t byfield on Thu, 2 Apr 1998 07:36:52 +0200 (MET DST) |
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<nettime> 3 April: usenet spam cancel moratorium |
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Newsgroups: news.admin.net-abuse.bulletins, news.admin.net-abuse.usenet, news.admin.net-abuse.misc Date: 31 Mar 1998 21:19:24 EST Followup-To: news.admin.net-abuse.usenet From: clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Chris Lewis) Subject: ANNOUNCEMENT: Spam Cancel Moratorium -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- [Cc'd to relevant newsgroups and mailing lists. Separate copies to news.admin.net-abuse.policy and news.admin.announce] Usenet Spam Cancel Moratorium As many of you are aware, the volumes of Usenet spam are ever-increasing. Latest statistics show about 1.3 million or more spams per week. Fully 40% of all Usenet traffic is spam, 40% spam cancels, leaving 20% non-spammed. In other words, 4/5ths of all Usenet traffic is spam or spam cancels. Many groups still look pretty good from the perspective of not being too spam-filled, but this is largely due to Herculean efforts on the part of a relatively small number of spam cancellers, or the handful of sites that have good filters. Recently, we're seeing other trends, such as more and more sites turning off cancels altogether, yet, implicitly relying on the spam cancellers to get much of the spam before it arrives at their systems. Many systems are doing this not because they don't want the spam to go away, but the sheer volume of cancels is causing technical problems with their servers. In contrast, many other sites have not taken any measures of any kind to protect their own systems, users or the rest of Usenet for that matter, and they rely on the spam cancellers to clean up spammers on their own site, keep their Usenet services useful to their customers and, in many cases, to keep their servers from collapsing. The situation is clearly getting out of hand, and it's time for us to temporarily change tactics. It has always been our intention that we should be aiming towards putting ourselves out of business by making spam cancels unnecessary. As this doesn't appear to be happening on its own, it is becoming necessary to force the issue. What we need: - We need users to become more vocal in their complaints to ISPs, and sites that host spammed web URLs. Accurate targetting of complaints can sometimes be diffcult. Here are some hints: http://www.sputum.com/sputools.html, and the links to the SPIT/SPITE tools. - We need ISPs to become more proactive in ensuring that spam doesn't originate on their own systems. Too many ISPs are sluggish, and rely on us to clean up their messes. The filters mentioned below, as well as spamfind on http://spam.abuse.net are useful in this area. - We need ISPs to become more serious in providing high quality service to their customers, whether it be the implementation of inbound spam filters, installing NoCeM-on-Spool, or, encouraging the development of spam-free feeds. See: http://www.cm.org for NoCeM information http://spam.abuse.net for filtering tools and other links http://www.exit109.com/~jeremy/news/antispam.html Cleanfeed filters http://www.spamhippo.com Spamhippo filters. http://www.nntp.sol.net/patches/diablo Diablo anti-spam filters http://rtr.xpat.com/~jem/cyclone Cyclone anti-spam filters The status-quo is not accomplishing these ends - the despammers are cleaning up the mess, so where's the incentive? It's time to demonstrate in inarguable terms what Usenet is facing, and force the hands of ISPs. It's like trench warfare: years of moving the line back and forth a few yards, and what do we have to show for it? A tremendous waste of resources and no significant progress towards ending the war. Therefore, effective April 3, we are calling for a full spam cancel moratorium. For an indefinate period after this date, no spam cancels should be issued. This includes "classic spam", "broken gateway spews", "newsgroup bombing" (ie: alt.religion.scientology, alt.pagan, and even news.admin.net-abuse.* bombs), third party forgery cancellations, in the big 8, other global top-level hierarchies such as alt.*, and regional hierarchies. You'll notice that we said "indefinate period". This is because we don't want ISPs to implement short-term solutions. NoCeM notices will continue being generated. We believe that NoCeM has some technical/scalability problems, but, NoCeM-on-spool is one of the easiest filters to install and the most effective. Most of the major anti-spammers have participated in the discussions leading to this, and will participate in the moratorium. We would hope that the despammers who've not been involved in this discussion will also decide to participate. Any despammer wishing to confirm this can email me directly at clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca. The only cancels that we will generate will be cancels that we're required to issue (ie: administrators issuing cancels of their own users), or forgeries of our own names. It is expected that some spam cancellers (particularly ones limited to specific regional hierarchies) will not participate either due to not seeing this notice, or deciding not to go along with the rest. So, some cancels will undoubtably continue. However, it is anticipated that the cancel volume will drop by at least 95%. Any "broad-coverage" despammer attempting to continue will be more than a little busy... ;-) - -- All postings to news.admin.net-abuse.bulletins are unconfirmed and unverified unless stated otherwise by the moderators. All opinions expressed above are considered the opinions of the original poster not the moderators or their respective employers. For a copy of the guidelines to this group, see http://www.math.uiuc.edu/~tskirvin/home/nana/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6 iQCVAgUBNSGlwJ3FmCyJjHfhAQGJtQQA0+tSOBgB5sEQsCdhmHOp5zb5eDfPiYfR GXwtpL/7EBM/lEEiJUHRFctKzbxTpt4906BaBjRroQibXWoesnaUUb/CggJXkD+K +NbQ8Ue+tckH3i5DzQT9uLk6MuDMNWaraHVBXz/PncDVRXLC+iDSJaD/aI49Yoz6 GhXo4RNCr+g= =VJH4 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -----End of forwarded message----- --- # distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@desk.nl and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/ contact: nettime-owner@desk.nl