OT - Oz fights Spam

PeterWright wrote on 4/8/2004, 6:12 PM
Tomorrow the Australian "Spam Act" comes into effect. After that, Electronic Messages...

a. must not be sent without the prior consent of the recipient. That consent may be express or implied ("reasonably inferred") from the conduct, business and other relationships of the person or organisation concerned;

b. must contain a functional unsubscribe facility; and

c. must accurately identify the sender of the message

Penalties run to over a million dollars.

Unfortunately more than 90% of our spam comes from overseas, mainly the U.S.

Hopefully all other countries will soon follow suit.

Comments

bakerbud9 wrote on 4/8/2004, 6:20 PM
amen to that!
-nate
farss wrote on 4/8/2004, 6:51 PM
The only thing that intrigues me about spam is how the business model works. I know it costs next to nothing to send it but it still costs something if only in someones time and power to run a computer.
If no one buys the rubbish they peddle then where's the return?
TheHappyFriar wrote on 4/8/2004, 6:55 PM
But someone does buy it, even less then 1% would bring a good return.

Plus i'd say 70% of spam is fake/virus mail anyway.

The US has a simular law (not sure of the specifics) but it should be changed from "unsuscribe link" to "if no responce to spam after 1/2 e-mail the person MUST be taken off the list".

Of course this doesn't help in "legit" spammers (ie those checkboxes when you sign up to things, EULA's etc.)
Even when you REGISTER a product they can spam you now. :)
briang wrote on 4/9/2004, 2:14 AM
Peter

As a fellow Aussie, I am right with you.

Until recently most of my spam which averaged ten per day came from the USA. A few weeks ago it jumped to around thirty five per day and in addition to the USA they now come from a wide variety of countries.

Whilst I use McAfee Spamkiller, to bounce and delete them, it is a real pain in the butt! On average it takes about ten minutes per day to deal with Spam.

These folks are taking the joy out of email and they need to be dealt with.

Regards

Briang
Zulqar-Cheema wrote on 4/9/2004, 2:26 AM
30 to 40 what, have you got favoritism, I gate about 200 a day ( in the morning when I check and then about 20 per hour), which is really clogging up my work as I one man band working from home.

The UK act came in force a couple of months ago, similar to the Aussie one.

It is now up to the US to change their new act from, sending a un- ubscribe in the mail, to unless requested specifically, all that will happen is you un-subscribe and the next day same person different company sending the same old *rap, this is the bain of my life know, talk about WMD, it's killing my business, slowly....

Mind you this is all useless unless it can be policed successfully
farss wrote on 4/9/2004, 3:44 AM
And now they use an unsubscribe reply to verify that they've found a legit email address. You cannot win.
It's a scary thought but Bill Gates suggestion to solve the problem maybe the only answer, charge a fee for every email sent.
craftech wrote on 4/9/2004, 5:37 AM
1. Many return addresses are spoofed address.

2. Hacking into a remote computer is relatively easy unless you disable active-x controls and scripts among other things, and e-mail addresses and passwords are routinely stolen. Those who end up with I-Frame virii are victimized by having the hacker send out spam (much of which is infected) using YOUR e-mail address. The first clue is that you begin getting lots of "returned as undeliverable" e-mails. If they get only a few identities or credit card numbers it is worth it to them.

3. In the United States the current government refuses to ban the dissemination of personal information. The "privacy notices" everyone gets (if you read them carefully) are full of loopholes because this is the only way the government would approve them. They were designed (as most of their legislation is designed) to dupe the public into thinking that they were getting new protections when in fact they were getting screwed. Large corporations benefit from most of the legislation they pass. We will never get a real anti-spam law because that would put constraints on corporate interests. (By the way, I am a registered Republican). An "opt-in" directive was added to the statute books of the 15 European Union member states in October, and laws complying with the EU directive are starting to come into effect. For example, the UK's updated Telecoms Data Protection Directive will impose fines of up to $8700 on companies and individuals caught sending unsolicited commercial e-mail and SMS text messages to mobile phones without prior agreement.

But despite the efforts of European politicians to get their Washington, D.C. counterparts on the opt-in bandwagon, U.S. lawmakers passed the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. This is an "opt-out" piece of legislation that puts the onus on individual users to let companies know that they do not wish to receive spam. The bill became law on January 1.

4. You have to maintain multiple e-mail addresses and when you order online use a disposable one. Most companies do not build in the ability to REMOVE your personal information from their websites. You can change a user name and password, but if you have your ISP change your e-mail address because you suspect it was compromised you're stuck if the vendor's website requires that you respond to a confirmation sent to the e-mail address you just disabled.
Also, participating in forums where your e-mail address is easily retrieved is an invitaion to spammers.

5. Many websites which are really popular require cookies and/or Active-x controls and scripts. Even Yahoo suffers from this nonsense. For example, Yahoo mail won't function unless you allow cookies to be spewed into your computer. Most of you would have to forego being able to view some videos and/or certain websites if you disabled scripts and active-x controls as I have unless you list them as "Trusted Sites" in the browser.

6. I wouldn't defend Bill Gates because he is also part of the problem. Windows 98 and W98SE for example had some glaring security problems which are relatively easy to fix, but MIcrosoft never told the public how to fix it. Instead, they introduced Windows 2000 and then Windows XP which closed those holes. Moreover, if you look at the history of Windows Updates you will see that most of the updates have been security fixes for Microsoft Outlook. MIcrosoft Outlook is a favorite for hackers because they fully realize that Bill Gates has created much of Microsoft's software so that it won't function without Microsoft Outlook installed. Many hand held PDA's will ONLY allow MIcrosoft Outlook as an e-mail client. And the newest version of Internet Explorer (version 6) doesn't allow Microsoft Outlook to be uninstalled or even re-installed without reinstalling Internet Explorer 6. If you have a problem with Outlook or one of it's versions (some of which aren't compatible with ONE ANOTHER) it is quite easy to have Outlook mix up dll files from multiple versions which makes it non-functional and extremely difficult to fix short of wiping out the hard drive. Meanwhile, software like Microsoft Picture-it Publishing will no longer function.

John