hey there, i just first want to tell you that you guys do an awesome job at keeping this website clean, in all the months i have been here i have seen only a few spam threads and you guys take care of them immediately..thanks so much for that


here is my thing. WHY CANT WE STOP THESE FRIGGING ***** SPAMS. I KNOW MY PERSONAL MAIL BOX IS INCESSANTLY FULL OF THIS KIND OF CRAP AND I AM REALLY SICK OF IT. it seems to me that these addresses should be able to be traced back to the sender and some sort of charges pressed against them. I am tired of being assaulted, even by their subject lines everywhere i go. There should be laws against unwanted ***** and a website where we can put their addresses for law enforcement


Ugh!! please tell me what i can do/ who i can talk to put up a stink about this kind of thing, i really am sick and tired of it

Well, unfortunately, it's a tough problem. For the most part, if you were to trace the posts back to the computers they came from, you'd find that they belonged to innocent bystanders. Cybercriminals use "botnets" -- networks of computers that have been infected with viruses that turn them into "slaves", used for automatically sending spam of all kinds. The actual owners of the computers generally don't even know about it.

What can you do? You can complain to Joe Sixpack, and tell him to learn a little about how to keep his computer safe from infection. You can complain to Microsoft, and ask them to make their computers more secure. Or you can complain to the governments of China and Russia, from where many of these botnets are controlled.

Meanwhile, we can web sites like this one try to fight them off, but it's a contiuous game of oneupmanship; we block them, they figure out a way back in. And so it goes.

thanks ernest. i know its a tough one, i have written to my congressman about this more than once, no one even reads the letter i am sure. it just frustrates me that these ppl get away with this stuff ya know. its one thing if you want the stuff and you subscribe to it but to just have thrown in your face every morning is so maddening..

i wish there was a website where ppl can put these name to a CRIMINAL list, cause i feel these ppl are sexual predators and their actions are indeed criminal, and by loading my mailbox up with this stuff that i never subscribed to amounts to sexual predatory, sexual harrassment, crude and lascivious conduct and charges should follow accordingly..

Whether your congressman reads your letter doesn't really have a lot to do with the practicalities of the problem, unfortunately. Legislation to punish those responsible severely is desirable, and in many jurisdictions already implemented (its a problem with big financial consequences, as you can see from the scale of it, which I touch on, below). The problem though is one requiring technical solutions

There have been periods in recent months where over 95% of all global email traffic has been spam (yes, you did read that correctly, and my figures are accurate!) Most of this is filtered out at the service-provider level, and its only the stuff that gets through those filters that customers (that is, us) see.

Spambots signing up to forums - and using forum facilities to spam, to advertise, and to attempt to raise search-engine rankings - is an increasing problem too. That's what CAPTCHA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captcha is all about - trying to prevent them from registering. Unfortunately, the spambot software is getting better at solving (or circumventing) this sort of problem.

There are other sorts of tests that can be used at registration - for example questions which require knowledge to answer, where such knowledge would be expected of genuine users.

There are websites compiling blacklists of spam IP addresses, and associated information, but lengthy IP-block lists are not ideal - however, see for example:
http://www.spamhaus.org/sbl/
http://www.honeynet.org/
http://www.projecthoneypot.org/

As Earnest said, its an arms-race. At the moment, the best strategies on forums seem to be trying to prevent them from registering in the first place, or promptly turfing out those which are spotted.


Dave

wow..thanks dave..that was quite informative..95% wow..that is crazy and i never would have guessed it to be soo high..i have contacted my isp regarding this problem and he tells me 'well someone must be cruising **** sites to get this mail" well that is bull..my lap top is brand new, i seldom go anywhere on it but here and it is still loading up with the **** in my mail box and i KNOW i am not cruising these types of sites.. so i dont think he knows exactly what he is talking about..

thanks for the info though.i had no idea .