Email Servers Will Choke, Says Spamhaus

Rub3X writes, "The legal battle between antispam organization Spamhaus and e360 Insight is heating up. Spamhaus has a user base of around 650 million, and its lists block some fifty billion spam emails per day, according to the project's CEO Steve Linford. Spamhaus CIO Richard Cox says the immediate issue is that if the domain is suspended, the torrent of bulk mail hitting the world's mail servers would cause many of them to fail. More than 90% of of all email is now spam, Cox says, and he doubts that servers worldwide would be able to handle a ten-fold increase in traffic." Others estimate Spamhaus's blocking efficacy as closer to 75%; by this metric spam would increase four-fold, not ten-fold, if Spamhaus went unavailable. The article paraphrases CIO Cox as saying that the service will continue "even if there is a short-term degradation."

Trying to block spam is like...

[skoaldipper]

...tilling for weeds and replacing your entire front yard with rocks.

Re:Someone please tell me they have an alternative

[crazyvas]

Dude,
I am so ready to walk away from cars. I just need someone to point me to a workable replacement.
I am so ready to walk away from television. I just need someone to point me to a workable replacement.
I am so ready to walk away from radio. I just need someone to point me to a workable replacement.
I am so ready to walk away from life. I just need someone to point me to a workable replacement.
I am so ready to walk away from my legs. I just need someone to point me to a workable replacement.

Bring it ON!

[nihaopaul]

holding the pipes and tubes to the internet screaming with his war face "BRING IT ON!"

now thats a slashdot experiance

Re:Someone please tell me they have an alternative

[Solder Fumes]

It's because you have no friends.

Re:Someone please tell me they have an alternative

[RMH101]

Your company advocates a

(x) technical ( ) legislative (x) market-based ( ) vigilante

approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)

( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
(x) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
() The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
(x) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
(x) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business

Specifically, your plan fails to account for

( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
(x) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
(x) Asshats
(x) Jurisdictional problems
(x) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
(x) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
(x) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
(x) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
(x) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with Microsoft
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with Yahoo
(x) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
(x) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
(x) Outlook

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

(x) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
(x) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
(x) Sending email should be free
(x) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
(x) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough

Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

(x) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid company for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!

Re:Trying to block spam is like...

[ArsenneLupin]

no its more like fighting a virus with asprin. You can remove the symptoms but it takes more to remove the problem.

In the human body's case there are white blood cells and the like which actively remove problems.

Hmm, so what would be the equivalent of white blood cells? Baseball bats?

Re:Someone please tell me they have an alternative

[dangitman]

Unlikely. Common sense is rather uncommon.

Re:Someone please tell me they have an alternative

[rbarreira]

I am so ready to walk away from cars. I just need someone to point me to a workable replacement.

Here. [wikipedia.org]

I am so ready to walk away from television. I just need someone to point me to a workable replacement.

Here. [wikipedia.org]

I am so ready to walk away from radio. I just need someone to point me to a workable replacement.

Here. [wikipedia.org]

I am so ready to walk away from life. I just need someone to point me to a workable replacement.

Here. [wikipedia.org]

I am so ready to walk away from my legs. I just need someone to point me to a workable replacement.

You can't walk away from your legs. Not with the same legs, at least.

SPAM is a serious problem

[atarione]

please forward this slashdot story to 20 of your friends in order to fight spam.... actually just to be sure email it to them twice.

Re:Questioning the Math/Assumptions

[Anonymous Coward]

Interseting, here's some math that will benefit your employer:

• D = The working day
  
• W = Time spent working
  
• S = Time spent on slashdot
  

Your employer is interested in the time you spend working, hence:

D - S = W

Now you need only calculate the ratio of work to slashdot and drop the results with finance and HR.

Re:Someone please tell me they have an alternative

[slackarse]

You can't walk away from your legs. Not with the same legs, at least.

Here. [wikipedia.org]

Re:I say let the spam come

[williambbertram]

Of course they are spammers. If tiny gray guys in overcoats, fake moustaches, and dark sunglasses ask permission (in a squeaky voice) to shut down the mouse trap factory, what do you think is going on?

Re:I say let the spam come

[suv4x4]

Ummmm, they didn't go to court and they have not accepted anything, Spamhaus are demonstrating their view that the court does not have jurisdiction, Spamhaus seem to have a clue what they are talking about but the judge isn't listening since they refused to recognise the court by showing up. And if push really did come to shove then Spamhaus would probably just "reboot the company" in a different country.

I hope it's like you say, because in the media it came more like this:

Spammer: I'll sue you!

Spamhaus: Sue me!

Spammer: I sue you and I sued you! Your domain is goin' away!

Spamhaus: Oh no we give up, omg world prepare for e-mailmageddon! Fair well, fair well!

ICANN: We can't take your domain, Spamhaus.

Spamhaus: Oh what tragedy is before us, pitty us and you and... ICANN, you can't? Hmmm (damn it)

Spammer: I continue suing you and will win anyway!

Spamhaus: Oh no, world see how unfair the world is prepare for spamornado, spamunami, we're all doomed! Oh I pitty my sad fate! Oooh... Noo! Oh oh...

Random Observer: Dude stop making ass of yourself, you need neither the domain, neither you're the only solution for filtering spam out there. Take it like a man and maybe start respecting the court.

Spamhaus: Shut up observer, you're interrupting my dramatic routine.

The Judge's reaction .....

[Alien54]

I can imagine the judges reaction when he realises that he decision has just sabotaged his own personal email. and the reaction of his/her friends when they find out that he/she is to blame for all of the extra spam they are suddenly getting.

Quantum mechanics.

[Anonymous Coward]

When you have finite number of messages in the inbox, percentage of spam could only take some specific values and 99.9999% is not one among them.

Spam percentage of a 474 message inbox could only be 100%, 99.78903%, 99.57805%, 99.367089%, 99.156118% ....

Thought it would be funny, but it is not, but I am not going to waste all that typing calculation I did, so will hide behind anonymity ;-)

Re:I say let the spam come

[nizo]

Actually a gabble is the gavel the judge bangs to quiet the rabble.

Re:gabble???? Uh, gavel...

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell that to Julie Gabble from Geometry class. She's been banged so many times she walks funny.

Re:Exactly, mod parent up!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't mod up people who say "could of".

Re:I say let the spam come

[Anonymous Coward]

Judicious use of the delete button while reading through all employee emails.

Re:Trying to block spam is like...

[LoveGoblin]

Ok, so let's make being stupid illegal.

But what would happen to Slashdot?!

/oblig

Re:The Judge's reaction .....

[KarmaMB84]

His e-mail is probably filtered by some poor clerk.

Sure thing, 'Anonymous' Coward (wink, wink)

[Lactoso]

I don't know what's sadder - that the GP/Parent so blatantly fakes a reply to his own post (#16451281 [slashdot.org]) or that his ploy actually works and he gets modded up.

I did like the way the poster's poor grammar is consistent in both posts though...(read the following in 'HULK SMASH' voice)

GP - "Spamhaus could of done a better job in front of jury."
PARENT - "Damn, why no mod points right now."

MOD PARENT UP!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know why people don't mod up mod up posts like this one (#16452955) [slashdot.org] since it is not a ploy for being modded up.

I like the way the parent pokes fun at the GP and GGP because they are consistent in bad grammar.

GP - "Damn, why no mod points right now."
PARENT - "(read the following in 'HULK SMASH' voice)"

Jeen-yus!

Re:*twitch*

[mooingyak]

Maybe you should just try and ignore it.