You've Got Spam: AOL Blocks 1/2 Trillion Spam

yohaas writes "Yahoo! News is reporting that AOL blocked more than 500 billion spam messages for its users in 2003. That comes to 40 messages a day per user. The company regularly blocks 75-80% of all incoming mail as spam! The article also lists the top 10 spam phrases for the year, including such come-ons as: 'Viagra online', 'Online pharmacy', 'Get out of debt' and 'Get bigger'."

Comments

AOL Users Will Love This

[SlashdotCEO]

I can almost gurantee that about 95% of all AOL users will be thrilled. I'm a supervisor for a broadband services department and we often get customer's who switch from AOL only to find that spam/pop-ups/porn/etc on the unfiltered internet is so anonying that they want to go back to AOL immediately. Those people love to have their hand held through everything and want AOL to protect them from the internet. Almost anyone that actually uses net send probably isn't on AOL, they have a true ISP.

Short of going to war with China

[rsilvergun]

what're you gonna do? Seriously, hasn't anyone noticed that the spam is comming mostly from countries that have a technology infrastruction combined with lots of really poor people (China, India, etc.)? In a lot of those countries life is harsh. It's no wonder people turn to rather unpleasant means to better their standard of living. Sure spamming sucks, but it beats the hell out of 16 hrs/day making Nike shoes in a sweatshop. If you want spam to go away, do something about the general standard of living in the rest of the world. There are just too many desparate people around right now.