with more aggressive spam filter. This is not the solution. You are saying that if your neighbour makes loud noises you can not call police to impose him to cease but you can only make your home soundproof. Ultimately, it's up to the person running the news server as to which posts they will or will not accept. Are you suggesting to moderate every news server and mail server all over the world? THIS is impossible! D. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
Il Sun, 30 Aug 2009 16:08:46 -0700 (PDT), r ha scritto: Yes i agree but your logic is flawed. If someone cuts my brake lines and i cannot stop who is to blame? Or if someone throws nails on the highway and i crash, who is to blame? Obviously you cannot blame the car owner. However if i let my brake pads wear out until they are metal on metal and run over some poor old lady crossing the street -- well now you got me! ;) But you cannot apply this logic when a hacker compromises someones computer, it the same as cutting their brake lines. How can you honestly expect that Joe computer user will know of this infection? I expect that user makes periodical and hopefully frequent checks to his computer. Today most of the people simply does absolutely nothing. Obvioulsy there is a vulnerability time between two check, but Perfection does not belongs to human beings so we must accept the risk of being cracked and being aware that we will charged for our computer actions, even if we are not directly responsible. It's a question of point of view: in italy if a thief steals a car and causes an accident the car's owner's assurance (having a car assurance is mandatory) must refund the victims. That's because protections of victims is first priority. Obviously the owner can not be charged Do you even know where your brake lines are? Even hackers can be hacked without ever knowing it! The only sure fire way is VM's or system re- installs. That's a problem of the computer owner. Why should the rest of the world be charged of *his* problem while keeping him safe from suffering any consequence? [...] I think it's time to switch to responsible computing and the mail-tax would charge each person of its own costs and annoyances without affectig the rest of the world. What, this is madness! If you have terrorist terrorizing your country you don't tax the public when they blow up a shopping mall so you can rebuild it! No you kill the terrorist in a harsh and painful manner and make an example of them, then you seize there monies. You should direct your anger to the proper internet security authorities(and more importantly to the perpetrator's) and not the innocent victims of such attacks. I want you to sit back and think very deeply about your proposal here because it is horribly wrong. Madness, you say? Let's examine the situation a bit moore deeply. First, the mail-tax would is not for rebuilding the destroyed building after the attack but, at the opposite, to prevent the attack. Wouldn't you pay a small tax to prevent terrorist's attacks? The mail-tax would be really small, if you send 1000 mails at month (a real huge traffic, for a non spammer!) the bill would be about 10 cents. Do you really think this is too much to get rid of most of the spam? Second, today we *are* paying that tax to repair building destroyed by terrorists. We are paying and hidden tax in terms of HW and human resources needed by ISPs to manage that huge (~90%) useless/malicius traffic. (I don't mention const related to dalays, denial of services, theft of informations...) Those costs are obviously charged by ISPs on our montly subscription bill. By the mail-tax we achive 3 results: 1. stopping forever direct spammers. 2. make each owner aware that his computer is compromised when the montly bill is higher than usual. 3. make that owner aware that *he* must pay for *his* problem and the rest of the world (included, I hope, you) is no more willing to be charged for this. The mail-tax may not be Final Solution against spam, but helps a lot. It is so easy to just slap a tax on something, yes that will solve everything. *sarcasm* You should reconsider your position because you are actually blaming the present situation, not my proposal. Finally a little criticims: spam and related malware is a problem growing day by day. I am proposing a solution and if somebody doest't like it, well, he should propose a better one. Just saying NO! and turning head aside hoping that the problem will solve by itsef is no more acceptable. If you want to avoid usenet spam and don't want to filter it yourself, find a provider with more aggressive spam filter. This is not the solution. You are saying that if your neighbour makes loud noises you can not call police to impose him to cease but you can only make your home soundproof. or you could go over and punch him in the nose, works every time for me ;-) In italy we say: preventing is better than treating (a disease). Regards David -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
Il Mon, 31 Aug 2009 21:04:27 +0200, David ha scritto: Obviously the owner can not be charged I mean: can not be jailed for crimes made by the thief using his car. D. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
Il Tue, 1 Sep 2009 11:50:14 +0200, Andre Engels ha scritto: What about mailing lists? There exist well-functioning mailing lists with thousands of subscribers. Being a posting member of those will significantly increase your internet bill under your proposal. It's an implementation issue, it doesn't touch the sense of proposal. One possibility is register the mail list to official registers and mail from a subscriber to other subscribers will be excluded from taxation or will have a lower tax rate. An excessive mailing from a single or few subscribers can be easily detected, traced, filtered and, if the case, prosecuted. D. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
Il Mon, 31 Aug 2009 20:06:54 -0700 (PDT), r ha scritto: Is the car owner not a victim too? :). i am ok with the filthy insurance company paying as long as the owners rates don't increase. He is, unless he left keys in the cockpit, but he is 'less victim' of the people involved in the accident. Since it is impossible to protect both kind of victims the law protects the 'most victims'. I'm not sure but I think that the increases. But why can't we force the criminal into hard labor to pay back the lost monies? Seems like that would serve justice to all parties... I'm not saying that criminals shouldn't being prosecuted, but we are talking of something else: creating and environment that discurages criminals, because present enviroment is pretty wild and criminals have a big advantage. The mail-tax proposal aims to change this situation. That's a problem of the computer owner. Why should the rest of the world be charged of *his* problem while keeping him safe from suffering any consequence? No, why should spammers feel safe while doing their crimes? I say put the pressure on criminals, and NOT the victims. I really doubt much is being done to fight spam now that is why it is so prevalent. Two FBI hackers can't keep up with billions of spams. This is a misunderstaning maybe caused by my poor english. When a person gets his computer infected and becomes zombi machine, well, *he* has a problem. At present, consequences of *his* problem are spread on me, you, people reading this discussion and the rest of internet users, while the infected computer's owner gets only a tiny fraction of those consequences. He has no reason to check his computer periodically, clean it, being cautios when surfing the net, do not install software to see free porn, etc etc because he doesn't get an evident feedback of the damage he is (even unconsciously) doing. Do you really think that things should go in this way? Only if that tax was given to highly trained US Marines who where given a green light to use any and all methods to brutally kill the enemy and make an example of him with no worry of prosecution by their own government. You did a mataphor and I've answered in the same metaphor. Let me say again that spammer and cyber criminal *must* be prosecuted with all means, but we know that present environment helps bad guys instead of good guys because most of the 'neutral guys' are just unaware (*and they want remain unaware because it's comfortable*) of being used by bad guys. The mail-tax would be really small, if you send 1000 mails at month (a real huge traffic, for a non spammer!) the bill would be about 10 cents. Do you really think this is too much to get rid of most of the spam? I don't think that will stop most spammers since they must be making more that a 10c a month profit or they would starve to death! I say why not put a 1000.00 fine on any idiot that responds to a spam! What about that? Spammers work with tenths of millions of mails/posts each month because they get revenue only from a tiny fraction of them, about 1 over several thousands. The monthly cost for such a volume of traffic would be intolerable for them. The system is definitely flawed. I am no internet expert so i don't really know what we could do to fix it. I do fear goverment or corporations taking over of the internet and robbing use of our freedom of speech under the pretense that they will *somehow* save us from the spammers. Something must be done however. I definitely agree with you on that point, that's why I'm making this proposal: the target is to reduce the spam *without* using armies of cybercops patrolling all over the net. If we let the situation get worse, goverments will respond in the only way they know: by restricting freedom. At the opposite, if they realize that the problem is under control and even they get a little revenue, they'll be happy to let us live in peace. (I hope my english is correct enough to expose this concept...) regards David -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
David wrote: I'm not saying that criminals shouldn't being prosecuted, but we are talking of something else: creating and environment that discurages criminals, because present enviroment is pretty wild and criminals have a big advantage. The mail-tax proposal aims to change this situation. I have read at least one person saying he did not mind his machine being used to send out spam. I have read more that one person advocating leaving one's wi-fi base open for anyone to use as the 'neighborly' thing to do. A substantial fraction of people have turned off Window's update. Consequently, whenever Microsoft announces a vulnerablility and patch, malware writers can write an exploit of the announced vulnerability and be sure that they will find vulnerable machines. All the above are contributors to the problem and are externalizing some of the proper cost of ownership and operation of a net-connected computer. tjr -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
On Tue, 01 Sep 2009 20:48:19 +0200, David wrote: Il Tue, 1 Sep 2009 11:50:14 +0200, Andre Engels ha scritto: What about mailing lists? There exist well-functioning mailing lists with thousands of subscribers. Being a posting member of those will significantly increase your internet bill under your proposal. It's an implementation issue, it doesn't touch the sense of proposal. One possibility is register the mail list to official registers and mail from a subscriber to other subscribers will be excluded from taxation or will have a lower tax rate. An excessive mailing from a single or few subscribers can be easily detected, traced, filtered and, if the case, prosecuted. This can be done already, without the need for an email tax. ISPs could easily detect spammers, if they cared to. There are a few things that can already be done to cut the spam problem to manageable size: (1) Why aren't ISPs blocking port 25 for home users by default? My home ISP does, I can only send email through their mail server unless I ask them nicely, in which case I'd be responsible for any spam that leaves my home network. If I send spam, I'll be breaking my terms of service. (2) Why aren't ISPs cutting off detected spam bots? Owners of zombied PCs are menaces to society. ISPs are in the best position to detect PCs which are spamming, and alert the owner. If no action is taken in a week, warn the owner that they're in breach of their terms of service, and if the behaviour persists, cut the owner off until they clean up their PC. Repeat offenders should be banned. (3) ISPs who won't cut off spam bots are either incompetent or have a financial incentive to do business with spammers. Therefore, responsible ISPs should cut them off. If this means the email universe divides into two halves, the Wild West where 999 emails out of every 1000 are spam, and Civilization where only one in a thousand is spam, I'm okay with that. As for the argument that home users who send spam are the victim, that's true up to a point, but not very far. Here's an analogy: suppose that terrorists sneak into your house after picking the lock -- or in the case of Windows users with no firewall or anti-malware, stroll through the unlocked front door -- and spend the next six months camped in your spare bedroom, using your home for their base of operations while they make terrorist attacks. When the FBI kicks your doors down, don't you think you would be arrested and would have to prove that you couldn't be reasonably expected to know they were there? If millions of spam emails are coming out of your PC, that's prima facie evidence that YOU are spamming. You would need to prove that you're an innocent victim who couldn't *reasonably* be expected to know that your machine was hijacked -- you would need to prove that the spam bot was so sophisticated that it infected your PC despite the firewall, that you didn't install it yourself in order to get some stupid game, that no commonly available anti-malware program detects it. Anything less than that is *at least* negligence, and possibly willful negligence. Negligence is a crime too, especially willful negligence. Perhaps a lesser crime than deliberate bad behaviour, but if you kill somebody because you neglected to service your car, the argument I'm the victim here, blame somebody else! wouldn't get you very far. Not knowing how to service your car to keep it in good working order is not an excuse -- if you don't know how to change the brakes, there are people who do. If you don't know how to set up an effective firewall and anti-malware software, there are people who do. Stop hiding behind your ignorance, and pay an expert to service -- and secure -- your computer. It is 2009, and the malware problem isn't some theoretical threat that only a handful of people know about. Anyone with an infected PC who does nothing about it is, in my opinion, *equally* responsible for the spam being sent out as the criminals who hijacked the PC in the first place. Yes, I'd like to see the criminals, the malware authors and the spammers punished, but I'd be satisfied to see them put out of business. The weak link is the zombie PCs -- fix the home users' PCs, or block them, take them off the Internet, and spam becomes manageable again. -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
On 2009-09-01, Terry Reedy tjre...@udel.edu wrote: David wrote: I'm not saying that criminals shouldn't being prosecuted, but we are talking of something else: creating and environment that discurages criminals, because present enviroment is pretty wild and criminals have a big advantage. The mail-tax proposal aims to change this situation. I have read at least one person saying he did not mind his machine being used to send out spam. OK, that's nuts. I have read more that one person advocating leaving one's wi-fi base open for anyone to use as the 'neighborly' thing to do. That's quite a bit different that allowing one's machine to be used by spammers. -- Grant -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
On Sep 1, 6:33 pm, Terry Reedy tjre...@udel.edu wrote: (snip) I have read at least one person saying he did not mind his machine being used to send out spam. That's aiding and abetting and can be prosecuted! I have read more that one person advocating leaving one's wi-fi base open for anyone to use as the 'neighborly' thing to do. Thats stupidity and *should* be painful! -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
On Sep 1, 6:33 pm, Terry Reedy tjre...@udel.edu wrote: (snip) I have read at least one person saying he did not mind his machine being used to send out spam. That's aiding and abetting and can be prosecuted! I have read more that one person advocating leaving one's wi-fi base open for anyone to use as the 'neighborly' thing to do. Thats stupidity and *should* be painful! -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
On Tue, 01 Sep 2009 19:33:47 -0400, Terry Reedy wrote: David wrote: I'm not saying that criminals shouldn't being prosecuted, but we are talking of something else: creating and environment that discurages criminals, because present enviroment is pretty wild and criminals have a big advantage. The mail-tax proposal aims to change this situation. I have read at least one person saying he did not mind his machine being used to send out spam. *Lots* of people have that attitude. I know a number of kiddies whose attitude is they don't care what malware is on their PC, when performance slows down to the point they can't play World of Warcrack any more, they'll just rebuild it. I have read more that one person advocating leaving one's wi-fi base open for anyone to use as the 'neighborly' thing to do. That's a different kettle of fish. You don't do anybody any harm by paying for Internet access for your neighbours (and anyone driving down the street with a laptop and wi-fi). A substantial fraction of people have turned off Window's update. Consequently, whenever Microsoft announces a vulnerablility and patch, malware writers can write an exploit of the announced vulnerability and be sure that they will find vulnerable machines. Which wouldn't matter if their system was behind a proper firewall, and if they didn't willingly install malware because it came with a cool game. Or accidentally installed it because they thought it was anti-virus. The one and only time my Windows PC was infected by malware was because my wife decided to do the right thing by installing the Windows update. Somewhere in the process -- I never worked out how -- ActiveX got turned back on in IE, and within an hour the machine had a dozen drive-by malware packages installed. I know they were drive-by, because the missus started the update process and then left the house, nobody else was there. When she returned, she came in to a hundred pop-ups on screen, and a hijacked browser. Took me two weeks of elapsed time and around 30 hours of effort to remove those suckers from the machine. Now I run Linux, behind two firewalls. -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
On Sep 1, 10:16 pm, Steven D'Aprano ste...@remove.this.cybersource.com.au wrote: (snip) That's a different kettle of fish. You don't do anybody any harm by paying for Internet access for your neighbours (and anyone driving down the street with a laptop and wi-fi). naughty, naughty! somebody's been wardriving! ;-) Took me two weeks of elapsed time and around 30 hours of effort to remove those suckers from the machine. Now I run Linux, behind two firewalls. Takes me less than one hour to rebuild my system including personal files, but excluding however winders updates cause there sure are a lot of thems updates :-O -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
casebash walkr...@gmail.com writes: So much of it could be removed even by simple keyword filtering. Use python-list@python.org [1], instead. [1] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list -- He's a responsible man in his own way. -- Michael Corleone, Chapter 25, page 363 -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
casebash walkr...@gmail.com wrote in message news:7294bf8b-9819-4b6d-92b2- afc1c8042...@x6g2000prc.googlegroups.com... So much of it could be removed even by simple keyword filtering. Funny, I was just thinking recently about how *little* spam this list gets--on the other hand, I'm following it via the python-list@ mailing list. The list owners do a great job of keeping the level of spam at a minimum, though there are occasional false positives (like your post, apparently, since I'm only seeing the replies). -Miles -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
Il Sat, 29 Aug 2009 17:18:46 -0700 (PDT), casebash ha scritto: So much of it could be removed even by simple keyword filtering. I think there is only one final solution to the spam pestilence: a tiny tax on email and posts. Spammers send hundreds of thousands of emails/posts a day and a tax of 0.0001$ each does not harm normal users but discurages spammers. This tax should be applied when a message is routed by a ISP server, this saves mails/posts internal to a LAN. Direct costs of this tax would be compensated by the simplified management of network traffic (70-90% of mail traffic is spam) and the reduced risk of virus infections. David -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
On Sun, 30 Aug 2009 11:18:35 +0200, David wrote: So much of it could be removed even by simple keyword filtering. I think there is only one final solution to the spam pestilence: a tiny tax on email and posts. Spammers send hundreds of thousands of emails/posts a day and a tax of 0.0001$ each does not harm normal users but discurages spammers. Apart from the impossibility of implementing such a tax, it isn't going to discourage spammers when the tax will be paid by the owner of the compromised PC from which they're sending their spam. If you want to avoid usenet spam and don't want to filter it yourself, find a provider with more aggressive spam filter. Ultimately, it's up to the person running the news server as to which posts they will or will not accept. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
Byung-Hee HWANG wrote: casebash walkr...@gmail.com writes: So much of it could be removed even by simple keyword filtering. Use python-list@python.org [1], instead. [1] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list Or read python-list as a newsgroup via news.gmane.org, which mirrors python-list, not c.l.p. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
Nobody wrote: Apart from the impossibility of implementing such a tax, it isn't going to discourage spammers when the tax will be paid by the owner of the compromised PC from which they're sending their spam. It would encourge PC owners to not let their machine be used as a spambot. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
On Aug 29, 7:18 pm, casebash walkr...@gmail.com wrote: So much of it could be removed even by simple keyword filtering. A more interesting question is what morons are responding to this spam and enticing the spammers to proliferate their garbage? Do people actually see a spam like Phallus enlargement pills and say to themself Alright!, just what i been looking for!. I guess i just can't understand foolishness... Yes i agree, far to much spam is getting through. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Why does this group have so much spam?
casebash walkr...@gmail.com wrote in message news:7294bf8b-9819-4b6d-92b2-afc1c8042...@x6g2000prc.googlegroups.com... So much of it could be removed even by simple keyword filtering. Assuming this is a serious question: 1. comp.lang.python has relatively little spam, compared to others. 2. The spam posters aren't looking for responses within the individual NGs, they're just hoping you'll click through to the link within the post. It's a version of fire and forget 3. Simple keyword filtering /by whom/? There is no central NG governing authority. The best response is to ignore[1] the spam posts; they'll eventually expire and disappear from your newsreader. [1] Although if they're egregiously stupid, you may find yourself mocking the OP. Realize that as witty and urbane as your response may be, the OP ain't listening. :-) -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
