is fighting spam a lost cause?

Friday 30 July, 2004 at 6:56PM (Nereus) :: permalink :: comments (6)

An interesting albeit extremely pessimistic view from the pages of Dive Into Mark discusses this newest avenue of unwanted solicitation; weblog comment spam. It is the "give up now because you haven't got a hope anyway" attitude that Mark conveys that will allow spammers to win, and I think his attitude is defeatist to say the least.

Mark gives numerous reasons for his attitude, along with somewhat threatening insinuations that resistance is futile and that 'they' will destroy you if you try. Well hell, that's a reason in itself to fight against it in my book! In another portion of his discussion, Mark states that even if we could prosecute these spammers, they will just move to countries where the local laws have nothing in place to allow them to prosecute spammers. There's an important thing to think about here though: to get their spam out there, these prats have to utilize multiple servers all around the globe, as do we all when surfing the internet, and this is where existing laws may help. There was a case a while ago in (I think) California where a guy was prosecuted for spam. He did not live in that state, and whatever state he did live in had no anti-spam laws at the time, but because prosecuters could prove that his spam was routed through a server in California (among many other places) they were able to bring a case up against him under California State Law. It is this sort of use of the law that will assist in the demise of the professional spammer in the future, and a combined global effort by governments to recognise this invasion and bring in laws to combat it accordingly will hopefully become a reality one day.

Why should they care? Because the communications benefits of the internet (and I'm not just talking weblogs here, I mean email, data transmission, streaming media etc) are under threat. How long will it be before some clued up spammer figures a way to inject spam into data transmissions? How much use will this wonderful communication tool called the internet be when it's covered in adverts for viagra and porn sites? How would you like your phone calls interrupted every few minutes by an advert for penis enlargement? Don't laugh too hard, because unless something is done, that is exactly where we are headed. It's either that or the internet will devolve into small and highly restricted individual intranets and you'll only have access to what your ISP hosts on its own servers.

This weblog is owned and paid for privately. I specify very clearly right next to the comment submission box that spam is not welcome or tolerated on this site. If some tosser came up and started slapping advertising posters all over my house or car, they'd be arrested, no question. As far as I'm concerned, the same should apply with spammers posting their crap on privately owned websites. At the very least, I should be legally allowed to bill them for advertising fees, or expect reciprocal and equal advertising on their site in return.

There are numerous other statements made on that entry in 'Dive Into Mark' that I disagree with, and some of his opinions on the current efforts to protect against spam are not well researched and show only minimal knowledge of utilities such as MT-Blacklist, although I notice Jay Allen (author of MT-Blacklist) has since emailed Mark, and as a result Mark has made a half-hearted retraction (of sorts) on some unspecified issues that he wrote initially.

My message to Mark; mate, you aren't helping the problem. As you said, it will probably get worse, but at least we're doing something about it rather than preaching doom and despair and just giving up. Your site has a pretty large following so you're in a position to help bring awareness to the internet community in a positive way. Do it. Please.

comments (6)

John Hoke
July 30, 2004 9:51 PM [link]

Wow!

Well said, but I have one issue with the above...

"There was a case a while ago in (I think) California where a guy was prosecuted for spam. He did not live in that state, and whatever state he did live in had no anti-spam laws at the time, but because prosecuters could prove that his spam was routed through a server in California (among many other places) they were able to bring a case up against him under California State Law."

This idea starts us down a slippery slope. My Website may be cached on a cache server ... in a state/country that has strict laws on what can be said (obscenity, anti-state discussions), sold (pornography, Vibrators in Alabama), seen, thought or etc. Should the marshals be able to arrest me for knowingly putting up something that I *know* can be accessed from another state?

There were prosecutions like this before, mainly against porn sites, where a state (utah i think) went after and successfully prosecuted an owner of a porn site because people in the state in question could access the illegal porn in their homes -- where such porn is illegal.

I think that is crazy.

No. We need a real anti-spam law, with real teeth ... forget CAN-SPAM it sucks, worthless and full of loopholes

We need a single law, similar to Fax Machines are treated now, and then where the spam orignates (within the US) is immaterial :)

I am dead tired, so I hope the above makes sense, if not feel free to send it to /dev/null :-)

-j-

Nereus
July 30, 2004 11:29 PM [link]

Yeah it makes sense, and good point. You just know the authorities would abuse that kind of power just like they've done with the Patriot Act, so there'd need to be strict guidelines as to what constitutes spam, and that such a law could only be invoked to prosecute spammers, not to be used as an excuse to slam anyone they want for whatever reason (such as that Utah one you described).

Bizarre that one in Utah though, I mean for the owner of that site, there is no way he/she could possibly control what someone in another state does on the internet, and the fact that they were able to successfully prosecute is scary. I thought that would be covered by some form of warning splash screen where the person has to click 'yes' to agree they are allowed to view the site before they can enter.. perhaps that guy didn't have any warning page? hmm.

Why can't people just play responsibly. *sigh*

Nereus
July 30, 2004 11:37 PM [link]

I better point out that the entry on 'Dive Into Mark' was posted near the end of 2003, just so ya know. Not that it makes much difference, spam is still spam.

Phil Ringnalda
August 2, 2004 1:08 AM [link]

Actually, Mark was right on the money, except for one thing he forgot.

Prosecution? Good luck: I know only one comment spammer well enough to have isolated all (well, much of, anyway) his work. He's Russian. I'd like to hear a recording of someone trying to explain to a prosecutor that they want a Russian citizen extradited and prosecuted for posting on their "internet guestbook thingy."

But what Mark forgot was that unlike previous sorts of spam, every single bit of this is routed through a single point: right down Googlebot's craw. Google knows all, sees all comment spam, and the single solution is for them to make the risk of getting on their blacklist so completely outweight the possible reward from comment spamming that nobody in their right mind will be willing to try it. Everything else is just marking time, trying to survive in the meantime.

Nereus
August 2, 2004 1:46 AM [link]

I don't think he was right on the money at all about fighting it being an exercise in futility. There's only a small number of big-time spammers out there in relation to the amount of bloggers, so with persistance, the sheer volume of bloggers out there could turn this around and make spamming an exercise in futility instead (if the bulk of the blogging community put their minds to it).

Yeah prosecution is highly unlikely in most cases unfortunately, but hitting them in their wallets would be most effective if it could be done.

I'd like to hear a recording of someone trying to explain to a prosecutor that they want a Russian citizen extradited and prosecuted for posting on their "internet guestbook thingy."

heh yup, that would be amusing :)

Now a Google blacklisting, that would be great. The only (or at least by far the primary) reason for comment spam is to increase search engine listing placement. If Google put their foot down in a big way, you're quite right, comment spam would most likely be drastically reduced if not eradicated. I hope it's only a matter of time until big search sites like Google take it more seriously and act, because it's getting to the point where it will become a detriment to their effectiveness as a search provider when their search results are skewed by spam rather than giving results based on 'real' relevance or popularity. Actually it's already near that point in some cases, depending on how generalised your search parameters are. Very good point Phil.

p.s. thanks for your frequent help on the MT forums :)

Ben
April 5, 2005 6:27 AM [link]

Idiot spammers exposed to a bunch of ANGRY RedNecks.

Hello

Re: "Mark states that even if we could prosecute these spammers, they will just move to countries where the local laws have nothing in place to allow them to prosecute
spammers."

I say, keep notifying the countries where they run to and embarrass that country to the point that they will eventually raid the Spamming idiots and make a public example of them.

After all, the type of "Public example" justice that is exacted upon people in some countries includes shooting them in the street, bulldozing or burning their homes to the ground and turning it into a dung heap.

(Unless of course the country is France, then the Spammer would be given a private cell and a PC connected to the Internet.;-)

Can you say poetic justice, let them run but they will never be able to hide from the eventuality of local rage LOL.

I can just imagine what will happen when a bunch of RedNecks from the North Florida - South Georgia area, who have been Spammed, discover that a neighbor is the originator of Spam...Oh my gosh! It wouldn't be pretty, I assure you.

Note: Every culture has it's own version of RedNecks, choice of drink, mode of travel and some particular idiosyncrasies may vary but when you get right down to the grits, they're still a RedNeck.

Seriously speaking,

Ben
I am a resident of Florida (Born and raised in North Florida) who knows that hell hath no fury like that of a mob consisting Angry RedNeck Rebels. Especially if someone has added a keg of beer and aimed them at some poor fool who had the lack of good since to do something unscrupulous to one of them and then let it be "Found-out".;-)

Their motto is, "If it P***es You Off! Kill it! Then bury it in a swamp or feed it to your dogs if you live in the swamp."

The scientific formulae for such a situation involving Spammers "S", exposed to RedNecks "RN", the end Reactance "X", when stated in mathematical terms is:
Person know as Idiot "PI" in addition to Spamming "S" is exposed to Angry RedNecks "ARN" @ sea-level "1ATM" or 14.7psi, in the presents of 24 Beer (24*"B") = X. Or {XPIS@14.7 psi~24Beer+RN>=10 ambient degrees of rage being measured in °C @ 80° → * C° PI = Warm Kibble} and can be expressed as: [(PIS@14.7psi'(RN>=10+24*B))@1ATM@80°]'S=OH-S**T!!!

You�re welcome! ;-)