I promised earlier today that I would write a blog about spam and what is being done to stop it. If you have an email account and who doesn’t then you probably are pretty sick of getting spam. First we had junk mail to try to stop it and the spammers just got trickier and trickier. The more we struggled the harder they worked against us. It was sort of like “Chinese” hand cuffs.. if you pull hard then they pull harder against you.
Well I have written a few stories showing how serious of a problem is. There are a few sites reporting on this issue. One article showed just how much spam it takes to actually make some money. Now you can see why they literally have to send so many spam emails. It is literally a Billion dollar industry fighting it and doing it on both sides!
Well yet another ISP was taken offline and this time it seems to have done some good. Personally I just wish everyone used a good anti virus program to prevent this from happening in the first place. Thats all it would take to put a huge dent in this whole thing.
By Joel Hruska | Published: October 06, 2008 – 09:20PM CT
When security researchers and network professionals announced that they had successfully forced the ISP Atrivo (aka Intercage) offline last month, the celebration seemed short-lived. Atrivo’s web site was back online under UnitedLayer within only a few days, and the consensus from some corners (including certain readers) was that the entire drive to take Atrivo offline was nothing more than an exercise in futility. Whack off the head of a hydra, after all, and it grows back two (unless you’ve got a torch handy). In this case, the ire of the security industry burned bright enough to serve that purpose; UnitedLayer terminated the company on September 25. As of this writing, Atrivo remains offline.
Did it matter? MessageLabs has evidence (PDF) that it did, though possibly only in the short term. When Atrivo fell offline on September 21, botnet activity across the ‘Net dropped significantly. They begin to recover immediately, suggesting that the benefits are short-lived indeed, but dropped again (though not nearly as much) when Atrivo was finally kicked offline for good.
I had no idea that the amount of traffic from spam was so huge. I also had no idea that there was such a large amount filtered before it even hits your inbox! That is just crazy that 90% is filtered before it hits and yet so much still comes through. Imagine the cost your isp pays by having to have so much traffic sent over their networks. Too bad that I firmly believe even if there was no spam the cost to the end user would still remain the same. I don’t see corporations ending their monopolies any time soon, nor do I see them lowering the cost to us if they did reduce spam. Still it is nice to see someone is doing something about all this!
By Joel Hruska | Published: October 14, 2008 – 05:35PM CT
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced Tuesday that it has won a major injunction against the massive international spam operation, HerbalKing. A US District Court has issued an order prohibiting the defendants (including brothers Lance and Shane Atkinson, Mike Van Essent, Roland Smits, and Jody Smith) from spamming or making false product claims. All of the various defendants’ assets have been frozen, and authorities in New Zealand (where some of the above apparently reside) have been notified and are working with the FTC. The organization claims to have received some 3 million complaints regarding spam mail connected to the HerbalKing operation, and believes the group may have ultimately been responsible for several billion spam e-mails.
The contents of those emails are so familiar it’s depressing. Herbal supplements, virility enhancers, weight-loss pills, and prescription drugs all top the charts, although HerbalKing may be in particular trouble for one product in particular. The spam outfit advertised VPXL as 100 percent herbal, safe medication that would “naturally” increase the size of one’s penis. Not only did the medication fail to do so, it contains sildenafil—the active ingredient in Viagra. That knocks out the 100 percent herbal bit, and since sildenafil can cause significant drops in blood pressure when combined with drugs containing nitrate, the medication doesn’t exactly qualify as “safe,” either.
I suggest reading the rest of the article. It is a good read. Not only is spam annoying it is severely damaging to the world economy. In order for these people to make money off the spam the cost is creating a terrific amount of worldwide traffic and effectively slowing down the entire internet. It is scary stuff.
On top of that, what they are spamming here is also not good. These kinds of herbal remedies are not cool. There is a reason the FDA doesn’t certify this kind of stuff; it doesn’t work! Also many times these drugs are poorly labeled. They have taken banned substances and simply replaced a few ingredients. I don’t know a solution to this problem because the FDA isn’t going to ban herbal remedies and at the same time companies are abusing this and marketing things they know are harmful to people. There is no scientific evidence for much of the remedies and yet they are still marketed heavily. There needs to be controlled experiments done in a laboratory. If they do not meet a certain set of criteria they should not be allowed to market the products. Many of these are dangerous and should not be consumed.
As more and more spammers are arrested, prosecuted and sued under state and federal anti-spam statutes, there’s one thing you can count on: Someone, somewhere, will invariably call the targeted spammer a “spam king.”
It seems the bulk e-mail industry has more kings than a pinochle deck. But who is really the king of kings? The following 10 spammers are all heavyweight contenders for the crown.
Half of them have done time or are still guests of the federal government. Two are dead. Most of the rest have been fined millions by the FTC and/or private companies for their misdeeds.
Which one truly deserves the title of king? Read on to find out.
On a side note… MSNBC has earned its own title from me. The most annoying pop up ridden, bug infested website ever. I have never seen a website so devoted to making money off their readers! Are you listening MSNBC? It really is a pathetic attempt. You cant even read their articles because you are assaulted with dozens of popups when you enter the site and then further assaulted with popups that hover over where you are trying to read. This is really pathetic. Cant you just make a website and let people read what you have written? You already have the top, bottom and both sides littered with your garbage advertising, must I also click on your stupid ads just to read an article?
–ok rant over–
What I was trying to say is that anyone who has been on the internet in the last 10 years or uses email is probably well aware of the infinitesimal amount of spam. It really is getting annoying. I am going to be writing a few more articles today about spam specifically. You might not even be aware of the extent of the problem!
