So much spam, so few scams
- August 7, 2007 4:25 PM |
- By Ian Johnson
by Dan Westell, CBCNews.ca
Four California computer scientists have taken the classic advice to investigative reporters - follow the money - in the ongoing fight against spam. So they did, and think they may have nailed a way to go after spammers.
Junk e-mails are not about themselves, but about luring the naïve to sites where they can be separated from their money.
So the University California San Diego researchers set out to see what they could learn about the relationship between the ads (spam) and the money-making schemes (scams) where the spam sends the victims. Their paper concludes that a spam campaign that can run to millions of messages usually - in 94 per cent of more than a million spams they analyzed - directs victims to single server for the scam.
"Our findings suggest that the current scam infrastructure is particularly vulnerable to common blocking techniques such as blacklisting,” said UCSD professor Geoff Voelker.
“A single takedown of a scam server or a spammer redirect can curtail the earning potential of an entire spam campaign,” the four wrote.
The paper, which outlines a new analytical technique they developed called "spamscatter," will be presented at the Advanced Computing Systems Association security conference in Boston.
About the Authors
- Tara Kimura
is a multimedia producer for CBCNews.ca.
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Comments (14)
Myself, I just put spam emails in my junk folder. They tend to come in waves with months in between of maybe fifteen or so in three months.... then BANG! I'll start getting seven or so a day from companies wanting me to get penis enlargements (I'm a woman) and to invest in mortgage payments (I live with my folks still). I just junk them and make certain the address is blocked, forcing them to don a new address each and every time they try to spam me.
So far, it's worked amazingly well and I've been able to group them!
Meds: Viagra is the biggest one here.
Payments: Mortgages and Third World Kings needing bank help are the tops here.
Body enhancements: Penis and Breast enlargements are the kings and Queens here.
Dating and Sex: Apparently, according the the spam I've categorized, Sexy Single Housewives Looking for FUN are the most common ploy of the dating games.... that, and the name Jenny.
That's my study. :D
I find it interesting just how much effort is being spent on blocking spam ... the only reason it works is because people keep falling for the scams! We don't need ways to block it, we need smarter people - if the spammers weren't making money, they wouldn't bother spamming.
Well, MT, you're partially right. People do buy into scams a lot.. but also, there are people who pass through various websites and end up spammed simply because a popup blocked their mouse when they moved to click something else. Just one click can land your email address in a load of trouble. How they manage to get to your address, I have no clue, but, like Carolyn, I get very odd spam as well and I have no clue as to how they decide what you should get.
Myself, I get offered fake rolex watches more than anything else. It's really quite odd.
I think, for the most part, people have already accepted the fact that spam will always be around. It's a nuisance more than anything else so I just toss them in the junk folder. Now, I only get a few compared to some people I know who get hundreds a day. For their sake (and sanity) I hope someone can come up with a way to eliminate spam altogether.
I find it hard to believe that people actually open these e-mails, or click on the links. If some shady looking character rings your doorbell at night are you really going to open the door and see what he/she wants? Same principle; strange e-mail from who-knows-where offering you meds, a chance to win whatever, a date with Jenny...do yourself a favour. Don't open it. If the UCSD researchers are right then you'll be doing the rest of us a favour as well.
I still remember getting a meds one with the subject line:
MMMMMmmmmAAAaaAAARRRRRRrrRRYYYYYYY'S MMMMMMEEDDDDDSSS
...would you trust meds from Mary?
Some simple suggestions to rid yourself of spam is to:
a) unsubscribe....40-50% of the time it really works. My hotmail spam was drastically reduced from 10-15 a day down to 4-5 a week.
b) use a more secure browser. Internet explorer is deplorable at its ability to fend off phishing tactics. The best way is to prevent it from happening...I personally use Firefox...
c) if you truly wish to publish your emails, use [a] instead of @. so abc[a]hotmail.com. The spam system of retrieving emails won't work with [a]. And let's be serious, I am sure your friends in this day and age would be able to figure out that [a] is in lieu of @.
d) Stop signing up to frivolous news. Even the ligitimate ones. Most of the money generated from the internet is the selling of personal information to 3rd party companies. Always assume this even if it might not always be correct and your spam will dwindle.
LOL...Mary's meds. Looks like whoever wrote the subject line must have been flying pretty high on good ol' Mary's meds.
There was this nice man who sought me to help him get his fortune out of his nameless war torn country. With only several thousand dollars in bribe fees, I can get several million.
I wish everyone else was this nice.
I'm just waiting for my millions
With out knowing how to set a watch and would be at a loss if some one handed me a cell phone, I decided, since I now have electricity, to get my feet wet. I went out and purchased (garage sale) a twenty dollar windows 98. As I was on my bike 25.00 delivered! I was left with the instructions to turn it on and off and when I applied for internet the installer was good enough to spend some time with me.
Some how I got onto a forum and I am bitterly acussed of SPAM and TROLL. I am now recieving on my e-mail what you people are talking about and have no clue to what I am accused of. Is there something more to what is called SPAM?
Bruce Voigt
If you know how, look at the email headers, and the IP address for the account sending the spam. Send an email to the "abuse" dept of that Internet Service Provider, and attach a copy of the spam. We got almost no spam email for years when I was doing that. I've gotten more lazy over the last couple of years, and we now have started getting maybe 10 a month.
Network specialists speculate that up to 90% of email traffic is spam. Simply directing it to your junk folder is not the answer - it shouldn't be allowed to get that far. Some people are inundated with hundreds of spam emails a day, severely limiting the usefulness of the system by making it hard to sort out what's legitimate. Most filters are a joke, anyone who uses them has probably found stuff in their junk folder that wasn't junk.
The answer, as much as there is one, is for the ISPs to take an active role. First, most spam comes from computers turned into robots by being infected with virus or trojan horse programs. Anybody that leaves a computer on all the time better make sure it's secure and free from malicious software. Then, no ISP should even allow external access to the SMTP port 25 - most residential customers have no business directly accessing any mailserver other than their own ISP's anyway. Most spam comes directly from infected individual computers, not mailservers, so why allow compromised machines access to the entire internet using a port with no possible purpose other than abuse.
Make sure your ISP uses the latest spam blocking technology, such as verifying senders, blocking known spam domains, using blacklists (like SORBS and spamhaus), virus scanning, and implementing the new SPF protocol which allows the mailserver to query the sender's domain and confirm it's being sent from an IP address allowed by the domain.
Email is inherently insecure, but if the industry works together by repairing the many weak links, then spam can be reduced to the point where email is useful again. Most of it ought to be blocked by the ISP so it never ends up in the user's inbox in the first place. Above all, never respond to any part of an unsolicited email message, now matter how legitimate or tempting it seems!
Some tips for avoiding spam:
Almost all spam uses a fake sender. Hitting reply will just result in it bouncing back, or worse yet, the sender's address is now more frequently a real one stolen from an innocent victim because many ISP mailservers now refuse messages where the sender is spoofed. Blocking a sender is futile since they never send twice with the same address.
Never post your address on a website. Spam robots scour the web constantly looking for addresses to harvest, and if yours is found, it can end up on spam lists for years. Even the most innocent site, like business directories or classified sites where you can advertise your lost dog often result in your inbox filling up with perplexing spam. If you must post an email address online, ask your ISP for an extra 'disposable' address so you don't risk having your main address hijacked.
Don't 'unsubscribe' unless it's a legitimate service. Clicking the unsubscribe link in spam just verifies your address is real, gives them your IP address, and according to studies, results in your email address being sold to even more spammers.
Use BCC to send messages to multiple recipients, not TO or CC. (Just look at a typical chain email and see how many addresses were forwarded!) This prevents your list from appearing on everyone's computer and being forwarded to others, which lessens the risk of an infected computer harvesting the addresses. Most viruses pretend to come from a sender you know.
The simple method I use for eliminating spam is to use the Message Rules feature in Windows Outlook Express. I write rules to match domain names, address extensions, commonly repeated words in the subject lines, and so on, and instruct that messages matching them be deleted from the ISP's server so they are not even delivered to my laptop. The rate of spam dropped dramatically from an average of two dozen messages a day to only 2 or 3. And for those few that do make it past the spam filtering? Well, it's just a no-brainer to not open a message from a "bank" I don't do business with, or from any "lottery" web site that wants to award several million dollars/pounds/euros, etc. in winnings, and NEVER open any message with an attachment. For those who do, that could be the start of a lot of grief, so beware!
A little bit late on this one, comp troubles, shall we say fried?
Aside the point but w/e.
I saw a good thing on spammers on the today show, hilarious stuff as usual, the guys employed to do all the spamming thinks its all fun and games till it comes to the point where they are asked if they would like their servers getting overloaded by spamming emails and they get all mad and are suddenly biting their tongues. Damn..
Carolyn, Penis enlargement you say? hmmm, the guy MUST be related to Mary!