Slashdot Mirror
Jupiter Forecasts 50% Increase In Spam
Mr. Sketch writes "According to Yahoo, the amount of spam is expected to increase 50% in the next five years, meaning the average american will get over 3600 of them a year. The future of email is??"
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
I went 100% cellular to (among other things like convenience) avoid the telemarketers. Haven't had one call since, and it's been a year. I think I could live without email as well if the spam gets to be too much. Web access is a must, but I don't really need an email account. That's one sure way to avoid the spam.
Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.
It's because dummies like you keep responding to them! Stop encouraging them!!! They have no way of making you money, or giving you a horse-sized penis.
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
there is one: spambuster, at the site cloudmark dot com (soon to be /. :ed ? :-)
Actually, including the word "spam" somewhere in your address makes most spammers filter it out :)
i actually forgot 2 things (i knew i was forgetting them i just couldnt remember what they were)
ok, i'm pretty sure thats all of them now ;)
personally i won't be in any more trouble than before, because i use spamassassin.
but what comes more and more to my attention:
spam is traffic, traffic costs money. who pays for all this?
A 5 line SMS spam telling me where to send an SMS (right, great idea) to get off the SMS spam list.
This is probably because one of your 'friends' used a 'free' SMS service.
Thanks, vodaphone. (My number is listed *nowhere*)
Complain to ICSTIS, who regulate this.
http://www.icstis.org/
Direct client-side bandwidth costs are too.
All you have to do is look at the data services offered by cellular providers - Spam could easily double or triple (maybe even more) your monthly cost with such services due to the bandwidth it consumes.
As a result of spam, I can't check email from my phone. My phone (Kyocera 6035, integrated PDA/phone) is more than capable of reading mail, but the 14.4 per-minute connection (And even the unlimited Vision connection if I sacrificed coverage and got a Treo 300 on Sprint) just can't handle the 50 or so messages I get a day, 95%+ of which are spam.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
No need to get violent. No need to kill. The solution is simple, cheap, and pretty easy.
Just start using SpamAssassin. It's free and installs easily on modern unix systems using either sendmail or procmail. If you're stuck with Outlook on Windows, there's a company selling an installshield-based version for only $30 (considerably less that even the cheapest of murder plots). They claim to be working on support for other windows based clients, so if you're windows based and using another program, relief is probably on the way. They have a 2 week free trial version.
Spamassassin really works. They claim it filters about 95%, which should put your spam level between 12.5 to 15 messages per day.... very close to the desired goal of 10 (and nobody needs to die).
With SpamAssassin, every message gets a spam rating. Legitimate messages usually score under 3 points, and SpamAssassin's default threshold is 5.0 points. You can adjust the threshold where messages get filtered... I personally set mine to 7.0 because I'm a bit paranoid of losing any legit messages. But even 7.0 works great... most spam scores well over 10 points. If all your legit messages are scoring very low (quite likely), you might be able to safely lower the threshold a bit and get under that magical 10 per day. Personally, I find it filters nearly all spams even at 7.0.
Be sure to turn on all the "network" tests including the blacklists and razor. By default, these might be set to 0.0 points each, so they won't get used. They do take some time because they involve communication with other sites (very large ISPs with one mail server for thousands of uses don't want to spend that much time per message, but as an individual you almost certainly do). The blacklists often block legit messages, so give them low scores, but it's safe to set Razor (a database of known spam messages, with "fuzzy" matching) to a high value like 4.0 or even 5.0.
There's been a lot of hype lately about Bayesian filtering... and maybe someday lots of email clients will have it built in. And maybe large numbers of users will go to the trouble to sort their messages properly so the filters on each machine "learn". Maybe.
But right now, you can download SpamAssassin for free (or pay just a bit for a commercial much-easier-to-install-on-windows version), and instantly 95% of your incoming spam will be gone. Well, most people just have SpamAssassin modify the message and then they use their mail client or procmail to deliver the message to a "spam folder" (so you can occasionally look through it and remember the bad-old-days before you finally broke down and went through the not-really-that-difficult process of installing SpamAssassin).
It really works, it's free (or cheap), and it doesn't involve killing anyone.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
SpamGourmet.com offers free disposable email addresses for registrations and other limited-use applications.
You write...
"The ability to send unsolicited email to practically anyone has long been a valuable online tool for everything from online protests (like filling your Congressman's mailbox with anti- DMCA flames) to communicating with intriguing personalities. A good deal of anti-spam legislation can be interpreted in ways that infringe on this basic cyber-right..."
Ahhh... Excuse me? Can you point to any existing law that declares the sending of E-mail, or the use of ANY Internet resource for that matter, to be a fundamental "right," as opposed to the privilege (similar to a driver's license) that it is?
You are forgetting that the majority of the Internet is made up of PRIVATELY-OWNED servers, routers, switches, etc. No SysAdmin or server operator is required to accept ANY traffic that they do not wish to.
For example: The spam problem is so widespread in some Pacific Rim countries (Korea and Taiwan come immediately to mind) that I have chosen to block all mail coming from those countries. I realize that this may offend your sensibilities. Well, all I can say to that is 'My servers, my bandwidth, my rules.'
When a spammer craps in my inbox, or that of my other users, they're stealing MY resources to do it. They're shifting the cost of their advertising to me. I will not tolerate that under ANY conditions.
As one very wise individual once pointed out; "Free speech is not free when it comes postage due."
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies