Lazy network operators - NOT

Sun Apr 18 03:24:32 UTC 2004

At 9:42 PM -0500 4/17/04, Doug White wrote:
>
>Spamming is pervasive mainly due to the inattention or failure to enforce
>acceptable use policies by the service provider.

It's pervasive because its profitable.  It's been profitable because even a few weeks
of a high-speed circuit can generate millions of messages which don't need much of a
response rate to generate revenue.  The problem now is that a growing percentage
of spam is originating from distributed farms of broadband connected users
(Commtouch says 80% in one article, but I'm not yet convinced its that high -
<http://www.clickz.com/stats/big_picture/applications/article.php/3337751>)
This would suggest that spam is pervasive largely because of the large number
of insecure systems available for origination (via port 25 :-), not because of
providers failing to close barn doors after the fact...

/John