Correct me if I'm wrong, but is spam worse now?

[jmowreader]

We've said that the two "crowning achievements" of the Bush reign of terror have been the Telemarketing Act and the CAN-SPAM act.

The CAN-SPAM act was supposed to help cut down on the onslaught of spam, but I don't think it has.

Before this law was passed, when I got spam for boner pills I got ONE spam for boner pills and it had something about Viagra in the subject line. Or "generic Viagra," or "natural Viagra" or whatever they were selling. They were even nice enough to use an AOL account to send it, so you could just create a special little "AOL mail" folder, dump all the AOL traffic you got into it, then make a real quick scan through the folder every day or so in case someone you knew who was on AOL was trying to send you something.

Today? I got 85--I counted--spams for "online prescriptions cheapest price" in my mailbox. They've got this new spam program that downloads text from other websites, cuts it into random-length chunks, and uses the chunks as message subject lines for the spam. (I was going to say "stories from news sites" but they actually grabbed eBay's Terms of Service and used that once.) And they're sending it all from the British Virgin Isles...where the CAN-SPAM law has no jurisdiction.

Penny-stock spam is even better...it all comes over as JPEG files. Hundreds and hundreds of them.

I believe it is safe to say that the CAN-SPAM act has been nearly as effective in cutting down spam as the PATRIOT Act has been in cutting down terrorism.

[sandnsea]

1. I currently have 29,622 spam

Gotten over the last 2-3 months. I don't know how many that is a day, but it's insane. And that doesn't count those cute little penny stock ones that sneak through my spam filter. I pay for mine, but I used to use Cloudmark, it was free if you added a line in your email advertising it. It worked pretty good too. I don't know what the SPAM solution is but I swear if I ever meet one of these people - kapow, right in the kisser.

[rucky]

4. I dumped Cloudmark & went with ZoneAlarm

highly rec'd.

[Sherman A1]

2. Seems to have picked up

for me within the last few weeks. Mostly the penny stocks which sometimes bypass the filters. All the viagra ones seem to get caught and dumped into my trash box. So now we can have some very "hard" information on "investing".

[cboy4]

3. I hAvEn'T nOtIcEd aN iNcReAsE (yOuR sIzE) iN sPaM

LOL!

The online meds are the ones that are completely out of control for me.

[rucky]

5. XXX RUSSIAN MIDGETS XXX

I wished I'd have saved that one.

[cboy4]

6. Naw, you would have wasted your money ;)

:spray:

[ikri]

7. The CAN-SPAM act

Allows spam, as long as there's a mechanism allowing you to unsubscribe from the mailings. Of course the unsubscribe mechanism might remove you from the spam run (the one that has probably already ended) but it will also act to confirm your email address for future spam runs.

Spam will never be stopped whilst lobby groups like the DMA are allowed to buy politician's votes.

[Solo_in_MD]

13. CAN-SPAM is useless, private action is the only effective tool

No law states that the email must go through. Most people are unaware that the Internet is a cooperative arrangement of private property. Nothing says that an ISP has to allow all incoming email into its private network and mail server. It is expressly legal to reject email for any reason you choose. The use of RBLs like Spamhaus, SORBS, and AHBL are very effective in stopping spam. Most ISPs use some level of blocking, AOL is a good example. There are tools out there like Spam Pal that let you use these same lists on a personal level as well.

Some of those who are blocked and don't understand the basics of the Internet work and squeal most entertainingly with a plethora of legal threats. When that happens, we make some fresh popcorn and enjoy the spectacle

[jmowreader]

19. The CAN-SPAM act requires a few other things...

none of which exist in the current generation of spam.

It requires the spam have a real e-mail address. This new spam does not.

It requires the spam to have the real name of the person who sent it. All this spam has pseudonyms.

It requires the spam have a subject line that roughly corresponds to the contents of said spam...

This is the total contents of a piece of spam I received today...judge for yourself if there is subject-ad copy agreement:

From: "Christie.N" <[e-mail]>
Date: Wed Jul 12, 2006 14:11:58 US/Eastern
To: "Xpps" <[e-mail]>
Subject: developing proper intelligence to counter the attackers.

Are you spening to much on your RX+s
We take care of your health
save up to 56%

http://<tdee>.musehasbe.com/hn/?a=1501

Cesar Newton

of the Diyala provincial capital of Baquba.because it is the last resort." reconciliation, which would help defuse the sectarian rift.Al-Maliki said the National Reconciliation Higher behalf of insurgent groups that are considering joining the reaching out to Sunnis through a process of volatile environment in Baghdad.needs to be improved, said Zalmay Khalilzad, speaking "I think you all know the security in Baghdad is difficult, Despite the "significant" sectarian strife, 20 wounded in a suicide bombing at a southern said an important component in the fight is In other violence Wednesday, nine Iraqis military official in Iraq, briefed Rumsfeld about "This sectarianism is the source of frequent tragedies reconciliation, which would help defuse the sectarian rift.

[ikri]

21. Interesting spammer there

Not really anything to do with the CAN-SPAM act, but the group of spammers responsible for that piece have some interesting history.

It also shows another problem with the act that the law doesn't address. The spam group are based outside of the US and they host their websites in China (musehasbe.com, 211.144.68.59, is in China), Brazil and Russia. Whilst there's a good chance that the company making the money is based in the US, that's not covered by the act just the spam source. That email hasn't broken any laws :shrug:

If you run your own SMTP server it's a good idea to blocking any non-US or non-EU IP address, in fact it's worth blocking any non-static IP address too since it cuts down on a lot of virus spam proxies.

[Minnesota Libra]

8. I can tell you how to cure all this.........

....so that spam will NEVER EVER be a problem again. Go to this website and download the "Firefox" browser. Believe me when I say you can set it to filter out ALL SPAM. I don't even see the ads on DU unless I specifically want to for some reason. I do allow them sometimes just to help DU out but it blocks all spam.

Oh, and there is an email program that is free as well as is completely compatible with Windows, think it is with Macs as well but can't swear to that.

You WON'T BE SORRY you switched - I never have been - as long as it is my choice I WILL NEVER go back to IE or Netscape for a browser or to Outlook Express for mail.

Give it a try, you can always delete it.

Firefox 1.5
http://www.mozilla.com

[rman]

9. I think this is about email spam, not web ads

Though there to mozilla can help out a bit:
http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird/

[Minnesota Libra]

10. I think I covered both with........

....the statement, "....as long as it is my choice I WILL NEVER go back to IE or Netscape for a browser or to Outlook Express for mail.":shrug:

The link I provided was merely a starter and indeed leads to the email but thank you anyway for making it more specific.

[MyNameGoesHere]

17. ? Changing email programs

reduces spam how? If i am not mistaken each email program has better filtering than others,but it is just a receptacle for email. Personal behavior on the internet causes the most spam. Ie. Not enabling privacy features or being unaware of what they do.

[benburch]

11. Much worse.

I get 2000-3000 spam emails every day here.

[mtnsnake]

14. Yikes!! I think it's time to change your email address, ben!

BTW, I get at least the same amount or more of spam now as I did before Bush, but I can't imagine getting 2 to 3 thousand a day. How do you pick through them?

[Javaman]

12. I think it's pretty bad but then again I haven't tasted it in years. ;) nt

[slackmaster]

15. WAAAAAY worse

Mine on cox.net is almost as bad as it was before the ISP offered server-side filtering.

That worked very well for about 18 months. But the spammers have gotten the upper hand.

I'd like to catch just one of those cocksuckers alone for 15 minutes.

[deaniac21]

16. It's about the same as ever. You can try these to mix it up....

http://www.hormel.com/advsearch_results.asp?cmd=search&index=recipes&querytext=SPAM&category=Recipes&searchmode=1

[MyNameGoesHere]

18. Oh the good ole days

when you ate Spam intead of getting it in email

[Lady Effingbroke]

20. I have been online (well, not continuously) for 4 years, and I have never

gotten any spam. I use the usual programs, some of which you may already have installed:

Ad-Aware

Spybot

Spyware Blaster

Zone Alarm

Avast antivirus

Firefox

I also use a hosts file manager, Hostsman, which allows you to easily edit your hosts file and also import block lists from the most comprehensive and popular sites maintaining such lists,including MVPS and hpHosts. Maintaining a blocklist through your hosts file (found at C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc) allows you to block a lot of bad crap, like boner spam, from even getting onto your computer.

Explanation of hosts file HERE