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80% Of Incoming E-mail At Hotmail Is Spam
The Llama King writes: "According to this AP story at The Houston Chronicle, 80 percent of the e-mail that makes its way into Hotmail's user inboxes is spam. And that does not include the UCE caught by Hotmail's filters. This is the first of a three-part series the Associated Press is doing on spam."
Most people use their Hotmail account to sign up for newsletters, do posts to news servers, give it out to people they only just met 2 minutes ago..
Of course most of it is spam. That's not Hotmail's fault.
Most spam is the result of an account owner's own actions (direct and indirect).
Other spam is just broad coverage, i.e. people sending to aaaaa1@hot/mail.com aaaaa2@hot/mail.com aaaaa1hot/mail.com and so forth.
I hardly have any spam on Hotmail, the spam I do get I mostly get from auto-forwarded e-mails to an address I had 2 years ago.
Still, there is promised security of the MS passport system etc. In this case it looks like more like a spam enhancement system. since this is supposed to be something to verify your login across the net. This means that most email addresses there have been preverified by MS as being valid.
a gift to spammers everywhere.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Not only that. Since Hotmail implemented one-click filtering, spammers have been using to: and cc: instead of bcc: so the commercial messages you have requested get throught into your mailbox. Annoying as hell. One reason I went over to Yahoo. Later I changed to spamcop, since yahoo aka large-intrusive-popup-ad-parlour sucks :-)
No, spam does not have to work because there's so much of it. What does work is selling harvested email addresses to assholes.
I quite like getting Cindy's email.
Makes me feel good.
It's pretty much the most interesting thing that happens in my day.
hmmm.. I think I need a new job.
~the keyboard is mightier than the pen.
Finally, a well-written article that highlights the downside of spam.
...)
Yeah, we all know that email is a "powerful new marketing tool", but few have written about how much negative impact it has to the economy and our everyday lives.
I have an email address that I've never given out, and 90% of the messages I receive are spam. The email address on this posting ONLY receives spam... mostly in some funky character set that I can't bother to being to read. This address gets about 40 a day (and likely more after this posting).
So, industry self-regulation? Well that doesn't seem to work - and it didn't work with Enron (or WoldCom or Andersen or
So I think it's time that we hit them where it hurts. Pass -strong- laws. Pass laws that permit individuals to sue in certain circumstances.
They passed laws to control the misuse of FAX machines... and although not perfect, they do help. Then again, how many people do you know that have a fax machine at home? Betcha most people have unplugged theirs due to FAX Spam.
Considering Micro$oft sells your address with nanoseconds of signing up, who is surprised? There are numerous mentions of this in previous comments to /. stories involving Hotmail. The most telling of these are the ones that claim the address was never given out, and still had SPAM within minutes.
This article itself is pure spam . . It contains information we allready knew about, and it contains a commercial for Associated Press. If slashdot had a block article button, I would have pressed it.
All these things are pretty standard these days, but webmail providers (not just hotmail) don't actually seem to bother. Remember, the more times you check your inbox, the more ads they have viewed.
And we all know that. Technical solutions will curb spam. Solutions for users and consumers like Brightmail ans spamcop are steps in the right direction.
Now if only all the mail server admins (corporate and private) of the world get their collective brains together and start blocking all the spame using any combination and permutation of RBL possible, spam might not make it into our mailboxes.
SPEWS blocks ISPs. I like that. I don't receive crap from certain domains anymore since using SPEWS. I also don't accept mail from hotmai, yahoo, lycos, and many other free web-based email services except from whitelisted users.
At work I get about 15-20 spam emails daily from an old work email address when the company changed named two years ago. If only the HMFIC of email would block off that domain i'd receive none. Laws won't help in this case because the email server is located in another country. Only a technical solution.
I'm so sick of spam I run my own mail servers and filter the crap out of all mail. I receive on average 1 spam per week in my inbox. All the rest gets rejected or filtered into a spam filter that i oly perue occasionally, but I don't see it in my inbox.
Keep going SPEWS - it's a great system.
Bill,
Scott and Larry said you would like to know about this.
Are you tired of churning Hotmail accounts due to spam? Have you ever found yourself wondering if others have inside tips that are holding your back?
Wonder no more. I have the answer. Move Hotmail to Debian Linux, type 'apt-get install spamassassin razor' and your problems will be solved.
Send your credit card details now to pay for my $0.02 worth.
Patrick
1000s Warcraft Gold while you sleep
Granted, a lot of spam gets through on guesswork (such as every common permutation of John Smith @ hotmail.com) but you have to wonder if something odd is going within the company when (as a test) you register ibtgsrq at hotmail dot com and within two weeks it starts receiving the usual fake degrees, penis enlargment and general porn stuff.
subnote: ibtgsrq stands for I Bet This Gets Spam Real Quick - and it did.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Recently, I ran a script against the mail server logs, testing what email addresses receive how much mail. And I was quite surprised to find a large number of hits for mailboxes that don't exist. For example: ... ...
8 - diane@domain.com
2 - diane1@domain.com
2 - diane2@domain.com
2 - diane3@domain.com
2 - diane4@domain.com
2 - diane5@domain.com
And also, such classics as jsmith@domain.com (and all numbers attached.)
Obviously, they can't afford to do this all of the time, but do it once, and use web bugs to track who opens the message, and boom. Instant verified email addresses.
One of the better articles I've seen on how to stop spam covers Social and technical measures (Google cache), by Richard Jones - using Google because that site isn't reachable right now. It doesn't have all the answers, but has some very good ideas. Most importantly, they can be implemented by ISPs without legislation, important though that is in the medium term.
I think a combination of strong filtering, strong terms of service (e.g. take credit card numbers of those who sign up for email service, and have an automatic and substantial fine for abuse), and legislation could really help. Spammers moving offshore actually makes filtering easier, for those people who don't do a lot of business with China at any rate...
One key point is that spam-filtering should be controllable by the individual, to allow people to make sure they receive email that might look like spam (e.g. most commercial newsletters) and server-based so that nobody needs to download spam over slow dialup or mobile wireless connections. SpamAssassin is the best tool I've found so far.
> Judging from my inbox it seems that 80% of
...
> outgoing email at hotmail is spam.
If you read the message headers, you'll probably discover that most of this spam isn't actually *from* hotmail. It just shows a hotmail address in the "From:" line. The "From:" line is no more accurate than a return address written in the top left-hand corner of a letter you'd get in the mail. In other words, it can say whatever you want it to say.
And as someone who has more than one e-mail account, bring able to change "From:" without trouble is a *good* thing
-- Rick
I created a couple of throw-away hotmail accounts before my current long vacation, as something to hand out to people I really don't want to know after we say goodbye.
There were of the form (slightly changed to protect the poor accounts)
qris9.4food772a@hotmail.com and
3metre3e4w.pa7@hotmail.com
not the kind of addresses a script could guess by incrementing numbers. I carefully un-checked all the "please let M$ partners spam me" boxes as well. For the first 2 weeks after creating these accounts, not a single message came in. Then they both started getting occasional spam, obviously targeted.
A couple of weeks ago I handed out the first address to a number of people while in Spain, and then checked it regularly from cybercafes around Portugal. Within days it was getting 3-10 portuguese language spams per day. Now it gets about 20 spams per day in various languages, but the second account is still only getting 2-3 per day.
Strange.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
... with the bath water is one of the problems in fighting spam.
I use Mail Washer as a pre-processor for my email accounts. It has now turned out to take more time to weed out legitimate messages.
More and more of my legitimate email from distro lists I have subscribed to from cNet, Woody's Windows Watch and even obscure lists such as Amusing Facts Daily now show up in the ORBD and other spam lists it consults.
For instance, just coming back from vacation I had 1200 messages across five accounts. 70% were tagged as spam from a spam list. 20% of those were legitimate distro lists.
The independent spam lists do a good job of catching most of the spam, but it also catches too many legitimate lists. I try to send an email to the list admin letting them know, but typically they respond that it's not worth the effort trying to get off the lists.
I've gone through a something just like it where I was Mudrered Electronically by my ISP.
This site talks about what happens when a legitimate company gets on the list.
Do you actually know the identity of the person spamming you?
The laws should require that ISPs provide you with any and all contact information for the person assigned the IP address from where the spam originated (provided that you can provide reasonable proof that the headers are legit). I'm sick of complaining to ISPs and having them say "pay $150 to get a subpeona and then we'll tell you who spammed you -- *if* we even know."
Greg Egan is an author, programmer, and scientist.
:)
In one of his short stories, he mentions having a setup where a whitelist of people you know are allowed to send you email for free, and anything else requires a minimum payment (which can be set from 0 to as high as you want). Tired of spam? I wouldn't be, for 25 cents a spam. That'd pad my bank account nicely.
How could it be done? There are already proposed extentsions to the SMTP command set so that clients and servers could agree on an amount and pass a token to each other (be sure you're using a TLS aware MTA, like Postfix), and it could be verified by both sides with the 3rd-party escrow server (which manages the money). Paypal is the only current online money system with enough momentum to make this work well for everyone, but maybe another one will come up
Either way, it makes it easy to stop spam by removing the one thing that spammers like -- the cheapness. Only people who want spam (haha), or people who don't live in the 21st-century (MTA wise) will have to deal with the 20th century scourge known as spam.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
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> As well, Ralsky is right, you don't get the same kind of grief, you get worse. But, that's the attitude of a con artist, no true intelligence or consideration for anyone else. I say, send the spammers to China. Hell, I'll pay for their plane ticket even.
Well, if Ralsky physically moves to China (as opposed to merely spamming through Chinese ISPs), I'm all for it.
First - he'll have to spam through Chinese ISPs. Most of us have blocked China's netblocks at the router due to Chinese ISPs' unwillingness to terminate spammers.
Second - I won't pay for his plane ticket. But I will gladly pay Ralsky $5000 for a spam that says "Citizens of China! Bring freedom to Tibet, and bring freedom and prosperity to yourselves by overthrowing the Communist Party and restoring power to the rightful leaders of China, currently in exile in the independent nation of Taiwan!" (I'm sure the Falun Gong would pay Ralsky to spam on their behalf too.)
I'm equally sure that Ralsky, being such a smart entrepren00er and ethikul bidnizman, would take the money and spam from a Chinese ISP. (Ralsky's proved to himself that he's smarter than Verizon by leaving the country to escape judgement, so why should he fear a bunch of dumb Chinks? You hear that, Alan? You're smarter than a bunch of dumb Chinks, aren't you? You'll never get caught!)
30 seconds later, I'd be watching with glee as the aforementioned "dumb Chinks" he's underestimated broke through the door of his Beijing apartment and started beating the living hell out of him for his crimes against the State. Oops, guess it's not like America after all, and they're not as dumb as you thought. Aaw, poor Ralskyboy fall down go splat.
A couple of weeks later, an enterprising PLA soldier with a handycam would have a grainy videotape of Ralsky getting his just desserts - and Ralsky's relatives would be paying for the bullets.
Now, considering the fact he's brainless, spineless, heartless, lily-livered, and terminally short-sighted, I can't imagine any of his organs would be useful for transplantation. (I mean, how many people need an asshole transplant? And even the most desperate colostomy patient probably wouldn't take Ralsky's asshole in a transplant. I mean, having to force your feces to slide through that for the rest of your life? Have a little respect for your own shit, man!)
But yeah. Go to China, Ralsky. Go there, piss off the wrong people, and get your just desserts.
(Any PLA d00dz out there wanna make a bundle? Lots of us, myself included, think government is wholly evil, but you could make up for a lot of that by webcasting Ralsky's arrest, trial, and execution. The number of Americans who'd pay good money to watch such a tape in the millions.)
I've had that happen a few years ago. I traveled to a part of the US that I'd never been to before and used Hotmail to keep up on email. Within a couple of days, I was getting spam targeted for businesses in that area. This surprised me because I didn't even know what the URL's were for the businesses in that area. The people I was sending and receiving emails from also started to receive the same spam. The only explanation was that someone in that area (an ISP?) was sniffing email addresses and then selling them.
Go not unto/. for advice, for you will be told both yea and nay (but have nothing to do with the question)
My wife, for example, created a Hotmail account, even though she already has her own email address with my ISP. The only reason she created the additional Hotmail account is to serve as a junk box. Many web sites that you don't really trust ask for your email address so they can send you a login/password to use their message forum or what-have-you. Why give them your primary email address, and risk them reselling it (or endlessly spamming you themselves)? She can just use the Hotmail account whenever she's not sure about the people on the other end.
How much of the spam in there is actually Hotmail's own fault? Who knows.... We don't really care either. She just deletes everything in it, each time she signs on, after retreiving anything of value buried in all the junk.
Additionally, for major providers like AT&T, Hotmail, etc, they'll take every single username that they know of at hotmail, and try it at AT&T, and see what bounces.
Add to this the fact that they often do these tests while bouncing through 500 open relays that they don't control, and you have an extremely hard to detect, hard to control wardialer.
I think I have gotten about 3 pieces of spam the entire 2 years. This is about on par with the amount I've gotten in my ISP accounts. Now, my Yahoo accounts on the other hand...
/. is just running this story because it singles out Hotmail, which is owned by MS. If it was Yahoo then the story never would have been posted. On a completely unrelated note, I just saw an ad for VS.NET; I'm thinking of picking up a copy today :-)
Why is this? Simply because my Hotmail account is the address I give to people and sites I trust (this one for example) that I'm sure won't share it with spammers. My Yahoo acccounts serve the opposite purpose. Whenever I register to some shady looking website that just seems to want to collect names it goes to the Yahoo accounts.
I've said this before: People that sign up for Hotmail and get barraged with spam are either 1) using an easy to guess address or 2) using a numbered extension suggested to them by Hotmail eg Cindy1234567@hotmail.com. It goes to figured that every numbered extension before that is a valid address. Do you think spammers don't realize this?
Anyway, I know that
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I didn't want to leave this space blank.
"Sued by Verizon Communications for millions of dollars, spammer Alan Ralsky said he may simply move beyond the reach of U.S. courts to where service providers value cash more than complaints.
"I think China is good place to be," Ralsky said. "You don't get the same kind of grief.""
You go do that. And as more and more Chinese domains are blocked at the border Beijing will start to notice the effect it has on business there, where their businesses aren't able to reach customers that can afford such luxuries like "indoor plumbing" (with the local GDP per capita still hovering around $3600, China needs Western markets). And Beijing will start to impose new anti-spam laws with penalties ranging from all-expense paid trips to one of the interior's lovely "re-education" camps to death by an accute case of lead poisoning delivered to the back of the head (conducted in stadiums so we all had the chance to cheer them on).
Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out!
Have you looked at sneakemail? It generates permanent random mail addresses that forward back to your "real" address. You can configure the name that gets inserted into the name when it forwards (i.e. "Spanish Cypercafe One") as well as the name people see when you reply ("Mr. Fly").
It saves a lot of tedious filling out of Hotmail accounts and attracts a surprisingly small amount of spam. (And you get to find out who spammed you...)