Spam News

Spam filters targeting foreign countries hurt legit URLs

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Spammers have learned to target recipients in countries other than where they are located to avoid the ire of their local governments, according to the July spam report released by web security vendor McAfee.

But because spam emails seem to come predominantly from a few country top line domains, like .cn and .ru (China and Russia, respectively), spam blockers that target those domains will hurt legitimate websites and businesses coming from those countries. Call it collateral damage in the war on spam.

"Spam has a long-term effect on international commerce. It can occur when administrators decide to block a sender's IP based entirely on geolocation," the report said. "These sorts of policy decisions … represent a digital bias against certain languages or countries that could affect legitimate communications."

The institutions providing the domain registrations for spammers thus are crippling the opportunities for legitimate domains in those countries, perhaps driving more companies into the spam business.

Examining spam subject lines by country domain, McAfee found that spammers have tailored their campaigns based on what works best in different locations.

At the same time, spammers avoid directing traffic to URLs in the countries in which they operate, McAfee said.