A vendor we work with just sent me a report of progress on fighting spam at work. The way Mike explained the problem really stirred thoughts about the way the radical right distributes messages and provides some valuable insight into the importance of focusing on distribution strategy for important and valuable communications.
The nature of SPAM delivery has subtlety changed, too. Previously, most SPAM came from ISPs that were either known to be SPAM-friendly, or from countries with lax laws on SPAM (Korea, China, etc.). These are easily filtered out and that's one of the things the Spamhaus service does.Now, the big problem is vast networks of compromised Windows machines with cable modem or DSL connections. Spammers can buy time on one of these networks and by using the distributed network send out millions of messages very quickly. By their very nature these networks are constantly changing as people discover their machine has been "hacked" and new machines are continually being brought into the network.
It's hard to filter this traffic out since it's always changing. And that's where a lot of the current crop of SPAM is coming from.
the nature of communication in the connected society has changed. In the past most political messages came from politicians and interest groups. The groups were identified to be bullhorns for a specific type of message and people have been able to filter them out. However, today the problem is that the radical right has compromised many different weak links in society to become their soap box. Fox (the 4th network, second rate think tanks, small conservative groups, theologically bankrupt church leaders and bamboozled small business owners. The spammers (NRA, radical conservatives and multi-national barons) hack the weak links in the network and buy time in these systems to distribute millions of messages. Eventually reality catches up with the false claims and people will understand that getting news from FOx will make you believe flawed reality (Iraq is going well, WMDs in Iraq, Saddam and Bin Laden connections). However, by the time people begin to discredit the source new churches and social networks are spreading the same message form new sources.
