• What is blocked
  
• Whether it is a dynamically assigned pool or allocated directly or indirectly to an organisation that has sent us spam
  
• Whois info
  
• Spam samples or evidence of abuse from log files
  
• and, last but not least, country

Draw your own conclusions if you like, but I found this analysis interesting, showing the percentage of blocked items (single IPs, IP ranges and resolved names) by country. Given that our organisation is UK based, the fact that the UK is near the top of the list should not be surprising. Given that the Internet started in the US and is still more widely used there, I suppose the position of the US in the ranking should not be a surprise either. But look at the gap.

The US has nearly half of all the blocked items here (include Canada and it's more than half of the total), we have very few business relationships that side of the pond and have had no complaints (not one) about real email from US based senders being rejected.

About two thirds of these US based blocked items are dynamic pools (ADSL services and so on), whereas in the UK the ratio is the other way around with only about a third of UK blocks being dynamic pools.

This could be a reflection of the widespread adoption of broadband there (still in its infancy here). So there it is.

Large scale availability and take-up of broadband, plus a lax attitude to security (not confined to US citizens, this, but rather a global issue), plus a probably quite small number of people determined to take advantage of this situation (qv sobig et al) equals... Internet meltdown. Coming soon to a computer near you.

1. Jerry Carter07/09/2003 02:09:26
Homepage: http://datatribesoftwerks.com

Chris,
The percentage of blocks from US vs UK is probably proportional to the number of internet users in each country. Not only did the internet start here, but we have LOADS of people - it's a really really big country.

There's another side to it also... I live in the U.S. and we have here people from all over the world... I mean every country you've heard of. People flock here, and not all of them eager to adapt to our 40+ hour work week but not all of them uneducated. There are a lot of small groups of starting up internet business here, and wouldn't you know SPAM seems legit to them.

There is some speculation ( no joke ) that the Russian Mafia and some of the SE Asian Triads are getting into the growing business. Then of course, there was the story this week of the American who registered sound alike domain names that linked to porn. He was making millions. It's no wonder folks abuse the net - it's profitable for them, even if it comes at a cost for the backbone, ISPs and site operators.

Hopefully, Internet2 will solve these problems... though I'm sure hackers, phreakers, and spammers will always be with us so long as we have a distributed technology that can be accessed from a private location.

Jerry

2. 18/02/2004 23:48:29

I think it is lame needs more info

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