NPR feature on spam

[rconner]

National Public Radio today aired a segment about spam, available in audio or transcript at here. The commentary suggests that spammers, stymied by more effective filters, have expanded their "radius of annoyance" to include social networking sites, web boards, cell phones, etc. Otherwise most of this is stuff we've already heard here. Some discussion of a "spam data mine" at the U of Alabama at Birmingham.

One unintentionally funny moment came when a UAB analyst was heard to observe "...(this spam domain) was registered at Network Solutions ... we'll contact them, they'll kill the domain name."

Uh-huh. Of course they will. Just keep telling yourself that.

-- rick

[Geek]

One unintentionally funny moment came when a UAB analyst was heard to observe "...(this spam domain) was registered at Network Solutions ... we'll contact them, they'll kill the domain name."

LOL!

Tried that.

No PERSONAL delivery (registered mail or courier will be refused) of the warrant (which must be drawn by an in-state court) by an Officer of the Court or Sherrif, no deletion.... according to the form-rejection I got.

...which was suspiciously similar to the ones used by Enom and Go Daddy.

[Miss Betsy]

They have to say that because of the lawyers. Of course, if the website doesn't go down, then they haven't done anything. OTOH, it doesn't mean that they haven't read and acted on the report. I remember a long time ago that GoDaddy was whitehat, but one notorious spammer had a website with them. It was never advertised (because of redirection?) and they were very frustrated that they couldn't kill the website. I don't remember the details. However, yahoo used to send a lawyerese disclaimer and never followed through that they had actually done anything, but the email address was gone.

I haven't followed who is whitehat and who isn't among the registrars, but I would think that, like newspapers, they would not be able to do very much about those websites that are just barely legal (the ones that sell cheap watches and acai berry). OTOH, I would think that phishing sites and other ones that are clearly criminal, they could do something about if they wanted to. At least, report them to the legal authorities.

Miss Betsy

[Devilwolf]

Forum spam has been around for ages, sites like getafreelancer com are full of ads from companies that will spam myspace, BBcode forums and other companies that will set-up thousands of fake accts on sites to be used for spamming.

Spammers even buy and sell stolen myspace accts on ebay. The value is based on the number of friends the acct has - more friends - more eyes on the bulletin spam.

The Nigerians have been using Yahoo IM and free dating sites for almost a decade.