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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."

4 of 623 comments (clear)

  1. Spammunition by BlackjackGuy · · Score: 5, Informative
    My spam problems have almost entirely gone away since installing Spammunition. It's a bayesian filter for MS Outlook. Wish I didn't have to use MS Outlook but it's a requirement at work.

    Bayesian filters are definitely the way to go. They flat-out *work*. Other programs I've used just didn't perform, like Cloudmark Spamnet.

  2. White list with pass code by Continental+Drift · · Score: 5, Informative
    My Eudora filters allow me to auto-reply to mail coming from someone not already in my address book. The auto-reply tells the writer to try again and put a code word in the subject line, which the filters will then bypass. This is very effective, and since I implemented it, I don't see spam. It is a bit of a pain for people writing to me the first time.

    Now, a white list like this can be bypassed by a spammer claiming to be a friend of mine. It can't claim to be me, because my filters automatically delete anything sent to my address claiming to come from me. I'm wondering if anyone else who has implemented a white list for themselves has seen any problems with it.

  3. Re:Optimistic by kring · · Score: 5, Informative

    I run a small site (~100 users) and our spam filter, which is designed to be relatively forgiving, catches about 35% of the total messages that are handled by our mail server. 40% seems pretty low to me.

  4. 40% is an understatement by Burdell · · Score: 5, Informative
    I just installed an upgraded spam filter server at the ISP I work for, and we are now filtering out almost 70% of inbound mail as spam (with basically zero false positive complaints). We combine Brightmail with the three main MAPS lists (RBL, DUL, and RSS), as well as the basic DNS based checks (for valid domains, etc.) built into the mail server, with Brightmail catching the most by far.

    You can see our mail stats here.