Spamtrackers.org
Welcome to Spamtrackers! This is a portal to connect you to a variety of online resources in the fight against spamming. But why fight spam?
Spam is about a lot more than unwanted junk email. And it's about more than just stolen bandwidth or people making you pay to receive their advertising.
Spam now makes up over 90% of the email being sent. Spammers mail to people who don't want to receive their messages. And they have to get past filtering by ISP's whose subscribers complain bitterly about receiving large volumes of unwanted email, often with content and images they find offensive.
If you did that, your ISP would maybe warn you once, then they'd tell you to find another ISP. And while there are ISP's that will let you send your spam if you paid them handsomely enough, it's easy enough for spam filtering software programmers to learn which ISP's those are and to block everything coming from their IP address ranges.
So how do spammers get away with it? Most are engaged in criminal activity. They hijack other people's computers to allow them to send their emails or to host the websites their spam advertises. And just to make sure those hijacked hosts are not thrown off the network by their ISP's, they hijack a LOT of people's computers so they can spread the usage around enough to avoid notice. That means they have to create and propagate malware (computer viruses, etc.) to allow them to take over other people's computers. And since their activity is illegal, they have to use fake names to register their domains, and they have to pay for it with stolen credit/debit cards or Paypal accounts.
Spammers just keep getting deeper and deeper in illegal activity in order to keep ahead of all the people who just want to be left alone. And it's ordinary people who are the victims of those crimes. In fact, you may have been sent here for more information because you were warned that your computer was being used by spammers or because your identity and credit card number were stolen.
The links on the left will connect you to some valuable resources in protecting yourself. Becoming educated about criminals is one of the most effective forms of defense. But first and foremost, NEVER buy anything advertised in spam. You don't want to encourage illegal activity, and you definitely don't want people like that to have access to your credit card number!
December 26, 2008
The anti-spam community is greatly saddened by the loss of Castlecops.com, a volunteer website devoted to internet security that was retired this week. It was in part a victim of its own success -- its scope had become so broad that it was a too big a time committment for the owners, and it was so effective in fighting internet criminals that it was a target of repeated and expensive attacks.
People are clamoring for its return; whether an institutional sponsor will step up and take over -- while maintaining the non-commercial nature of the site -- remains a question. But the hundreds of volunteers whose contributions helped make the site so valuable have not given up. They continue to fight to make the internet safe enough for people without special technical skills, helping to achieve its potential for allowing productive communication among people from all nations and backgrounds. Spammers should take note that not all antispam forums are publicly accessible, and their members find events like this to be a reason to fight even harder.
