Slashdot Mirror
Forty Percent of All Email is Spam
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."
I think this is a bit optimistic. I get 300 peices of email a day, and I'm lucky if more then 50 are legitimate mail.
01101001 01100001 01101101 01101110 01101111 01110100 01100001 01101100 01100001 01110111 01111001 01100101 01110010
The srticle states that 40% of Internet traffic is Spam. And where does this statistic comec from? From Brightmail...a vendor of anti-spam software. Remember...liars, damn liars, and statisticians
Always value the individual over the system. --Bruce Lee "I don't need a Sig - I have a custom 191" - me
Aside from the AOL spam control center, most of the spam prevention discussed in this email is aimed at trying to stop the sender through legislation and black lists. Legislation will never work, and black lists are marginal.
The answer to this shortcoming in the current email infrastructure is redesigning email protocols to allow spam to be stopped as it is sent.
I don't have the answer, but something that forces the sender to verify that the recipient will accept the message before it is relayed will be a start. I also like the idea that came from Microsoft recently of forcing the sender to pay the recipient a small amount of money.
The problem with bayesian filters is that they filter too much spam. The more people that use bayesian filters, the more messages the spammers will have to send to get through. Because it is almost free to send messages, they will continue to increase the number of messages they send until it gets to a point that email infrastructure can't handle it anymore.
A follow up question: how much spam gets past their filters and do they use a standard deviation accordingly to arrive at those numbers? It is conceivable that the actual figure is higher.
(Score: -1, Stupid)
Citing "Freedom of speach", the first ammendment, etc, there still seems to be an ignorant crowd that thinks that we shouldn't have any legal means to curb spam. They still think technology can solve a social problem. As ISPs put increasingly invasive filters on email servers, legit email gets lost. When 99% of all email is spam, will you STILL think it's ok? When ISP's raise your internet fees due to spam, will you still defend its legality? When you are on the road paying $.50 / minute downloading spam for half an hour, even though your local filter blocks it from your view will you still be happy?
There are people who want to re-invent the email protocol to solve the problem. Yeah, doing something technological can help the FUTURE, but what are we going to do for the 5 years it takes to develop, implement, and deploy this new technology?
Think about it.
that the biggest purveyor of filling my postal mail box with crap that I haven't signed up for or asked for (ie: cd's and cd holders that are worthless), is now fighting spam. Give me a break! How about they stop mailing those stupid #@%@$%^& cd's and filling the landfills with garbage that doesn't degrade. They are hypocrites!
Money not found! A)bort, R)etry, D)eclare Bankruptcy
You know it's a funny thing because businesses like and hate spam. They like it because it brings in money and they hate it because they have to spend money on spam filters and lost work time.
Here is a possible solution. Spammers cover their tracks. Well instead of trying to go after spammers go after the business that use them. Those businesses MUST be traceable because they include ways to buy their product. If we must make a law, which would only work in the US, it should say "You can't hire a spammer to send your mail". Then when www.pacificmeds.com sends me a spam for "save money on prescription drugs" they can be fined.
Go after the source, not the person who fills the need. Once the need is squashed by the law spam will reduce greatly.
I agree with this principle.
At what % do we look around and say, its time for a new protocol with spam avoidance built in?
50, 60, 75?
"Sig free in '03!"
The problem is, you are still getting spam. The filter may block you from seeing most of it, and it may stop you from getting tags with linked images, etc... but it's still coming in.
You, and your ISP, are paying for the bandwidth it uses. And if you ever had to travel and get email by dialup/cellphone... you can expect that you'll notice spam simply by the large delays it takes you to download email.
Client-side filters only mask the problem... it's like having an air-freshener and big fan in a public washroom.... the stink is still lingering in the background.
With one exception......viruses. Filter these suckers out at the server. This will cut your opps I clicked on something I should not have syndrome.
Gorkman
The article stated the figure came from Brightmail not AOL.
If it was AOL or Verizon, then I would think that the numbers would be skewed as they have sued spammers and those spammers have agreed not to send spam on those networks.
Grasshopper, remember the two rules of spammers.
1. Spammers lie.
2. If a spammer says anything, see rule 1.
Fight Spammers!
Nice innit?
However did you notice in the article it said:
"nearly doubling in the past six months, according to Brightmail Inc., a major vendor of anti-spam software."
So I'm not 100% sure the stats can be believed - it's in their interest to tell you it's all doom and gloom. It's even in their interest to have you spammed, but that of course would be conspiracy theory central...
YAW.
Your head of state is a corrupt weasel, I hope you're happy.
Umm, what AOL is doing is right and proper. Is your host the MX record for a domain? No? Then noone should be accepting mail from it. Can your host be authenticated with reverse IP look-ups, crosschecked with MX? No? Then, again, noone should be getting your mail. (All except your own ISP, that is.)
This might be inconvient for you, but this system exists as a deterent to spammers. Don't like it? Get your own IP addresses for home use or host your own domain somewhere (that's what I do).
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
It's also possible that a spammer could harvest email addresses using a Outlook virus that infected one of your friends or anyone who has been sent an email that has your email address in the header (or body for that matter).
I don't know if these sort of viruses are common but if they're not now they could be in the future.
Having multiple email addresses is a good idea but, unfortunately, not a perfect solution. Once your "safe" email address is in the hands of a spammer they can pass it on to other spammers and it can become unusable quite quickly.