How is it a solution to spam?
"Stelian" <[email protected]> Mon, 31 May 2004 00:31:02 +0300
| Newsgroups | gmane.mail.im2000 |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <00a401c4468d$688caf80$7853c451@compk3f8yezqq2> |
I'd really appreciate it if someone showed me where I'm wrong in these assumptions about IM2000. So, instead of sending 10.000.000 pieces of spam 10 kb each from hijacked machines like they do today: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/04/14/1415217 http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/virus/story/0,10801,81825,00.html , the spammers now send 200.000.000 notifications 500 bytes each, using the same techniques. They need an online server? Easy ! they buy domains in bulk at 4$/domain, and they set up one of the hijacked machines to do a round robin DNS pointing to the other ones, and those run a im2000 server, that pushes the spam content to anyone interested. Each domain is used for a few hours for sending, making RBL very hard to do. After the notification hit the users inbox, you can't do much. So, we have just amplified our spam problem 20 times in terms of productivity loss, because nobody really opens spam (except maybe those "hello" or "how do you do" ones, certainly not the "buy vi@gra xa.nax" ones), so after the notification is received by the client, the damage is done. At the same time, the bandwidth abuse of the servers remains constant, because it is limited only by the capacity of the spammers to send spam, and that remains the same. Although I like the design of the system, I think it makes sending mass emails more efficient, because it scales so good. Instead of repeating the message to each user, not knowing if they read it or not, you keep a single copy on your machine, and those who are interested come and download it. Goodbye webbugs ! Now you can do targeting based on individual preferences, and see what type of subject lines make them open the message. Is your victim a man or a woman, a child or a grown-up? Spammers heaven ! This is all a little to scary.