SPAM and internet censorship

2009 December 16

by Lisa

Spam seems to be on the rise, if my spam folder is anything to talk about!

There’s a number of court cases worldwide, finally catching-up with those that send spam, but it’s going to be an uphill battle to stop it, even if we can.

Take for example, the current Queensland case against “The worlds biggest spammer” – Atkinson in court

The issue ultimately is that spammers don’t send from their home computer, so it’s very hard to track to a culprit or culprits. They use virus infected proxies, known as zombies, to send and re-send messages out into the internet. And they use computer programmes called “bots” to read email addresses online.

A report released today by Project Honeypot, an online organisation of interested parties trying to track and stop spam (which logically should include most people), has discussed their findings so-far, which includes such statistics as:

Best IT security: Finland
Worst IT security: China (odd, since they’ve got their Great Firewall of China)
Top spam harvesters located: USA
Days of increase and decrease in spam: 21% increase Christmas Day, 32% decrease New Years day (even spammers get time off apparently; perhaps it’s the end of year hangovers?)
Number of different spellings of the word “viagra”: 956

You can read the full report here: 1 billionth spam message received by Project Honeypot

Spam is a blight on the in-boxes of everyone online, and it’s difficult to stop, and in many cases (twitter for example) relies on the participation of people to flag spam when they receive it. There’s a lot of nasty stuff out there on the internet!

But here in Australia, communications minister Stephen Conroy seems intent on building his very own net censorship system, based upon a very small number of ISPs participation in the initial trials, and despite the leaking on wikileaks of the full blacklist earlier this year, and over the objections of experts in both internet technology, industry, state governments and civil liberties groups.

Many different people have voiced their concern and astonishment at such a system being proposed, much-less implemented, citing reasons as diverse as a slowdown of internet speeds to the dangers of censorship as a whole, right up to the unexpected inclusion on the blacklist of a Queensland dentist, showing the system isn’t without fault.

The problem of censorship is one of scope: where does it stop and who decides what’s right and wrong? Politicians have shown themselves time and again to be followers of only the social opinions that will net them quick votes come the next election, so my concern is one of viability and honesty. They can say that they’re trying to stop child pornography, and if people object to this scheme, they’re immediately demonised. The problem comes when a genuine desire to protect children expands into something else, where a vocal minority forces their version of the spectrum of morality on the rest of us because a few politicians seats suddenly look shaky.