One Third of Email Now Spam

Himanshu writes "The volume of spam received by business has doubled over the last two years and it's going to get worse. Analysts IDC reckons that spam represented 32 per cent of all email sent on an average day in North America in 2003, doubling from 2001. That figure is less than the 50 per cent or more junk mail statistic commonly cited by email-filtering firms like MessageLabs and Brightmail but it still represents a serious problem,"

Comments

Oh no!

[Anonymous Coward]

One-third of e-mail is spam? But nine out of ten of my e-mails are spam... Nobody loves me. :~(

Re:Oh no!

[Mateito]

> One-third of e-mail is spam? But nine out of ten
> of my e-mails are spam... Nobody loves me. :~(

Post your email address to slashdot, and we will all send you friendly emails.

Re:Oh no!

[strictnein]

if they had bothered to read the headers to my postings, they would know I'm not running Windows.

I know when I spam I always check with each person I'm going to spam that the spam I am going to spam them with is full of spam pertains to products they would like to be spammed about.

OKay then

[schnits0r]

Then who is getting the other 66.6% of my email?

Well, in that case,

[imadork]

spam really needs to catch up. I know that over half the snail-mail I get is junk mail...

Re:Well, in that case,

[Anonymous Coward]

If you live in the UK I'd say that is probably right. I work for Royal Mail, as a postman, and I'd say that just about every problem you hear on the news these days regarding your post delivery being late etc etc is caused by the volume of this crap.

Almost there...

[Anonymous Coward]

... another 2/3 to go then our job is done.

Sanford Wallace

Wow! It's down to 1/3?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's about time it started going down.

600,426,974,379,824,381,952 ways to spell Viagra

[Anonymous Coward]

"After I received 80,730 different emails trying to sell viagra, I started to wonder: How many different ways are there to spell Viagra?"

http://cockeyed.com/lessons/viagra/viagra.html

1/3 seems very low

[theManInTheYellowHat]

I think that they goofed. 1/3 of it is virus infected, another 1/3 is spam, and the remaining 1/3 are jokes from people that you barely know that are not that funny.

Re:1/3 seems very low

[brutus_007]

And another 1/3 are forwards that people send you so they don't die, don't have a lifetime sex dry-spell, grow a mustache, work for the RIAA, get money from Bill Gates/Disney/AOHELL (pick one or more). I know that's now 4/3, but if I don't wrongly use math five times within 24 hours, I will grow an arm out of my neck and I will never know true happiness. Now you've got it too!

Re:1/3 seems very low

[cK-Gunslinger]

You may laugh at this, but if you forward some of that spam to at least 10 friends, Bill Gates will send you a check for $284 dollars. I know, a friend of mine (who is a doctor!) recently received a check for $890,642! And he also knows this prince in Nigeria who is going to help him get some more...

*sigh*

I feel bad for kill-filtering my mom, but.. what can you do? :-P

So bad my spam filters are too strong

[reverendG]

I get about 2500 spams a week to my work address, and I can't change my work email. It's on my business cards, and as a DB geek they won't get me new ones :(

Because of the extreme amount of spam that I get, my Bayesian spam filters are pretty strict. I lose valid email all the time!!!

Why just this morning, I came in and was going through my spam folder, and found that my good friend Gooshot Moneyface has been trying to get in touch with me! I was wondering why I hadn't heard from her for so long.

I don't get some of them

[Dark Paladin]

OK, so some I can understand, like how to make millions of dollars by investing in some guy in Nigeria. Or increase the size of your sexual organs (though I'm disturbed by the ones that state "I went from 2" to 6"!" I mean, my 2 year old son is 2", you know? What of freaks are in these testimonials?)

But the ones I really don't understand are the "stop spam with this email!" It's like the phone company selling you caller-ID systems that block unlisted or telemarketers numbers - then sell the telemarketers systems to get through those.

That would never happen, right?

Re:I don't get some of them

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Freak,
Please stop measuring your son's penis.

Regards,
Child Protective Services

Re:I don't get some of them

[sindarin2001]

If you were my parental unit and I ever found out that you had broadcast in a public forum the size of my sex organ, I would probably start my teen angst REALLY early.

Re:I don't get some of them

[No Such Agency]

Yeah, but if your p3n1s was 2" long when you were 2 years old, imagine how big it would be now?

Re:For Our CEO it's more like 98 out of 100...

[azadrozny]

Funny, here 98% of spam comes FROM our CEO. :)

New Spam Filter

[kelseyj]

Deletes every third email. No mess, no fuss.

Re:compared with snail mail?

[gmhowell]

anyone know how these stats compare with standard mail?

Pretty well. I get nearly 100% spam in my snail mail box. Marked with things like 'Past Due', 'Gomer's Collection Agency', 'We Know Where You Live'. I just chuck it all in the trash.

How to you do...

[markan18]

to get that much spam???

I tried to get as much spam as possible in order to test spamassassin. I posted my email address on usenet and on all porn sites i've found. I have also tried installing spyware and toolbars. Internet explorer now crash on all sites but no spam so far.

Now, i resort to post my address on slashdot
sm@bigserver.hopto.org

Re:How to you do...

[blakestah]

Top ways to get spam

1) post your email address on a web page that is not robot protected from web crawlers

2) post your email address on Usenet

3) respond to a few of the "email us to be taken off this mailing list" spams

I'd bet using these three alone you can hit several hundred a day. Good luck.

And one third of Slashdot posts are First Post

[turnstyle]

And one third of Slashdot posts are First Post

Re:600,426,974,379,824,381,952 ways to spell Viagr

[Anonymous Coward]

One day I'll simply snap and actually contact a spammer with the following order:

From: my@email.com
To: spammer@email.com
Subject: Order req'uest for >X<@n4x and V1agro! fxfj aspll cps

Dea'r Si:rs,

I w.ould l1ke t0 pl@ce 4n 0rder for tw0 p.ortions of Xa:n:aX' and v_i_a_g_r_a. P13aS.e sh1p im:medi`ate1y, 1 h@ve an><1ety and ne:ed a -bo-ner-

Y0urs s.incerel'y
S@vvy 1nvest0r

akdf k- dfks. dfk v9iew casoji ropdfk hork
aso, ckdo ofgkf opwerk- mmos odkaok s
w eofk, eoro gksod bz o-

Re:Offended

[byolinux]

I DON'T LIKE SPAM!

Re:My tool

[Anne Thwacks]

Would you like your tool to be longer and harder ;-}

After spamassassin, really only a third(n/t)

[aralin]

This message contains no text. Surprisingly, all the contents of the message has fit into the subject line. Clicking at a subject line with (n/t) for 'no text' brought you to read this incoherent drivel. Thank you for participating.

"Too dumb to Live Awards"

[__aagmrb7289]

So, I'm thinking - those people who actually respond to spam? We should host an awards show for them - called "Too dumb to Live". We give them a chance to give their speeches and thank their whatevers, and then, when they leave the stage to go to the "press interviews", we can just dispatch them in some nice, efficient manner.

We should ALL do something to make the world a better place to live, ya know...

Re:My tool

[nuggetboy]

Funny, on the basis of *your* subject line, I'll bet a lot of filters would have rejected your message. (Good ideas, though, for us English-based e-mailees).