Could spambots finally be eliminated soon?

rhames

Spam, which is one of the things I hate most, took a hit today with the shutdown of the C&C servers for the Grum spam botnet.  Great!  From what I've read, this was the 3rd largest botnet and was responsible for about 20% of spam messages worldwide.  The servers were located in Russia and Ukraine, which seems to have been a pretty safe location for spammers up to now.  Are Russia and Ukraine finally on board with stopping spam?  If they are (or can be convinced to be), could this actually be the end of the massive spam botnet?   

Topic: Internet
Answer this Question

Answers

2 total
jimlynch
Vote Up (2)

I certainly hope so! Spam is so incredibly annoying. However, I temper my enthusiasm with the realization that perhaps they will simply move to another country. Spammers always seem to slip through the cracks and move on to some other place to operate from.

Let's hope that this will at least put a dent in their efforts for a while. A spam-free word would be wonderful indeed! I hope it happens, but I'm not getting my hopes up. They remind me of cockroaches. Every time you think you're rid of them, they come back.

hughye
Vote Up (4)

Well, that is one down at least.  If just the biggest spammers can be eliminated it would make a huge difference.  I'm surprised that there was a successful effort to shut down servers in Ukraine and Russia, to be honest.  

 

I don't know much about Ukraine, but I have a little experience dealing with Russian businesses and government bureaucracy.  All I can say to people that are going to try to get consistent cooperation from Russia to fight spammers is, "Good luck."

 

Russia and Ukraine have been pretty safe places for spammers and other miscreants on The InterWebs for a long time, and I have found trying to get a Russian company to do anything that doesn't result in an immediate gain for them is a challenge.  There was a foundry in Russia that was making air cooled cylinder heads with cooling fins, and they after they cast the heads, they would literally throw them into a big wooden box on a pallet.  The result was cracked and broken cooling fins, scored sealing surfaces and a lot of parts that wouldn't pass the lowest quality control standards.  It took significant effort to get them to just use a wooden parts rack and somewhat gently set the heads on the rack instead of tossing them 4-5 feet through the air, and this was something that would result in significant and immediate benefit to the company.  On the government front, about 10 years ago I flew into Russia and was forced to pay a border guard over US$500 to get my perfectly fine paperwork approved so I could enter the country.  I like quite a few things about Russia, it is a very interesting and distinctive place, but it can also be extremely frustrating to deal with when you are used to EU and American standards.  I will be surprised if it becomes the norm that efforts to shut down spam servers in Russia are successful.  There is always hope, I suppose.

Ask a question

Join Now or Sign In to ask a question.
VMware has launched its long-anticipated public infrastructure as a service (IaaS), touting its virtual networking capabilities as a differentiator from other established hybrid cloud offerings.
Donations to WikiLeaks since January have only been enough to cover expenditures in essential infrastructure, such as servers, according to a transparency report.
Amazon Web Services has finally received certification under the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, which the company said will lower the cost of implementing its cloud services among government organizations and agencies in the U.S.
Just a month after a top Google executive said Glass wouldn't be officially released for another year, sources say the computerized eyeglasses actually should ship by the end of this year.
It appears Canada's anti-money laundering regulator will leave Bitcoin exchanges in the country alone for now.
Mobile network builder Nokia Siemens Networks unveiled tools to optimize video performance on mobile devices on Monday, just in time for the CTIA Wireless trade show that begins Tuesday in Las Vegas.
Directly licensing music from labels could let Apple and others offer music services which may be better for the listener, but potentially less profitable for recording artists
Google will retire its Checkout payment processing tool on Nov. 20, and warned retailers they will need to move to a different payment processing platform.
Sprint Nextel said it had received permission from SoftBank to negotiate a rival acquisition offer from Dish Network.
While Yahoo's acquisition of blogging site Tumblr will make a handful of people very happy, others are not convinced. Here's how to import your posts from Tumblr to WordPress.