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Christmas Spam Level Skyrocketing

Posted by timothy on from the bring-back-the-stockade-please dept.

dbolger writes: "ZDNet has this brief, but interesting article about how the amount of spam we recieve in our inboxes has increased 650% since this time last year. Nice to know that that anti-spam legislation passed a while back is having an effect (not)." For PINE users, just remember the magic spell: "m s r f a."

3 of 286 comments (clear)

  1. Both sites and advertisers are desperate by Artifice_Eternity · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I was laid off from a marketing/"branding"/ad firm in July, b/c they just weren't getting the web development business they once had. Banner ad rates have plummeted, and we are being assaulted by ever-more-maddening varieties of web ads (huge banners, popunders, clickthroughs, and now "shoshkeles"!?). Sites feel they have to give advertisers more for their money, simply in order to bring in the same revenue as during the dot-com boom.

    When will this madness stop? Users may flee sites that harass them too strongly. Then again, the general level of advertising in our environment has been slowly but steadily increasing for decades. I doubt this trend will stop anytime soon.

  2. Re:the rest of the world... by MS · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The rest of the world (= non-us) accounts for about 67% of all internet users, and is growing more rapidly, as there is more room for new users. The US is reaching saturation.

    Despite more than 2/3 of the Internet-users beeing non-us-citizens, 90% of all spam originates in the US. This is most likely due to permissive legislature in the US. In Italy for example collecting (e-mail)addresses and other personal data is illegal, unless you have written permission from the user, or you have a business realationship (italian law #675/96, aka privacy law).

    IMHO, stopping the increasing number of spam-mails is only possible with legislature forcing opt-in methods for advertisers and huge fines for those who don't conform.

    Ciao,
    ms

  3. Spamcop.net seems to have worked for me.. by ltm · · Score: 5, Interesting
    About a month ago, I started reporting my spam to Spamcop.net .. you sign up for a free account, and every spam you get, you post to their website. (Additionally, there's a utility out there called Spam Deputy that will auto-post selected spams to your Spamcop account from Outlook.)

    Spamcop takes the headers and fires off Abuse messages to every domain it finds in the trace of the spam.

    The results? Well, I check my email and my wife's, and we used to get roughly identicle spams .. After using SpamCop for maybe 2 weeks, my spam count dropped off the map, while her email still gets hit. I'd say I've gone from 20 spam/day to 1 spam/day.

    It's kinda spooky. Don't know why it worked for me.