..is the title of an Wired article, addressing something that Sysadmins around the world has know for a long time – asian ISPs don’t care about spam, and don’t do anything about it. Which in turn has made spammers start using asian ISPs to peddle their garbage.
Not suprisingly, that has led many ISPs to start blocking ALL e-mails coming from asian ip-addresses.
I have to admit that I have been tempted to do the same. Especially with one of my e-mail addresses that I have been using for many years on Usenet, which now regulary recieves huge amount of (to me) unreadable spam. I am sure I have deleted some valid e-mails from that account too – and none of the anti-spam solutions I am using to filter the e-mail account of spam has worked so far, so even though it would mean blocking out ordinary asian users, I am starting to contemplate blocking all e-mails comming from asian ISPs, untill they start to take spam seriously.
The most interesting comment regarding spam has to come from a Hong Kong computer store owner: “It’s a sign of respect that someone sends you an electric business card. It means he wants you as a customer”
I only wish I had his fax number, I would have loved to send him my electronic business card – for hours on end.