Webmasters Blog - Salem-News.com

Over the last few months I have come to the realization that the only way to reduce spam and other cyber crimes is to not only do what I can to keep them from using my services for those purposes but to do what I can to keep them from using others.

Deleting spam in my inbox or bulk folder does nothing to stop future spam or those that profit from it. Finding ways to stop abusers from using my site should include ways to stop them from using anyones resources for criminal purposes.

Currently many (More than one is to many) US Government websites are under the control of criminals. Finding Hacked Goverment and School Web Sites Try a Google Search for site:*.gov porn or swap the words for other terms and you will most likely turn up sites that redirect to obviously not Government sites for pornography or Malware downloads.

Now it is understandable that sometimes hackers win a battle and gain control over something they shouldn’t. But it has been days since I first read of this and began finding sites owned by hackers. This should not be and the agencies involved should be far quicker at fixing the problem or lose their right to be responsible for maintaining a public website.
My email to one of the websites hacked.

I understand that sometimes sites become hacked but you should be far
quicker at shutting down or correcting the problem. Or you should not
be allowed on the Internet.

Now I receive from multiple sources spam emails and blog postings. I could just quickly delete them and move on but that does little to fight the problem. By contacting the sources and eventual domain name destinations of these attacks far more can be accomplished.

Most of my spam both email and blog spam comes from commen peoples computer or advertises sites that are quick and easy to put up or hide behind a URL redirection services. At least one of them 110mb.com a free hosting site quickly responds and removes the offending site.:

Site has been removed.

Thank you for reporting it.

Best Regards,
110mb.com Abuse

Or on the opposite end a supposedly well intentioned URL redirection service offers no contact to report abusers. (Approximatly 25% of Salem-News.com comment spam uses RubyURL services to mask themselves)

The team behind RubyURL hates spam just as much as you do.

Unfortunately, we cannot prevent people from using the RubyURL service and pasting links into spam emails, wiki pages, and blog comments. If you found your way to RubyURL due to spamming, please to report the offending RubyURL and we’ll flag it for review.

Thanks!
-The RubyURL team

In order to ever keep the Internet somewhat secure people must do more than just ignore or delete problems they must join the fight against it or criminals will always win.

The least you can do

• Install up to date anti virus software (A large amount of spam and malware distribution comes from zombied computers)
• Install and configure a firewall

The better you can do

• Learn to track spam sources(Spam Tracking)
• If you can not keep yourself secure do not connect to the Internet until you can

Posted: Tuesday, November 13th, 2007 at 8:44 pm under: Security. Comment Feed (RSS 2.0). Interact: Comment or Trackback.