American lawmakers may soon pass a bill that would attempt to make the Internet a little safer for everyone. A new report indicates that ISPs could be asked to block scam sites and emails (among other things) that invoke the name of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC). Congress Interested In Having ISPs Block Scam Sites The SIPC is, as its name might well have led you to believe, a nonprofit organization that aims to protect investors. Specifically, it steps in when brokerages shut down and tries to return investors’ money to them. So, especially once you take all of the recent bank closures into account, you can imagine how it benefits scammers to pretend to be associated with the SIPC. Representative Paul Kanjorski would like to put a stop to that. He proposed a bill that in part reads, “Any Internet service provider that, on or through a system or network controlled or operated by the Internet service provider, transmits, routes, provides connections for, or stores any material containing any misrepresentation (of the SIPC) shall be liable for any damages caused thereby, including damages suffered by the SIPC, if the Internet service provider…is aware of facts or circumstances from which it is apparent that the material contains a misrepresentation.” And that sounds reasonable enough at first listen. But of course, things aren’t always as straightforward as they seem. The first detail that needs acknowledging is that many ISPs already try to block scam sites and spam email; it simply isn’t good business to allow your customers to get robbed and/or bugged left and right. So, from a technical standpoint, it may be difficult or impossible to add additional layers of protection. Then there’s the classic slippery slope argument. Although protecting consumers from scammers is all fine and well, censorship of any sort leaves a bad taste in some people’s mouths, and concerns exist about what the government might decide to block next. Still, Declan McCullough reports that the language of Kanjorski’s bill may yet be changed, and there’s no guarantee that it’ll be passed into law, anyway.

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Congress Interested In Having ISPs Block Scam Sites

Control of the Spam and Open Relay Blocking System (SORBS) has officially changed hands. Security specialist GFI confirmed its acquisition of SORBS late yesterday, and also shared an idea or two about what it will do with the entity. GFI Acquires Spam Blocklist SORBS One of GFI’s top priorities appears to be improving the reputation of SORBS. Maintaining a list of email servers that are responsible for sending spam is a fine idea, but SORBS has been accused of being far too quick to puts stuff on its list and being far too slow to comply with removal requests. Presumably as a result, GFI told John Leyden in a statement, “GFI is now actively developing plans for the future of SORBS, including SORBS 2.0 and methods to improve SORBS data and responsiveness.” GFI then continued, “Having a reputation service within GFI will allow us to provide a better service to our customers and to greatly enhance our standing in the anti-spam community as well as give us opportunities to report on spam trends and analyze real-time feeds in ways we have not previously been able to. We are very excited about this acquisition and look forward to the benefits in the months and years to come.” SORBS’s rumored price tag was $451,000, so for the sake of both GFI and unfairly blacklisted companies and individuals, hopefully everything will get sorted out soon.

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GFI Acquires Spam Blocklist SORBS