A billion reasons to be wary of emails from Australia!

Peter Dinham
Tuesday, 07 July 2009 14:35

Business IT - Security

“Actions such as these generally stem from foreign-language spams reaching executive decision makers who then demand an administrator respond to specific language-based criteria,” says McAfee, cautioning that “these sorts of policy decisions are unlikely to be regularly reviewed, and represent a digital bias against certain languages or countries that could affect legitimate communications.”

“The enormous prevalence of Chinese and Russian URLs in pharmacy spam mails causes people to want to block every incoming email from these countries, just to be safe. From a business perspective, the institutions providing the domain registrations for spammers cripple the opportunities for legitimate domains. They are branded guilty by association and are often blocked along with the rest.”

McAfee says the providers of these spam services make no attempt to hide their position, pointing out that one spam written in Russian directed the recipient to a website where they advertise the ability to send hundreds of millions of spam messages to “your choice of more than 150 million email addresses spread across various countries.”

On the issue of action or inaction by countries against spammers, McAfee makes the point that, though protected from criminal prosecution by the laws and bureaucracy of their host nations, these sites are not unknown or anonymous entities to spam researchers.
 
“The overwhelming evidence of bad behaviour can far outweigh a legitimate “mom and pop” shop trying to set up a low-cost website through a local hosting provider,” McAfee says, adding that it is in the best long-term interest of sovereign nations to police hosting companies located inside their borders rather than allow them to operate so openly.

According to McAfee, worldwide economic issues today pose enough problems for the average business trying to stay afloat, and it sees a place for governments to work with law enforcement authorities on the spam issue.

“We all rely heavily on our governments to protect us and provide an environment that is conducive to legitimate business practices. Until government regulators, together with local and international law enforcement, start cracking down on illegal Internet activities, it will be extremely difficult for companies to win business in international marketplaces.”
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