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."

Comments

Optimistic

[Rosonowski]

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.

Take this with a grain of salt

[mrhandstand]

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

Losing a figurative war on spam

[Nonac]

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.

isn't it ironic???

[Botchka]

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!

Go after the businesses who pay spammers

[kalislashdot]

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.

Re:now i get spam

[You're All Wrong]

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.

Re:Accuracy

[corbettw]

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).