[Mediawiki-l] SPAM RANT! [Was: Malicious content deleting bots]

[Jan Steinman]

> From: Michael Daly <mikedaly at magma.ca>
>
> So much of this kind of crap comes through the Asia Pacific Network
> Information Centre that I sometimes consider cutting them off  
> completely.

<rant>I did that once for port 25. Cut my email spam by about 70%.  
But then we had a need to allow email from the orient again. (Didn't  
care much before then.)

I also once had a script that would pull out the IP from the last  
"Received:" header in spam, resolve it to a netblock range, then  
install an appropriate block in my firewall. It worked great for a  
while, then the Internet started getting real slow, and I checked the  
router, and noted that I had several thousand filters that each legit  
packet had to negotiate. Scratch that idea... I left the dozen or so  
top-hit-count filters in place, but the nature of the beast is that  
it is transient and ever-mutating, and the effectiveness of blocking  
those netblocks eventually dissipated.

Those were in the days when I was trying to run a dozen websites  
through a 128kb IDSL pipe. Sometimes spam would saturate my entire  
bandwidth, and legit traffic would get bounced. Now I'm paying twice  
as much for 8Mb, and I just bear the spam traffic. There is a hidden  
cost of spam that politicos and "free speech" advocates don't  
acknowledge, and it is NOT paid by those whose "free speech" is being  
defended!

Sigh. Tragedy of the commons. I'd be willing to pay a penny to send  
an email, if it would put an end to the idiots who send several  
million a day! Then I could go back to a cheaper connection, and  
actually save money.</rant>


:::: Freedom of the commons brings ruin to all. -- Garrett Hardin ::::
:::: Jan Steinman (a fossil-fuel free zone!) <http:// 
www.VeggieVanGogh.com> ::::