3 banks key to spam
By Asha

NYT has published a report on what could probably be the key to blocking most spam.  Apparently, most of the spammers use only 3 banks, and these financial institutions can be persuaded to cut off the funding and profits for spam operations

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For years, a team of computer scientists at two University of California campuses has been looking deeply into the nature of spam. Now they have concluded an experiment that is not for the faint of heart: for three months they set out to receive all the spam they could (no quarantines or filters need apply), then systematically made purchases from the Web sites advertised in the messages.

The hope, the scientists said, was to find a “choke point” that could greatly reduce the flow of spam. It turned out that 95 percent of the credit card transactions for the spam-advertised drugs and herbal remedies they bought were handled by just three financial companies — one based in Azerbaijan, one in Denmark and one in Nevis, in the West Indies.

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