Does reporting spamvertising to hosts make a difference?

August 29th, 2007 • email, spam

I just read the following article about reporting spammers to their web hosts in order to deter their activities and how it’s more effective than anything else (via TechDirt). Since this is something I do every day, I have to strongly disagree with these people. Reporting spamvertising does stop it from occurring…from that particular web host, it doesn’t stop it in general. We gets tons of reports everyday about spamvertised sites and we take them down. I follow up on these sometimes and notice that the spammers just take their sites elsewhere and continue on, the cycle continues and nothing has changed. This is how these people make money and you’re not going to stop them from spamvertising (advertising a site solely through spam tactics) ever. While reporting is a good tactic, it’s not at all effective.

Our abuse email address at work receives spam, just like any other address, and many times it’s the same one over and over again from different addresses. Every few weeks, the URLs in the emails change but the email is still the same and their aim is the same. If people truly think that reporting spamvertising is really going to stop it, they need to stop reporting it altogether and find something more worthwhile to do such as develop filters that are capable enough of recognizing and filtering these emails out before they even reach a user. No matter what moves we make on the administrative side, spammers are always three steps ahead and their tools are so automated that there is very little they really have to do in order to continue making money.

Telstra to block Gmail, starts idiot campaign

April 15th, 2007 • computing, email, idiocy, spam

According to The Inquirer, Telstra are starting to block all email from Gmail because of spam originating from the network. On the upside, having dealt with a ton of Telstra customers at my current job, I hear Telstra were a bunch of dolts before this. Having dealt with their customer service, I can confirm it. But that’s a tangent.

Telstra are set to block the world 3rd largest email provider because they’re too ignorant to implement proper spam filters on their network infrastructure. Gmail sending out spam is nothing new and before them, Yahoo! and Hotmail have been doing it for years with Hotmail being one of the worst free email solutions I’ve ever had the displeasure of using. Welcome to the 21st century, Telstra. Every free email service known to man can have spam sent to and from it without any intervention from the provider. With spam techniques changing almost daily, this will never stop until there’s something to supplant and replace our current — and pathetic — mail infrastructure as a whole. I receive spam from Gmail on my own Gmail accounts but this doesn’t make me implement filters to stop it, I understand that it happens and I don’t see why Telstra should be any different. All big email providers end up on blacklists from time to time and that’s the nature of email so why doesn’t Telstra implement the various RBLs in place that are widely used by everyone else is certainly beyond my feeble understanding.

But it seems Telstra are in the forefront of spam technology along with Verizon: block entire services. It’s my assumption that this is the wave of the future and will stop all spam immediately. This will ultimately stop all that direct spam, backscatter spam, sender domain/envelope spoofed spam and all that Cialis spam that we all love. Actions like this will require no need for innovation in spam blocking techniques or appliances because soon enough, Telstra customers will only be able to receive emails from Telstra/Bigpond customers so they’ll know it’s all legit.

I applaud you, Telstra, for your mighty foresight and innovation in keeping your network “usable” for your customers. You should get awards.