Spammers’ Shopfront Vigilantism, Part II

By | February 25, 2004

Further to my previous posting, here’s another way to keep the spammers out by checking out the links they want you to go to.

Sophos, the British virus people, say that their year old URL filtering “continues to prove to be an enormous success”. The filtering basically collects known spam sites and bans any email which contains them somewhere in the message. Today, Sophos says, the URL filter identifies over 50% of the spam detected by Sophos PureMessage email software.

An innovation, Spammer Asset Tracking, goes further by looking at the source and destination locations of the email, sniffing for suspicious spammer activity. This speeds up adding spam sites to the blocked list.

Not a bad idea, and a feature that home-based spam filtering, such as Bayesian filters, couldn’t really manage to do. No mention is made of scam emails in the press release, but I assume they must be in there somewhere, given Sophos’ interest in such matters. (Stopping them, I mean, not sending them.)

One thought on “Spammers’ Shopfront Vigilantism, Part II

  1. ca

    jeeezuz christ people!
    “ohhh.. sniff sniff,.. how ever will we stop the spam?? Oh my.. what will we do??”

    It’s simple idiots – treat it like the crime it is. From browser hijacks to viruses to spyware to spam – you know what it is.. I know what it is.. my grammy knows what it is. It’s THEFT.
    THEFT of my time and resources. And TRESPASSING. Invading my personal privacy without my explicit permission. And FRAUD – if you have a business, present yourself as such.

    It’s the EXACT SAME as someone illegally entering your home, altering your personal files, and stealing your computer or damaging your property.

    As soon as the ISPs and our gov’t starts treating it exactly the same as any other crime, it will be over. It’s not very profitable to run a browser hijack business when the FBI roots you out, blocks your sites, seizes your assets and takes you to court for 2.6 Million counts of Theft, Fraud, and Tresspassing.

    Harsh? Not at all compared to the damage they do.
    Go after them like the music industry is going after file-sharers and this will all go away.

    Simple.
    Call a spade a spade.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.