[Info-vax] Desperately Seeking OpenVMS ecosystem

[Bill Gunshannon]

In article <529c4a7b$0$7157$c3e8da3$76a7c58f at news.astraweb.com>,
	JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot at vaxination.ca> writes:
> On 13-11-30 20:21, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> 
>> Yes.  100% sure.  Don't confuse Production Servers with Granny's Windows
>> ME box.
> 
> A lot of people, desktop and servers are still on XP. This is a huge
> problem because the original XP was wide open to attract viruses/botnets
> etc. And there are still millions of those boxes around.

But we were talking Servers. Ordinary people aren't running 2003, 2008
and 2012 in their homes. (Well, most aren't, I do. :-)  And, as I have
often stated here, XP can be secured and the info to do it is both free
and publicly available thanks to the US taxpayers.

> 
> 
>> Don;t blame MIcrosoft.  Brazilian ISPs openly support SPAMMERS.  The
>> quickest way to get lots of Portugese language SPAM is to join any
>> mailing list hosted out of Brazil.  I know this first hand.  Luckily
>> because it is in a foreign language it is really easy to filter.
> 
> Not sure where the spammers are located. But the invected Windows boxes
> are often in Brazil, acting as part of the cluster (botnet) which sends
> email controlled by the outfit making money from this endeavour.

Actually, most of the "infected" or "zombied" boxes are located in places
like the US and Canada.  No need to wast time trying to infect PC's when
the ISP's openly support SPAMMING, as they do in Brazil.

> 
>> Of course, you have to wonder how truly stupid they are wasting time
>> sending SPAM to Americans in any language other than English.
> 
> 
> They are getting fairly smart. I get spam from different countries in
> the world (as per the Received from: header) targetted to me as a
> canadian living in Québec. Often in french, and for canadian banks.
> Having a .ca email address does help them target the spam to me.
 
I get SPAM in english, Russian (cyrillic charset), Hebrew (hebrew
charset), Arabic (Arabic charset), Portugese, Japanese, Chinesse,
Korean and I am sure other languages I just didn't take the time
to look at.  I have no reason to assume I am being uniquely targeted
in these various languages.  And my point is that 98% of Americans
couldn't identify the language much less read it.

bill

-- 
Bill Gunshannon          |  de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n.  Three wolves
billg999 at cs.scranton.edu |  and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton   |
Scranton, Pennsylvania   |         #include <std.disclaimer.h>