On 04/12/2008 23:59, "Chris Lewis" <clewis(_at_)nortel(_dot_)com> wrote:
Barry Shein wrote:
On December 3, 2008 at 23:24 sethb(_at_)panix(_dot_)com (Seth) wrote:
Most of my 419s come from Yahoo.
Well, since we're now debating about what amounts to a knowable fact
does anyone know of any reliable sources for this information?
I should think Seth is pretty reliable about what his own spam load
looks like ;-)
The point that Seth (and Steve) is really making here is that while BOTs
are 80-90% of all spam and IP blocking works well against them, there
are other classes of spam where IP blocking doesn't work nearly as well.
What's often forgotten here, though, is that those big ISPs who have
outbound spam problems have those problems not because of incompetence or
malfeasance, but because of those very same botnets attacking their
registration & webmail interfaces.
(Human 419ers cutting & pasting may be an exception; it's hard to be
certain. If they're bots, they're really really good at randomness and have
extremely sneaky operators.)
But in any case, the all-too-common cry to blame the big ISPs has two
effects:
1. we lose sight of the magnitude of the problem
2. it alienates a group of people who have more to lose from spam than any
home anti-spam hobbyist
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