Slashdot Mirror
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,"
I've had the same domain name for around ten years with a catch all email acount. 1 in 3 is nothing, for me its closer to 99 out of 100.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
One third of my regular mail is junk mail, and it's been that way ever since I can remember. Why should email be any different?
See
Happy Spamiversary!
Celebrating Spam's Ten-Year Anniversary
U.S. is World Leader in Spam
This is by no means a good list of all the spam stories that have hit slashdot, just a list of the ones that seem to have no point, are glaringly obvoius, or are redundant.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Filtering doesn't mitigate the problem.
So what if I don't have to see the mail? That doesn't mean my mailserver isn't using cycles to talk to some originating server, transfer, store and eventually delete that spam. The only saving grace is I don't have to pay for bandwidth on a usage basis (cable modem is still, happily, "flat rate").
But what happens if that volume gets to be high enough that it starts to affect my ability to use the bandwidth for other things?
What we have available are basically work-arounds; we need a concrete solution that addresses the basic problem.
So what is the problem? People soliciting without you opting in? Deceitful mail designed to make you open it thinking it is from a friend? The sheer volume?
The real problem is we haven't found an effective way to trace this crap back to the people supposedly "making money" with these schemes.
Solve *that* issue... put a name, address, and bank account to that spam, and we'll clean this stuff up in a hurry!
Diplomacy is the art of saying, "Nice doggie!" until you can find a rock.
Note that the analysis says that 1/3 of all email sent is spam. This can easily be coincide with many users receiving lots more spam than this.
For instance, there might be many users which receive a larger slice of the other, legitimate 2/3, thus making up for those who receive less of it.
I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
It could be that 33% is correct, as there are some lucky souls like myself that don't get spam, but do process a lot of email.
But for those who use filters, it is likely to be >50%, since why would they be using filters if they didn't have a spam problem? I don't use a filter b/c I don't get spam, but others who are overwhelmed with it will be using filters.
I am really tired of all our calls for spam protection, whether it be through an ISP, the government, or anyone else. In my experience, companies and groups that try to filter spam unwittingly filter out true messages that were important to their clients. With increasing volumes of spam and more clever spammers, this problem is just going to get worse. On the other hand, when I set up my own filters, I manage to collect all of my spam into the same place, which I can then glance through to check for an important (missed) email. As much as I don't like spam, I want to be the one charged with protecting myself from it. As much as people dislike spam, to the best of my knowledge, at least, it isn't breaking any laws (and should even be protected under the first amendment here in the States). Caveat emptor, I say. We ought to protect ourselves.
Live free or die
I realize that it's only an option on si20. I'm complaining about the general concept of authentication, and the selfishness of the people who choose to use it... Not si20.
... is if they count the volume of "intranet" mail.
Corporations deal piles of mail on the inside, that never gets out to the genpop: HR crap, memos, meeting notices, etc. etc.
Customer relationships also generate piles of e-mail, but that should be visible to your average slashdotter who buys stuff.
I wonder if they're counting automated, machine-read e-mails such as SEC filings and other things that humans never read?
Design for Use, not Construction!
While I get tons of spam on my personal email account, my work account sees far less junk. Part of this is that I've had my work account for a shorter period of time. My work account is also publicized less. Finally, I get dozens of work related email in the course of a day. Contrast that with my personal account which receives so much junk that I don't even hide my address on slashdot anymore. That account has been in existence for about 6 years now and I only receive a few pieces of personal mail a week.
So, in short, I'd tend to believe the 32% figure. Most of my users don't have their email address published anywhere but their business card and send a lot of work related email in the course of a day.
bance.net
Interesting idea, I suppose. A company I worked with briefly was considering something like this. Email from sources not on the "whitelist" would get a kind of bounce message that directs you to a page on the company web site. The page explains the whitelist idea and asks you to do a Yahoo-style "type in the word you see in this picture" verification of non-bot-ness. Thereafter, you're on the list as OK. They still haven't implemented it company-wide though (I sent 'em an email last week and didn't get bounced ) so it probably doesn't work as smoothly as it sounds...
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
When I actually see you beat up a spammer with a baseball bat or delete all the files on his/her computer, then I'll concede to yours.
IPv4 allocations for hobbyists? join the ipalloc-l mailing-list! www.operations.net/mailman/listinfo/ipalloc-l
Nonsense. Even setting aside the obvious frauds contraband offers, unauthorized use of trademarks, etc. found in 99+% of spam, it is a violation of property rights. The First Amendment does not protect spamming any more than it protects grafitti vandalism.
At most, the law might reasonably tolerate spam if it evidences no attempt to evade filtering -- no forged headers, no "v1agra" munges, no misleading subject lines, no nothing. The use of such techniques creates a "bright line" between spamming and legitimate bulk e-mail, because it constitutes prima facie evidence of intent to intrude without permission (and, indeed, against an express prohibition).
Bottom Line: The computer-cracking laws ought to be clarified so that the evasion or spoofing of a spam filter is treated just like the evasion or spoofing of a password prompt.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
One way to reduce this ratio would be to send more legitimate email. C'mon, get sendin'!
:)
Two further points.
1) Lots of comments are talking about how much spam they _receive_, this article was talking abut how much spam is _sent_. Naturally since spam is sent in huge numbers from few originators but most people don't send any spam, there's a greater ratio of spam received per user than sent.
2) Many comments say spam is easy to block, but then talk about blocking spam to only a small population or just a few accounts. The genuine email expected by one company that e.g. supplies bathroom fittings will be easier to avoid blocking than a huge diverse population e.g. a University, where people work in many different areas on lots of different projects.
When spam blocking, avoiding false positives (blocking genuine email) is key.
Environmentalism is the new Victorianism. Everyone ties on a green corset and pretends we're virtuous.
I really do think they means One-Third of Mail NOT Spam. I've read a dozen reports in the past year that said that half of all the email was spam. I know it's not decreasing. 2.5 years ago half of the email coming into a provider I contract with was getting rejected as spam. Now that number is even higher. 1/3 my foot. 3/4 is more like it.
Let's keep things straight,
SPAM isn't "any unwanted email"
it's UCE.
Unwanted email is probably already outnumbering wanted email. But viruses are ALREADY illegal, so fudging them in with the spam, reduces the credibility of those who complain about spam, in lawmaker's eyes, who associate people who don't like spam with whiney people with no sense of discernment.
The article is about spam, which is probably reducing its "inbox percentage of total emails received"(for people who don't have gateway-level virus filters) and increasing it's "inbox percentage"(for people who block those at the gateway level, and never see the viruses).
Lumping our enemies together is great, as long as you like them outnumbering us, a faceless myriad of enemies. If you want to fight them, we gotta categorize them, unanonymize them, and take em out, one at a time.
--
I still remember the internet before spam
It was idyllic
> It's just that if they'd be a bit smarter, they could direct their spam to people who might actually WANT what they're spamming about, and get better results quicker.
What would be better about their results?
It currently costs them nearly nothing to send millions of emails to blind lists of emails and random names at random domain names.
How would spending time and effort trying to do anything sensible with that list get "better results" for a spammer?
As much as we hate it, they are behaving in the most cost-efficient way for a scumbag marketer to behave. Any extra effort expended must give better results in order to be worth it, and pissing off less people doesn't put any dollars in their pockets.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Fewer complaints, and far less likely that they would end up in court for spamming.
Seriously, if spammers had any foresight, they would at least try to target interested people. They would honor unsubscribes. They would put legitimate info in their header.
None of that would make it acceptable to me, of course, but if most spammers did that, congress wouldn't be passing laws about spam, and far fewer people would complain about it.
As they are doing it (the cheap and easy way), they are forcing people to get decent spam filters, they are convincing lawmakers that laws must be passed, and they get a lot of complaints.
If 1/3 of all the email that is SENT is spam then how is it that over 60% of the mail received is spam as reported by BrightMail a few months ago?? Does it have babies as it goes through the routers?? If so is Spam processed out of rabbit meat?
1=2 I'm confused?
I'd say that at least 30% of the physical mail I receive on a typical day is junk mail, which is just the real world version of spam. On some days, it's a lot more than 30% junk.
An interesting point about physical junk mail, by the way, is that it costs money to produce and it costs money to send. And yet, continue to get the same crap day after day. There are a lot of people out there who think that the key to stopping spam is going to be charging the sender for sending mail. But real world experience shows us that it just ain't so... physical mail costs a lot more to produce and send than anyone has proposed charging for e-mail, and we still get plenty of junk mail.
I think the real key is going to be something akin to the national do-not-call list. In fact, it could be an extension of it. You could register an address (street or e-mail) and say that you choose not to receive unsolicited commercial mail. That, combined with better regulations requring accurate sender information, could really help.
Because Slashdot wasn't when I submitted my site as a newsworthy article some time ago.
In a nutshell, my program, CF13 uses a number of simple, non-mathematic, pattern-matching tests to make it virtually impossible to get English language spam past it. These tests do not require the overhead associated with Bayesian Filtering and its ilk.
I think the key feature to it is to treat as spam all email from unapproved senders that contain more than 'spaces' and alphabetic charaters.
This simple but powerful feature makes it IMPOSSIBLE to conveniently spell email addresses, URLs, postal addresses, prices, and phone numbers. These items are neccessary for e-commerce to take place. Without them, e-commerce is IMPOSSIBLE or at least extremely difficult to conduct. It also treats as spam email containing 'non-ASCII' characters. I have gotten quite a few such emails at another email address I use infrequently--all spam (sales pitches in foreign languages).
As an added benefit, CF13 makes it 100% IMPOSSIBLE to accidentally run malware sent by email provided a particular registry setting has not been compromised. It does this by treating all email and file attachments as 'text files' that can be scanned for malware and handeled safely. Thus, one's PC CANNOT be compromised by a malicious malware HTML webpage or worm/virus/trojan email file attachment.
It also detects 'mailbombing' and handles it a manner that makes it easy to clean up afterwards.
It is probably best to fight spam at the SMTP server level but I have heard it is best to fight spam at the end user level. Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages so this issue appears to me to be a toss-up for the time being....