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AOL Cans 1 billion Spams In One Day

Posted by timothy on from the high-water-mark-for-low-water-marks dept.

linuxwrangler writes "AOL announced today that its spam filters hit the 1 billion reject mark for a 24 hour period. This is an average of 28 rejects per day per member. In addition, AOL spam engineers say they receive 5.5 million spam submissions each day from AOL users. Other reports here(1) and here(2)."

7 of 405 comments (clear)

  1. What I want to know is... by AEton · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...how much of that was outgoing? i.e, how much did AOL users themselves generate? Probably more than they want to let on...

    --
    We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
  2. not to burst your anti-spam bubble, but . . . by kraksmoka · · Score: 5, Insightful
    unfortunately, i would guess that half of their spam is legitimate communications that get blocked. i have alot of email addys. but apparently, only my mac.com address gets through.

    every other letter i write to my mom gets rejected. if i am not allowed to spam my mom, who else should be????

    --
    "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
  3. Re:Failure rate? by mosch · · Score: 5, Insightful

    More importantly, how many valid emails were wrongly discarded as spam?

  4. Re:This is the most important story of the year by mstockman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Would someone mod the parent up +1 Funny, please? Because the poster can't be serious. Let's look at a few of the more obvious problems with the post:

    • You capitalized "Freedom of Speech" being usurped, so I assume you mean the freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment, which you mention at the end. Sadly for your post, that Freedom and that amendment apply only to the Government. Private institutions can suppress (that is, fail to use their own money to allow) any speech they damn well please.
    • Nobody is taking away anyone's freedoms, because each and every AOL user whose spam was blocked paid AOL to do it. Those who don't want spam blocked are Free to change to another ISP. (Oh, quit it... AOL is too an ISP. Stay on topic, all right?)
    • Finally, tons and tons of CDs, unless they appear as ISO images in your mailbox, are Junk Mail, not spam.

    Hope this clears up exactly which "rights" have been infringed here -- the rights of spammers to dump 1 billion pieces of mail into AOL users' mailboxes. And I just can't get too hot under the collar about their loss.

  5. Re:This is the most important story of the year by robi2106 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Exactly. Tell me where it says in the USA Constitution that a corporation is required to pay to support your missguided interpretation of freedom of speech? The government isn't even required to do this.

    The only thing the government can't do is supress or prevent you from doing so.

    I should be allowed to stand on the steps of the White house and demand that I be given press conference time immediately following the President, just because I am a citizen. But I should be reqected my requests and even asked to shut up and read the Constitution that I tried erroneously to wave in my defense.

    And how many spams originate from citizens of USA any way, more from outside I would venture.

    robi

  6. Don't exagurate. by stefanlasiewski · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Don't exaggerate.

    When you compare spam-blocking with Nazi atrocities, you're belittling the horror that Nazi victims experienced.

    Many of those Communists, Jews, trade unionists, Catholics were often killed in all manner of horrific ways.

    By contrast, AOL isn't killing anybody. If AOL blocks spam, somebody looses some money, and an AOL user gains some time, money & sanity.

    There can be no fair comparison of these two activities.

    --
    "Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
  7. Re:Failure rate? by Anthony+Boyd · · Score: 5, Insightful
    how many valid emails were wrongly discarded as spam?

    I can partly answer that, and say it's probably a huge number. Bigger than they want you to know. I help out with a local church's Web site. This is a church -- they're far too nice and technically inept to spam anyone. But their site is hosted on a machine that about 100 domains use. Other customers of the ISP HAVE sent spam. AOL blocks at IP address, so all 100 domains are blocked.

    So. To answer your question, a LOT of legitimate email is not getting through. I had to work with the church's ISP and AOL spam cops to get them to make an exception for the church's domain. They LEFT the other 98 domains that hadn't spammed on the block list, just because those domains hadn't complained yet. And of course, every now and then, they "forget" that they've made an exception for us, and I have to go over it all again.

    Really, AOL gets such big numbers because their system is not very efficient.

    --
    My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &