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Forty Percent of All Email is Spam

Posted by michael on from the enlarge-your-make-money-fast-in-nigeria dept.

PCOL writes "There's an interesting article on spam in today's Washington Post which includes an inside look at AOL's spam control center in Northern Virginia. The story reports that roughly 40 percent of all e-mail traffic in the US is now spam, up from 8 percent in late 2001 and nearly doubling in the past six months; that AOL's spam filters now block 1 billion messages a day; and that spam will cost U.S. organizations more than $10 billion this year from lost productivity and the equipment, software and manpower needed to combat the problem."

6 of 623 comments (clear)

  1. Another stat by techstar25 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Ironic. Forty percent of spam is pork.

  2. Re:40% ...? by scott1853 · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's deleted by the spam filters.

  3. in other news ... by borgdows · · Score: 5, Funny

    after renaming "french fries" Congress has just decided to rename "spam" as "french email" !

  4. Re:Optimistic by grylnsmn · · Score: 5, Funny

    Oh yeah? Well I send over a million emails a day, and I'm lucky if 10 of them are legitimate!

  5. Sturgeon's Law by handy_vandal · · Score: 5, Funny

    Forty percent? That's nothing. Sturgeon's Law states that ninety percent of everything is crap.

    --
    -kgj
  6. yep, we're all doomed by gse · · Score: 5, Funny
    One billion spam email a day, just through AOL. Gosh.

    I figure I get about 425,000 a day myself at this point (er, give or take). It's at the point where it's getting painful to go through my SpamAssassin "caughtspam" folder. But there are still enough false positives (really, one is enough) that I can't send the whole thing to /dev/null.

    Meanwhile, I'm accruing a great collection of classic spam subject lines. Some examples (all real):

    • "I don't need your social security number yet"
    • "this mom loves to stick hot dogs up her cooch"
    • "Pill to Increase Your Ejaculation by 581%"
    • "i am not perfect but i suck c0ck"
    • "I got revenge by fucking! Here's proof :)"
    • "Mission: To fuck as many mothers as I can!"
    • "Fucking Machines! 13IN, .5HP, 350RPM"
    • "Your slut wife boss need some action!"
    • "#1 COLON CLEANSER! SEE PROOF"
    • "Maybe your pets dream of intercourse with you"
    Mmmm, society at its finest.
    --
    wordclock records :: flailing since 2000