anti-spam

This can be really good. Many of the readers of this site have been calling out for covernment action against spammers. And it looks as if France is in the lead, when it comes to some real action.

“On Thursday, the French government launched “Signal Spam”, an anti-spam platform created in association with public entities and private companies, such as Microsoft. Internet users will be able to
report spam messages by mailing them to this platform which will act as a centralised monitor of spamming activities. The platform will generate a blacklist and help initiate prosecutions against spammers.”
http://french-law.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=38&Itemid=1

http://www.signal-spam.fr/en/index.php/frontend

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Some really smart people at the University of Illinois in Chicago have written an application that can keep conversations going with scammers of all kinds in order to make them use up all their free time in endless conversations without end.

The robot can even simulate different personalities to make the mail exchange more convincing.

Here’s a really great example between the spamalot robot personality Arthur and a scammer:
http://acm.cs.uic.edu/~lszyba1/arthur.html

Two presentations from MIT SpamConference 2007 last Friday:
(The sound is really bad but gets better after a minute or so).

1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZwqq3aweHI
2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plIK8tMKS1A

This is a really great idea! Well worth my personal Nobel Prize.

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It’s been a sad day for the spam fighting business.Today the battle between Dave Linhardt (of email-marketeers E360Insight) and the anti-spam organization Spamhaus.org took a new turn. Dave Linhardt claims that he now has a court order giving him full ownership over the domain spamhaus.org. He presents his claim at
http://www.e360insight.com/news-item1.php

And here is the reply from Spamhaus.org:
http://www.spamhaus.org/legal/answer.lasso?ref=1

Spamhaus today made a call-to-arms to all major ISP’s and Internet officials to come to their aid.

Dear All,

This is an appeal to ISPs and industry participants.

As you know Spamhaus is now appealing a default legal judgement obtained last year by a spammer in Illinois. The default judgement, granted because Spamhaus, a UK organization, chose not to defend the case in Illinois on jurisdiction grounds so as not to set a jurisdiction precedent, left the spammer with a $11.7 million judgement which the spammer has since been using to threaten U.S. ISPs.

In order to present the best appeal possible, Spamhaus urgently needs the help of a number of high profile industry participants.

We are asking you to consider adding your company’s name to an Amicus Brief which our attorney will file with the court on your behalf. (The text of the Brief will be finalized by the end of today).

The appeal will generate extensive press coverage, therefore the presence of your company name in the “Amicus filed on behalf of the following companies…” section will generate very positive PR.

If you can put your company name to an Amicus Brief in support of Spamhaus, please let me know and I’ll pass your details on to our filing attorney to contact you. Unfortunately we need to get this done quite quickly, we have just a few days in which to compile the names of the Amici.

Our filing attorney for this Amicus Brief is Matthew Prince (UnSpam). If you are able to add your name as an Amicus, please contact Matthew at <matthew at unspam.com>

Thank you,

Steve Linford
Chief Executive
The Spamhaus Project
+44 207 183 2002
http://www.spamhaus.org

It would, in my oppinion be an outright disaster if Spamhaus lost the right to their domain, and thus to the address to the most important anti-spam blacklist used world-wide by responsible ISP’s.

Let’s hope that all good forces, by coming together in this Amicus Brief, can fight the Illinois court ruling.

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