Spam the Spammer. Will It Work?
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| by Allan Gunneson |
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Spam is everywhere. It’s the
“in-box lunch meat” nobody likes, wants or looks
forward too. Unfortunately, many folks enjoy “eating”
this product because if they didn’t, there wouldn’t be
any. Read on…
The federal government’s ill-conceived CAN-SPAM Act did
little more than make a few legislators feel better about
themselves. Did this legislation stop spam? No. Did it at
least slow down the flow of spam? Nope.
You can’t eliminate a problem by treating the symptoms.
If you want to eradicate a problem, you must make its
environment one that will not support it.
There’s a new plan recently hatched by some
well-intentioned folks at Blue Security that several of my
clients have asked about. On the surface, it sounds like a
good idea but, in my humble opinion, the model is fatally
flawed. Here’s the scoop…
1. You sign up for their "list" which is
basically a "do not spam me list" and that gives
them the authorization to act on your behalf.
2. You then have to send EACH spam message to them for
inclusion on their list.
3. They then send the spammer a "stop order"
(which, if they can even find the spammer, will be
ignored).
4. They then flood the spammer with basically a DDoS
(Distributed Denial of Service) attack hoping to bring
down the spammer's server.
This all sounds great until you think about it
rationally...
1. Spammers use "open relays" and hundreds of
addresses to prevent you from finding their originating
location.
2. The "stop order" they send is just their way
of fulfilling the letter of the law under the CAN-Spam
act.
3. The part I have the biggest problem with is they then
effectively BECOME A SPAMMER by sending thousands of
messages in a Distributed Denial of Service attack (DDoS).
This is the same thing hackers do when they bring down a
website by sending so much traffic to a server it
basically shuts down.
4. Most spam is sent from your neighbor's PC. I spend a
great amount of my time cleaning “bad guys” from
client’s computers. There are MILLIONS of "zombie
computers" that are infected with auto-dialers and
trojans that are being used without the owner's knowledge
to send spam. Don’t believe me? Just run Counter Spy on
grandma’s PC and tell me what you find!
5. How long do you really think it will be until the
spammers turn the tables on Blue Security and initiate
their own DDoS attack? It will be interesting to watch.
Other fight-back tactics against spammers have failed.
Last year, Lycos Europe rolled out a screensaver that
conducted DDoS attacks against known spammers. Within
days, however, Lycos buckled under pressure from security
groups, which called it vigilantism, and ISPs, who worried
that attacks originating from their members would make
them liable to legal action on the part of spammers.
Spam will NEVER go away until you attack its real source
engine. If you don't order anything from a spammer and
don't even click on his link to open the message, the
monetary incentive for spam is removed. Spammers operate
under the same economic rules as the rest of us...supply
and demand.
Take away the demand and you eliminate the supply. Simple.
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| About
the Author: Allan Gunnneson is the CEO of Gunner Web
Group ( www.gunnnerweb.com
), a website design and marketing company based in Kansas.
Online reprint rights granted as long as the article is
published in its entirety, including links ( www.gunnerweb.com
). Copyright © Gunner Web Group, 2005 |
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