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Spam

USA, UK, Australia Sign Anti-Spam Memorandum 92

Posted by CmdrTaco from the but-what-does-it-mean-man dept.
securitas writes "Computerworld's Todd R. Weiss reports that the USA, Britain and Australia have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for six agencies to share resources to fight spam. The MoU lets the government agencies 'share information and work together to detect, investigate and track spammers' as well as 'exchange evidence and coordinate enforcement efforts.' The agencies involved include the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), its counterparts in the UK and Australia, and several other consumer protection agencies. You can get a full list of participating government bodies from the FTC press release, 'Consumer Protection Cops Join Forces to Fight Illegal Spam'. You can also get the spam MoU full text in PDF format from the FTC. More at The Register, vnunet, The Age/Sydney Morning Herald and InfoWorld."
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USA, UK, Australia Sign Anti-Spam Memorandum More

USA, UK, Australia Sign Anti-Spam Memorandum

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  • Cool (Score:2, Funny)

    by MikeDX ( 560598 )
    Who wants to be the first on their mailing list?

  • This is great news (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    But did they have to email it to everyone?

  • Potential for misuse? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bhmit1 ( 2270 ) on Monday July 05, 2004 @10:58AM (#9613024) Homepage
    share information and work together to detect, investigate and track spammers

    So is this just forming some back channels to track anyone, or are their limits to ensure that only spammers are tracked. And if there are limits, how do they define a spammer?
    • I guess they'll be able to call on that other great UKUSA back channel [google.com] suite known as Eschelon.
    • Travel to Nigeria once in a while and you may find yourself being arrested at the terminal as a Terrorist Spammer. Wouldn't surprise me in the least the way Bush and cronies are going.
    • Surely such back channels already exist. They'd just say you were a 'person of interest' on something vaguely terrorism related if they were interested in bending rules.

      This doesn't indicate any new type of collaboration and isn't something they'd need to do to allow them to "track anyone".

      They could do that already. This just means they are targetting spammers.
      • They could do that already. This just means they are targetting spammers.

        By that logic, they could have targeted spammers already, too. The fear here isn't so much that they can't do this already, but that they have one more tool to legitimize investigating someone that may not have done anything. Now you have to prove to a judge that not only are you not an enemy combatant, terrorist, cult member, nor gun owner without your nra card, but you also have never sent a spam. What's that, you forwarded a jo
        • By that logic, they could have targeted spammers already, too.
          Of course they could, inter-agency and inter-country cooperation already happens.

          All this announcement establishes is a specific framework for them to do it through in the case of spam.
    • arn't slashdot posters all spammers?
      • No.

        Countless messages posted to web-based message boards, no matter how trivial, off-topic or obtuse IS NOT SPAM

        Spam is UNSOLICITED COMMERCIAL BULK EMAIL

        There is a disturbing trend among unknowledgable internet users these days to re-define spam as anyone or anything that appears off-topic or designed to simply waste time. You can find endless examples of this on most web boards. "Stop spamming this thread," is a common response to trolls or a string of off-topic messages. Such messages do waste y
        • Nonsense. The hundreds of viagra, mortgage, and porn messages posted to usenet and message boards most certainly are spam, even if they're not e-mail (Usenet spam is older than e-mail spam, in fact.) Noncommercial messages can be spam also. You might be able to defend "bulk" as part of the definition, but even if the mailer targetted only me with his penis enlargement ads, I'd still classify it as spam and I think most others would as well.
          • No no no no no. You misunderstand me. Or maybe I explained it badly. I'm not talking about advertisements. Most onlne adverts that are un-asked for I think are spammish. I was talking about web-based message boards. Not usenet newsgroups. A lot of times you will see messages that are part of a flame war, someone's attempt to increase their message count, or something else not totally on-topic for the board.

            What you see is people start calling those messages spam. First and foremost the messages are
    • There is a right time and place for your tinfoil hat, this ain't it. You should already realise by now that the other agreements (who needs privacy - not citizens - only the government) are already in place and have been for quite some time ;-). Don't forget polititions and their families get spam too.

  • Absent from the list (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Chatmag ( 646500 ) <editor@chatmag.com> on Monday July 05, 2004 @11:00AM (#9613037) Homepage Journal
    China, Korea, and Brazil are absent from the list. It just figures the countries sending the most spam are not onboard.
    • China, Korea, and Brazil are absent from the list. It just figures the countries sending the most spam are not onboard.

      I was just about to post the same comment, only to find that a relative had already done so. Go figure.

    • Re:Absent from the list (Score:3, Informative)

      by Ced_Ex ( 789138 )
      Are you just guessing? Or pulling figures out of your ass? The US is sending like 56.7% [com.com] of all SPAM.

      Just as a note, China sends 6.2%, South Korea 5.8% and Brasil is even less.

      • What I meant to add was that you need a figure to spear head the movement. Get the largest SPAM sending country to take action, and others will follow.

        • Re:Absent from the list (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Chatmag ( 646500 ) <editor@chatmag.com> on Monday July 05, 2004 @11:27AM (#9613201) Homepage Journal
          I"m going by message headers that I recieve in emails, and that most URL's in spam point to servers in those countries. Fighting spam also means taking down the web sites that they point to.

          Granted, a large number of professional spammers are in the USA. What I have not seen covered very much is the new law enacted July 1st here in Florida [tallahassee.com] that makes sending spam a Class C Felony. Everyone complains about Florida being spammers paradise, and now that Florida is on the track to cleaning up spammers, no one notices.
      • Just because somewhere is really really bad at sorting out itself [cooperativeresearch.org] doesn't mean it can't start waving its sword around at others. [google.com]
      • Whether they are the origin or not is irrelevant. Their irresponsible administrative practices hurts the Internet community at large. They are bad neighbors in a diverse neighborhood and they should get onboard and clean up their act.

      • Re:Absent from the list (Score:3, Insightful)

        by bhmit1 ( 2270 )
        Are you just guessing? Or pulling figures out of your ass? The US is sending like 56.7% of all SPAM.

        To pull a figure out of my own ass, I'd guess that 56.7% of all insecure machines that can be hijacked and used to relay spam are located in the US. That doesn't mean that the person doing the hijacking is in the US, which is why you need agreements with China, Korea, Brasil, Russia, etc.
    • What about Nigeria?
      • I didn't forget the Nigerians, but is it considered spam or a scam. The scam doesn't send out millions of emails, they instead target certain individuals, so I created a DIY Nigerian Scam Template [chatmag.com] just to see how long it takes for one to get back to me. Nothing since I posted it last year, but it's gotten a few laughs.

    • Re:Absent from the list (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      France, Russia, and Germany have so far declined to take part, but were sternly admonished by the Bush administration: "You're either with us, or you're with the spammers."
    • I am using SA on my mail server and OSX Mail Junk filter on the client side which cuts the crap rate down to about 1000:>10 and of those 10 that I do see China, Korea, and Brazil make up about 8 to 9.

      Brazil has come into the lead lately and the sites advertised in those spams always seem to lead back to China. You would think that with the harsh censorship in China it would be hard to host a porn site there. :)

      "Is any law that does not include public beheadings enough to stop spammers? "
  • Governments will collect information about spammers to make their efforts more effective? Sure, fight fire with fire. I like it.

  • Hopefully... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    ... one of the organisations willing to share resources to combat spam would be the SAS.

  • China, Russia (Score:4, Interesting)

    by nycsubway ( 79012 ) on Monday July 05, 2004 @11:04AM (#9613062) Homepage
    Now if they can just get China, Russia, and the other major spam producing countries to sign on, that would be useful. Also if they could actually track down spammers effectively and actually stop spam, then that would also be something.

    • producing or relaying?

      they should just need the producing sellers - which would be easy enough to get to through following the money trail.
    • you must have missed the part were once the information on the spammers is gathered, spam will be decalred a weapon of mass destruction, and we will be going to war with China and Russia.

  • Coincidence (Score:4, Interesting)

    by BenBenBen ( 249969 ) on Monday July 05, 2004 @11:04AM (#9613066)
    Throw in Canada and New Zealand, you're looking at the founders of UKUSA and Echelon.

    Maybe Fort Meade is renting out CPU cycles to Mr Richter.
    • I wonder why Canada and NZ were not involved? And for that matter, any other country with broadly compatible legal systems.

      However, it does seem to explicitly allow each country to try to get others on board, so there may be some hope.

      But, the process of requesting one another to deal with spam is too slow and inefficient, and the requesting party will pay the costs.... I really can't imagine the UK coming up with the cash to fund legal actions in the US. Of course it shows that the respective politicians h

      • I wonder why Canada and NZ were not involved?

        Two spring to mind...
        1. They just plain were not as organised. Here in NZ submissions on legislating spam just closed on June 30. So we are a wee way behind on enabling legislation. That could be one factor, and I'm not sure how Canada is currently placed eh.

        2. Canada and NZ were both more hesitant and vocal against getting involved in Irag. This may be one of the little political machinations that went down faster between the three states that are more buddy
    • You're probably not that far off from reality.

      A couple points to consider: as the NSA likely scans email for intelligence, spam has likely lowered the signal-to-noise ratio for them. Working to reduce spam improves the intelligence value of searching emails. So while it's doubtful there's any direct NSA involvement in this, the previous treaty arrangements developed for NSA/Echelon etc no doubt are being used -- and the action would likely have at least moral support from intelligence agencies.

      The other p
  • So, who's going to win this steel cage match, the vast majority of slashdotters who'd gladly pay to see spammers drawn and quartered in the public square, or the smaller but feistier tinfoil hat crowd?

  • Rules! (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I just signed a Increase My IQ While I Slack Off Memorandum.

    Tomorrow I'll sign the Give Me Your Money Memorandum.

    I'm expecting good things from this! After all, I signed the Memoranda!

  • I just got back from holiday... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by danormsby ( 529805 ) on Monday July 05, 2004 @11:15AM (#9613127) Homepage
    I just got back from a week long holiday to find 226 e-mails of which 170 were spam. I used to get far less but now my out-of-office (as enforced by company policy) replies automatically to spam stating I'm away thus reenforcing the fact that my e-mail address is a real and active one therefore even more spam gets directed at it. :-(

    • Re:I just got back from holiday... (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Technical solutions to spam do exist, and they're pretty easy to implement. For instance, your email could simply ask you to verify if you want mail from a new address or not. If outlook,hotmail,gmail and a few other major email programs did this then spam would be useless pretty fast.

      So whats the problem?

      The problem is that these companies WANT you to recieve unsolicited email, like ads and crap. That's how they make their money. Email filtering programs are impossible because they try to distinguish

    • Re:I just got back from holiday... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by carndearg ( 696084 ) on Monday July 05, 2004 @11:36AM (#9613259) Homepage Journal
      The vast majority of spam I receive has random from and reply-to addresses. Thus an autoreply just bounces harmlessly off into the ether, or if it's really unlucky, into the catchall of whichever hapless geek owns the random address the spamers mailing software picked.

      So dont worry too much about your company policy signing you up for more spam, if your spam is like mine all they are doing is generating more internet background noise.

      In fact, count yourself lucky that you have such a high useful mail to spam ratio, I wish I had that little spam.

  • One small step... But only a small step.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by eamacnaghten ( 695001 ) on Monday July 05, 2004 @11:20AM (#9613158) Homepage Journal
    I welcome this statement of co-operation, but it is only a very small step in the right direction, and it will do little good and have hardly any effect.

    Spammers will always find a way to spam so long as there is money in it. If that money is denied them they will stop. "CAN-SPAM" acts need to be changed to "CANT-SPAM" - and internationally at that - and spammers need to be hit where it counts - in their bank balance.

    However - I do not see the above happening. All countries need to participate and co-operate, not just the ones involved in the press release, do you really see THAT happening? Also legislation NEEDS to be passed that the US have already shown they cannot - and most other countries will not dare to try - not good for the future there.

    I suppose we will have to get used to the usefulness of Email becoming more and more diluted, of the endless race between anti-spam software and spammers getting round it and so on. I think we will still have the internet and inboxes getting clogged up with that rubbish for some time yet - if not from now on in.

  • I was pretty sure it was also illegal to mug people in most countries but I still see hundreds if not thousands of people getting away with it and these people can't change how they look (AKA change where the e-mail spawned from).

    Looks like another useless law which people will laugh at and shrug
    • Looks like another useless law which people will laugh at and shrug

      It's not useless. It costs money. If it doesn't do what it say it does then, since it still costs money, you have to look at what it does do.

      In this case I think it opens up a few more cushy overpaid upper management positions with arbitrary accountability for politicians to shoe their progeny into.
  • I've seen many articles about Carnivore, Echelon, etc. and how everyting is monitored.

    Just how do they filter out spam?
  • I don't get it.

    All this bruhaha, yet still all they would have to do is using their existing laws and take down Ralsky, Richter and the rest of the well known spammers whose track record of criminal past and present has been thoroughly documented over several years now on Spamhaus [spamhaus.org] and other sites.

    Ralsky, Richter and the other gang of professional spammers know what they do, most of them openly admit what they do and many of them have boasted about it on several occasions in newspaper and TV reports about
  • The answer to Spam in not technical. The answer to Spam is socio-political.

    Its making the sending of span for commercial purposes, as if there was any other reason, expensive by imposing large fines.

    Spammning will always be possible, but not as an agent of profit, if you fine the people who its sent FOR a whopping great deal of cash.

    The delivery mechanisms, the spammers, are irelevant. Charge the people who would benefit. The phony pleasure enhancer pill pushers and their ilk.
    • Some executives at music companies in London were recently threatened with ASBO, which if breached can lead to 5 years jail, for sponsoring "fly-posting" (putting posters for music events/albums illegally).
      • It's kind of scary that ASBOs can seemingly be used against pretty much arbitrary behaviour that is deemed "antisocial"...

        Of course, it's also very useful when used in the right hands. ;)

        I'm not really sure what to think about this.

  • Save trees instead of bandwidth! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Lank ( 19922 ) on Monday July 05, 2004 @12:28PM (#9613684)
    Seriously, I hear anti-spam sentiments every day on here. I hate spam myself, but it's semi-tolerable and it only takes 1-2 minutes a day to sort it out from the real e-mail I get. But when I get ~5 piece of printed real mail, well, doesn't anyone seem to mind that? So over the course of a year, I would get approximately 1500 piece of physical junk mail, and that must kill a bunch of trees I would think. I would actually prefer spam to printed junk. I am a quasi-environmentalist, though...
    • But when I get ~5 piece of printed real mail, well, doesn't anyone seem to mind that?

      That's because we know that the sender paid the USPS to deliver that mail. Sure, they get bulk mail rates, but at least there are expenses involved. Spam has a much lower cost to the sender, and if the sender breaks the rules (hijacks other machines or uses an open-relay) the sender doesn't even have to pay for the bandwidth used to send the spam. I don't know of any USPS offices that would allow someone to drop off

    • That assumes the trade-off is that the people responsible for most spam would be sending mail if they were unable to spam. That is simply completely false. If some magical perfect technological fix for spam were implemented tomorrow, your level of junk snail mail would not change at all.

  • Shared resources? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by stripyd ( 614714 )
    Given the UK government has failed to allocate resources to tackle spam using existing legislation and information they already have as noted here [slashdot.org], I won't get my hopes up that this is anything more than a publicity exercise for the "somthing must be done" department.
  • ...and ask fellow SlashDotter(s) to complain [slashdot.org] about the governments' misallocating resources fighting spam instead of concentrating on improving economy, curing cancer, and "getting us out of a ficticious war".

  • Wow! New gov't agencies, more gov't employees, tax (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Am I the only one that sees them doing what they always do, find a problem and use that to create more and bigger government?
    And since when does the United States Government have any right to spy on "citizens" within the borders? And they have no right to give that info out to other countries.
    Are all you people just plain stupid when you see this stuff? Stop it now!
    Damn, people get a clue.
    And stop being a US Government citizen with a social serial number stamped on your forhead making you owned by the gover
  • Well, I reached some sort of a milestone. Looking at the sizes of my mail logs, counting bytes, not number of messages - I see that in June, my mail was 95% spam, 3.53% MS Windows viruses and only 1.47% clean mail - sigh...
  • OK, so they're all in agreement. When do we start dropping bombs on the spammers?

    Talk, talk, talk...that's all these assholes ever do.

  • Fighting SPAM (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Isn't it odd that we must shut down ISP's utilize millions of man-hours finding spammers? Is anyone following the money? Seems to me that should be much easier to find out who is collecting and shutting down that end rather than some (talented?) intermediary schmuck on a public terminal sening out E-mails

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