 Spam gangs
Monday, 15 August 2005
According to Spamhaus, their ROKSO database is:
“The Register of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO) database collates information and evidence on known professional spam operations that have been terminated by a minimum of 3 Internet Service Providers for spam offenses.”
Their known spam gangs list asserts that these criminals are responsible for 80% of our spam.
Summarising these results by the country of origin, we get this:
132 (72.93%) United States
14 (7.73%) Canada
7 (3.87%) Australia
6 (3.31%) Russia
4 (2.21%) China
3 (1.66%) India
2 (1.10%) Hong Kong
2 (1.10%) Costa Rica
2 (1.10%) Brazil
1 (0.55%) United Kingdom
1 (0.55%) Ukraine
1 (0.55%) Taiwan
1 (0.55%) Romania
1 (0.55%) Poland
1 (0.55%) Philippines
1 (0.55%) Latvia
1 (0.55%) Israel
1 (0.55%) Argentina
From the above, we can see that the overwhelming majority of criminals, almost 73%, are based in USA.
Even though the US anti-spam act was passed in 2003, the current US state laws certainly indicate a lack of commitment by their government. States such as Alabama, Hawaii, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, South Carolina and Vermont haven’t even enacted the legislation.
The other states have only adopted a half-arsed approach: banning misleading subject lines, enforced content tagging in the subject line and including opt-out instructions are the only requirements for unsolicited email to be considered legal.
Considering the above percentages, this is very bad news for all computer users as it will only make things worse by legitimising the scourge that is spam.
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