Chopping down the 'spam tree'

Aug 24, 2007 10:54 GMT  ·  By

Imagine spam as leaves from a tree. What we have been doing till now is tear each leaf apart one by one. Till we were done with 20 leaves, 3 new branches appeared. Wouldn't it just be easier to cut down the whole tree? Well... yes... and that's what is going to be the new trend in spam-fighting.

Instead of tolerating spam and just using all sorts of filters to protect ourselves from it, we should attack spam and take it down. For example, spam doesn't just pop up by itself - it's all being sent either from sites, either from botnets. So, what needs to be done is track spam down and then just kill whatever spawns it. Why just avoid it, when you can destroy it?

I've had these ideas for some time now, but I didn't know that security expert Garth Bruen had done what I only thought about and taken spam-fighting to the next level, till I read it on NetworkWorld. He runs a project focused on taking down sites that are run by spammers. Way to go!

I guess that spam fighting could get even better if more people would join this initiative. Starting with 2003, Bruen has taken down more than 30.000 spam websites, and that's a pretty big number, for such a project. Spam has never seen levels as it does nowadays and that's why more effort needs to be done, in order to help users keep their Inboxes clean. Blacklists and filtering just doesn't cut it anymore.

Bruen's project is called KnujOn ("No Junk" spelled backwards) and - just as NetworkWorld tells us - it now seems to have a new partner - Computer Cops LLC expanded its efforts and began doing the same thing. This is probably the best news this week! Spam needs to be taken down - it's just too much!