Commentary--Our Own Spammers War

Last week we encountered one of the ugly sides of the internet. We began receiving 1000's of bounced email spam and requests from people to "remove" them from a non-existent list at Macs Only! While we are used to getting a dozen or two spam messages a day because our email address is public, 1000's is quite a different matter.

Most of the spam itself is illegal since it provides no statement on how to be removed from their list. But our main concern is that the spam fraudulently uses our business email address as the "From" address, destroying our reputation, getting our domain blocked on many servers and clogging our inbox with 1000's of bounced messages per day. We thought it would abate so we tolerated it for a couple of days. Unfortunately, it has not. As of publication time we are getting 100-200 bounced email messages per hour form all over the world.

Friday we decided to try fighting back. After checking WHOIS and NSLOOKUP we discovered that all of the domains which proclaimed cheap credit cards, cheap legal advice and how to explode our sex lives, etc. (we are getting loads of unmentionable ones now) in the various spam messages are owned by registrants in China, mostly Shanghai and Beijing. They have registered various nonsensical domains like dnxyb.com, 932.com, qx932.com, cgx932.com and 528214.com at Network Solutions, Inc., (VeriSign) and Tucows, Inc. Their ISP is mostly 51.net, a domain also registered in China by Tucows.

We asked for but are getting no help. We asked our host, Pair.Com, to filter the bounced messages at their server because the flood of 1000's of messages a day render our email unusable when on the road using 24-26K connection in hotels. First, they sent us a generic response and now they are no longer responding to our numerous messages suggesting how they might help. They are a huge disappointment. After over five years of doing business with Pair.Com, we may have to change hosts to one that will be more responsive. Prepare for a blackout.

We also contacted Network Solutions and Tucows, the registrars of all of the offending domains. NetSol has not responded despite repeated messages. Tucows did respond but effectively said that it's not their problem unless the registration information is not correct. When we provided evidence that some of the registration information is bogus, like non-existent Yahoo addresses of the registrants and administrative contacts, they agreed to investigate. We're waiting and still being flooded with bounced email.

While the response we received from Tucows does not agree, we see internet domain registrars as no different than motel owners who register guests. Both situations take money from a registrant and hold the power to kick people out (or off the intenet) for illegal activity. Both should be held accountable criminally and civilly for knowingly allowing illegal activity to continue. NetSol, Tucows and probably many other registrars are enriching themselves off a myriad of illegal spammer registrations which in turn are killing other legitimate internet businesses with the full knowledge of NetSol and Tucows.

So far we are losing the war with the spammers. Our requests for "reinforcements" have gone unheeded by US companies that we have done business with and are enriching themselves off these spammers. We may have to test what the courts will say but we hope not. Stay tuned.