Bot Nets Behind Recent Spam Surge 389
gsslay writes "Everyone must have noticed a surge in spam recently, particularly for stock pump 'n' dump scams. The Register reports that anti-spam companies have seen a 30% increase in the last two months and, more worryingly, more of this spam is getting through to mailboxes due to the spammers' change in tactics. Rather than use unsecured mail relays spammers are using bot nets, making spam harder to identify and eliminate. Bounced spam is also on the up, and some experts reckon it's past time to start worrying. "
Re:Smarter Spammers (Score:4, Insightful)
despite all their shortcomings, somewhere, someone is obviously making money, so they continue.
Re:Email is a broken protocol (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Smarter Spammers (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe spammers don't need to be technological geniuses, and maybe some of them can't spell, but they aren't dumb. In the classic manner of all human history, they are the slightly smarter making money out of the not so smart. The real morons here are the ones who, incredibly, actually take financial advice from spam.
Unfortunately the morons will always be with us, and perhaps this increase in spam is a sign that more internet users are getting the message on spam and binning it. The spam's response rate goes down, and so the spammer cranks ups the volume in order to compensate. As long as we have one moron in a hundred thousand, spam can still turn a profit. Remember, the cost of spam isn't born by the spammer. They're getting something pretty much for nothing, and no-one's making any real effort to stop them.
This will never, ever end while conducted as a techie game of hide the email.
Re:Smarter Spammers (Score:1, Insightful)
> Two thoughts: Classic prisoner's dilemma, and selfishness. (ie, "Who cares if I broke the internet? I made this fat stack o' cash!")
You're confusing the Prisoner's Dilemma [wikipedia.org] (game theory where two individuals must separately decide to cooperate or compete to obtain optimal outcome) with the Tragedy of the Commons [wikipedia.org] (individual's incentive to overuse common benefit so as to maximize his profit, at the expense of ruining the common benefit for others).
Re:Bayesian Has Failed (Score:3, Insightful)
There are a lot of very innovative anti-spam techniques out there. Teergrubing, greylisting, blacklists, baysian filters, now we get OCR and what-have-you.
Problem is: Every filter is a tool for the spammer. Since the filters are readily available (and have to be), the spammer can just take them and tweak his spam until it passes.
I'm with parent. Let's make the problem obvious. Let the world drown in spam for a couple of days, a week or two. We can all live without mail for a while. But mum and dad and even congresscritter Joe Stupid will finally get it: We're having a real problem here.
Then tell them that we already know the criminals. Spamhaus and others have lists of them, often with physical address. We know who they are. Get the stupid fucks in congress to arrest the top 50 spammers and lock them away for 10 years.
No, that won't solve spam. There are still spammers in eastern europe and those we don't get will go into hiding. But it'll drive the risk and costs of spam up, maybe to the level of making it unprofitable.
But I'd go a step further: Round up each and every company that advertised through spam as well. Put them on trail and prove whether or not they knowingly sent spam. If they did, fine them a couple millions and throw their CEOs in the hole for a year or two.
That'll take care of the other end of the spammer business, the customers.
Finally, go through the spammer and spam-company records and find every stupid moron who ever bought from them by replying to spam. Yeah, I know, we won't get them all because you often can't seperate them from those who just went to the website through Google. But try to get a bundle of them and put them on trail for aiding the spammers. Make them pay the idiot tax and make it public.
That'd eliminate the final point, because it'll drive the amount of people who actually reply to spam down, making it even less profitable.
If all that doesn't work, I'm still in favour of the death penalty for the top spammers - not every little marketing dude who ignorantly thought a "newsletter" would be cool - we all make mistakes, but people spamming on the order of millions a day year in and out are the kind of human beings that deserve to get their breathing permission withdrawn.
Re:Email is a broken protocol (Score:2, Insightful)
I have been asking to make Visa, Mastercard, Amex et al financially responsible for their customers illegal actions. So, if the USA can pass a law making it illegal to take card payments for online gambling, even if the processing bank is outside of the USA, why not pass a law to enable people to get compensation from the card companies for the receipt of spam?
The t&c's would quickly state 'no spamming' anyone who continued to offend would quickly be cut off, therefore no income from the spam, therefore no spam. The law only needs to be passed in a descent sized economy and it will impact on the entire world as Visa and friends would not likely pull out of a multi-billion market.
We would all forward our spam onto a government agency who would have people compile it and as soon as enough was received to prove it was spam an instant fine of £10,000 (or more) to visa and friends, this is each not between them, then all related spam for the next 2 weeks is collect and filed with the original. Any more after this is concidered a new offense!
Think about it
This does not tackle all spam, but it does directly attack spammers who use credit cards to get their money.
I wonder how long before someone actually goes after the cause of spam - namely making money. How many spams are just to annoy us? there are some, but most want our money.