Slashdot Mirror
Crazy Stats on Spam
gtaylor writes "An article in the Korea Times says that market research firm Emforce has established that South Korean internet users average about 1600 pieces of spam annually, summing to around 39 billion pieces of spam per year. According to the same story, Americans receive about 2500 pieces of spam per year." I figured that I get somewhere around 30-40,000 pieces of
spam annually. Lucky me... I get *this* statistic to be on the other
side of the bell curve :)
You should spam a bunch of people with the above message, add "Would you like to know my secret?", and see how much dough you can rake in. Now *that* would be a study. :)
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
My definition, adopted from long enough ago that I can't remember who said it, is:
1. any email sent to more than 5 people who don't know the sender and didn't request the email
2. any posting on more than 5 newsgroups
Content is irrelevant.
I suppose I would say that spam is getting to be an undefined term these days. It is raking in "classic spam" and also unsolicited advertising via email or posts on non-sales-related newsgroups or weblogs. Soon it will probably include any email from anyone you don't know, or who doesn't name you in the to: or cc: lines, or whatever.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
Not just that, but you can tell who it is coming from, and warn others about it as well. For example, I have my own domain (several actually) and if I have to enter my email address online when I am buying something I always use company@[mydomain]. That way, if they sell my address, I know exactly who sold it, and can raise hell with them about it. Also, I can just put a deny in my mail server for that address and not worry about losing real mail.
Of course, this means you either control your own mail server, or have a pretty good relationship with your ISP for them to set this up. It's worth it though.
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Not necessarily. Arguing that spam must work because people keep trying it is like arguing that "Make money fast" must work because people keep sending it (or variants on it). All that's required for people to keep spamming it is that they think that it works, not that it actually does work. My guess is that the only spam that actually gets a big enough response rate to justify sending it is the kind that advertizes spamming services. Unfortunately, we'll only know for sure in 10 or 20 years when everyone who's unscrupulous enough to try spamming has done so. If they all give up because it doesn't work, we'll know that it was a failure and people were just trying it because they didn't know any better. If it keeps up indefinitely, we'll know that it does work and we'll have to start revoking net access of anyone dumb enough to reply.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Unsolicited mass emails are never going to go away 100%. It frustrates me that so much time and energy and print/webspace is given to studies and articles that don't include what I would think to be the most important indicator of spam's level of infiltration - Signal to Noise Ratio. Sure, the "average" user gets xxx Spam per day/year/minute, but on what amount of traffic? If the "average" user gets 1600 spam out of 1700 emails, that's obviously very bad, but 1600 on 170,000 emails a year is a lot better. The poster's comment about being on the wrong side of the bell curve doesn't neccesarily mean he's getting more spam than most people as a ratio of spam-to-legit-emails. I would be most interested in studies that analyze the SNR, for in doing so I think we'll see (even more clearly!!) that there is indeed a spam problem that must be dealt with through enforceable legislation and/or international agreements.
As a side note, I have taken to giving out different email addresses for every place I'm asked for one, and using a "catch-all" from my domain, for example my email address here is slashdot@theoretica.net, but it might be goatpornmailinglist@theoretica.net or vic20overclockerslist@theoretica.net for other places. That way not only can I see what spammers got my email address from where, but I can also block a given address once its been overcome with spam - you know those places where you are asked for an email address and you just *know* you are going to get spammed senseless for providing it, but you must to get a login or pwd or whatever?
I also have OE move everything that's been BCC'd to me into a spam folder, mark it as read, and review it once a week.
-- "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." (Charles Darwin)
The issue is, to many, a bit more complicated than that. Legislating away the powers of business can, and often does, have consequences far beyond what people initially understand. Granted, if the fly-by-night operators others have mentioned (selling investment opportunity, porn, and such - often on shaky legal ground) dissapeared, they won't be missed. But do you want to act in an irrational manner that would genuinely hurt legitamte business, in that one powerful tool of communication would be denied to them if the proposed law wasn't clear or too harsh?
If such a law were to be proposed, it would have to respect not only the rights of the individual, but the ability for the business to conduct itself in a fair and efficient manner. Many here have brought up some excellent points, involving opt-in only, always having a valid return adress and so on. Under a fair set of guidelines "spam" can be both containable and beneficial to us. Banning it all outright seems a bit overkill when we've actually done little (federally at least) to try to solve this problem, though I agree with you the attempts haven't gotten us far.
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." -Voltaire
We may be better off working out our own solutions, but my computer-illiterate parents sure won't be. They can barely check their e-mail. Installing filtering software is definately beyond them.
What if a law were devised that would not stop legitmate e-mail, but which would stop spam? Unlikely, you say? That's not my point. What if? Productivity would increase, ISPs would have their costs lowered, and another form of fraud could be stopped. Stopping spam should be our goal, even if the possibility exists that it could block legitimate mail. We have to try.
Synergy is your friend