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Spam Costs U.S. Companies $22B Annually
KoReE writes "According to this CNN article, a study at the University of Maryland says the loss of productivity from spam is costing U.S. companies $22 billion per year."
Of course, they also say people get 18.5 spam per day, and I'm tipping in at 20x that.
Since I read about a new spam study every other day, I'm wondering if that $22B price tag includes the cost of all the studies being done about the cost of spam?
didnt mention how much they earnt through having the facility of email in the first place no ?
Count me in as one of the 11% who gets (a lot) more than 40 spam e-mails a day ...
Hulk says all spammers should be SMASHED! ;-)
Funny, I get about 25 spam messages a day... now that's after the corporate firewall/antispam software has had it's hands in it... and really, any message from my boss is counted as SPAM and moved to my junk folder so, yeah, 0 spam from the world, about 25 spams from my boss... yup... near the average then I guess..
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
Of course they also say people get 18.5 spam per day, and I'm tipping in at 20x that.
Yeah, their estimate is really low. I mean, everyone runs a website that gets millions of hits a day. They apparently don't realize this.
I believe that any company that is too ignorant to install protections on their systems, or too stupid to find someone to do it for them, deserves to lose their money.
That number sounds wrong, how could spam cost anyone billions when all they have to do is hit the delete key!!!
I'm being sarcastic. Spam is a huge cost to resources, of course (probably not even counting hijacked resources, an intangible figure). Too bad the government basically told companies they CAN-SPAM as much as they want. Marketing drives America.
Yes, well, maybe you'd have less if you weren't publicly providing your email on one of the most viewed forums on the internet.
NMG
how much money is being made *because* of spam in the US?
Do they account the loss in productivity due to readers stuck on slashdot or just reading news ?
How about the industry supported by SPAM ? Someone out there is selling (and someone buying) those viagra and boob enhancers.
A telephone-based survey of adults who use the Internet found that more than three-quarters receive spam daily. The average spam messages per day is 18.5 and the average time spent per day deleting them is 2.8 minutes.
2.8 minutes to delete 18 e-mails? That's 10 seconds per mail, man that's ineffective. I'd guess the companies would save billions if their employes learned how to read and respond faster, or at least if they learned that if the e-mail subject says "c1al|z", it IS spam, no reason to verify it by reading the thing.
Where else can you get tips on great new products like penis enlargers, hair loss solutions, and debt consolidation!! And lets not even forget about the free porn pictures!!! And people see spam as a problem....I think not. God bless you spam!! Thanks for everything you have shown me!
Use them. If gmail can put filters in (FOR FREE) a company sure can come up with a solution.
> Of course they also say people get 18.5 spam per day, and I'm tipping in at 20x
> that.
18 spam a day should only take a few seconds, and therefore cost next to nothing. Perhaps if it takes you 5 mins to delete each one, and you're stupid and paid way too much money.
This dosn't take into account how much time and effort they put in to filtering out spam, and doing all this crap. I've had to abandon email address and spammers have made an entire domain of mine almost useless for sending email because they started jojobbing (forging headers to look like the mail came from my box, with random addresses so I get tons and tons of bounce messages) it when sending spam.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
>Time wasted deleting junk e-mail costs American
>businesses nearly $22 billion a year, according
>to a new study from the University of
>Maryland... The average spam messages per day
>is 18.5 and the average time spent per day
>deleting them is 2.8 minutes.
Using this same logic, I would guess that Solitaire, Minesweeper, etc. cost American businesses at least $200 billion per year. I hate spam as much as the next guy, but using the time it takes to delete spam as the basis for determing its economic impact is ridiculous. A much more accurate number would be the amount of time/money companies use to prevent spam from coming in and going out of their systems, the amount lost to phishing and other scams, etc.
JAMWiki Java-based Wiki engine
The real problem that I noticed from the study is that 4% of people have bought something advertised through spam. That's the real problem. If everyone would just ignore it, and get there *cough* all important pills elsewhere (try Mexico!) then none of us would get spam. It's a simple cost to benefit ratio, as long as enough people buy things off spam, spammers will continue to operate.
http://www.pterrys.com
I'm guessing it's not as high as $22B. In which case if all these businesses were to launch class action suits againsts spammers, they might stop once a judge order damages in the order of the loses to business.
Not all conservatives are stupid,
but it is true that most stupid people are conservative.
- Hume
And I *don't* run a million-hit-a-day website.
I *do* run my own domain, and about half of the spam is bounces from third-party forged spam.
About 10% of it, or about 100 messages a day, is to a pseudo I made up for the purpose of clicking -once- on a Green Laser Pointer web ad. I didn't get the laser pointer.
...and it costs me my soul.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
count me as one of the people who gets about 1 spam every 10 days or so across 4 accounts.
on a few occasions a message has been passed on marked spam. I can't comment on how much spam has been headed for me but filtered and not passed on.
These kind of 'calculation' assume that 100% of the time an employee is 'working' is productive work. Trust me, it is not, especially when the employee has unmonitored access to the net.
Now I don't say that employees SHOULD be productive 100% of the time. I just say that the time spent deleting spam is probably taken on 'unproductive' time anyway, not on things that need to be done.
Eureka Science News - automatically updated
Is that the same productivity cost they use when estimated how much money a "hacker" cost them when he looked at their files?
Of course they also say people get 18.5 spam per day, and I'm tipping in at 20x that.
Who's fault is that? It's not like there isn't tools to help filter that out.
As far as costing $22 billion a year, I'd say that's actually quite low. Considering what commercial antispam software costs are, how many people are actually on the web, how much bandwidth this stuff is eating up, and how much processor time is being used to filter out what CAN be filtered out. You also can't forget something as nominal as the extra electricity that's being used by devices, either the extra devices or the extra power used by existing equipment with a higher load on them. I see it being closer to the hundreds of billions, if not well past that.
I very very very rarely get spam and when I do it is quite easy to shutoff. Boy that is asking for it. For every person or company I meet I give them a unique email address. This is actually quite easy to do if you own your own domain. This helps with 2 things. 1. If a friend gets a virus that gets my address and uses it to start sending spam, I just delete that address and give them a new one. 2. If I gave a company I do business with an address and I start getting spam I just delete the address. If they say they don't sell my information then I guess I could sue them as well, since the only way someone could have gotten that address is from them. I also never give my email address out in public where I can avoid it. I know this is not possible for some public speaking peeps, but then you use a unique address for public and one for private. Then you just have to do spam filtering on 1 address. For any sites that require an email that I don't trust I just use Mailinator.
I guess people should quit eating it - I never knew.
The best posts are both flamebait and informative.
I spent 5 minutes today scratching myself when I got into work. Now if everybody in the world does that, it costs $512823812937123 TRILLION DOLLARS every other minute! Then you'll get angry CEOS who will want to enforce rules to only higher ugly women, or remove them from the work force.
This is just more serious bullshit. If they really want to do a study. See how much money is spent on men looking at women's breasts at work. They will find out that is 123190238127398071273891029837129387 TRILLION DOLLARS EVERY minute.
Do these studies ever take into account that people can't spend every single waking second at work doing work, and that it neccessary to sometimes do something different. Although spam does differ, where it is a nusance, and as such it does waste peoples time constantly. But the way the factor it by putting a value on an employees time is very in accurate.
Treat me like a marketing stat, and I'll treat your movie like a series of ones and zeros
Would I prefer that Spam be stopped dead in it's tracks? Regardless of this, yes, because it also occours to me how much time I've wasted on this problem that I could have used doing other more productive things.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
If we all just spent 5 minutes less a day, at lunch or going to the toilet, we could all save about 40 billion dolars!
char punchline [][] = {
"But man are their penises H.U.G.E!",
"They made 220 TRILLION, working from home, and you can too!",
"They expect to recoup it with an electronic transfer from a certain King Umfuuffu from Nigeria.",
""
}
Just think how many people spam employs. There's the people generating the spam, there's the people employed to increase IT capacity to deal with the spam, anti-spam activities employe a small army of people, it gives journalists something to write about, and then there's the attorneys who get paid to defend the spammers. And heaven only knows, the poor attorneys could use the work.
Spam in my cyberspace and meatspace mailboxes costs me $3 a day, based on my hourly wage and the amount of time it takes to sort through and trash it. For junk mail, I waste a little bit of the mailers' money as well by returning their "Business Reply" Envelopes stuffed full of other junk mail. Too bad we can't do something similar with spammers.
I waste far more of my day on slashdot than reading/deleting spam. Perhaps I can talk a University into letting me do research on the issue? Then we can debate it here. And I can waste more time!
Time is only "lost" and costs money if people would otherwise use it to be productive. Most people reading spam messages are doing it because they are bored and wouldn't be working anyways
This sounds a lot like the wildly fictitious "cost of hackers" reports that we have all seen before.
You don't see me declaring that theifs have cost me $120 because I have locks on my doors, do you?
I know that this is a claim of lost productivity, but people sitting in front of computers aren't 100% productive. Expecting them to be so is absurd, and pinning their less-than-perfect output on spam is just scapegoating. We all hate spam, but this is just the usual cost-hunting nonsense....
Ive tried alot of good spam products but ill tell you now I get 0 spam. I used to get close to 100 a day since my domain for my primary mail has been around since 94 I think im on every spam list ever.
I run something called Modus Mail from Vircom. Its expensive as hell but its the best by far.
For a cheap solution try xwall. Its not a mail server but its the most configurable spam gateway ever. Its like 395 bux last time i checked.
You're right! We should commission a study to study the effects of Studies on other Studies while they are being studied. It could be the next re-insurance insurance bonanza.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Are those billions counted when comparing Linux and Windows TOC?
DON'T PANIC
"4 percent of the recipients have bought something advertised through spam within the past year"
And there you have it. The source of the problem. I wish those 4% would realize that THEY are directly responsible for most of the spam in circulation. If no one bought anything from spammers, the problem would go away (since filters, education and laws don't seem to be helping).
Surely the profits on spam, selling the hardware, selling the services, etc. are large, otherwise no one would do it. SO, some people are making money on it, others are losing money on it. Does it equal out?
Vote Quimby!
"whether /. costs US Companies" like employees spending time at /. .. well like me.
If SPAM costs $22B to companies, can't they invest another $22B to push the govt into making a DECENT law vs SPAM?
Seems we see these stories about every day or two - 'companies lose $xx billion to such-and-such every year.'
Has anyone added all of these up? With the wild loss estimates from sick days, viruses, spam, major sporting events, bee stings, and Slashdot, I wouldn't be surprised if the world as a whole is running trillions of dollars in the negative...
Well what did you think would happen would you signed up for free sample address labels on freebiecrap.com?
Spam, chinese take-out, and most canned soups have a lot of sodium in them. Too much sodium for lunch has a serious negative impact on my afternoon productivity. *snore*
I am so glad that the government was able to protect the telemarketing firms freedom of speech.
Now we need a US civilians freedom of silence.
Unfortunately none of this will change through legislation. Our government is too heavily in bed with corporations and not enough concern exists for the individuals experiences. As you can see by the title of this article, it's the cost to business, not individuals, that is worth measuring and reporting on.
...they wouldn't be laughing.
There is a certain part of the population who will buy into anything. Generally they are those who would have been eaten by wolves long ago if it weren't for civilization trumping evolution. In this (relatively) enlightened age, we still have people making a mint as fortune tellers, televangelists, runners of Ponzi schemes, 'multi-level marketing', charity scams, and so on. In fact, I think that many people's tastes run to the untruth told in sonorous, comforting tones.
The Independent: Reverend Spooner Arrested in Friar Tuck Incident - ISIHAC, Historical Headlines
I think that the 4% who buy from spam, according to the article, should be castrated. Then they won't have any need to buy anything else. Unless they start selling strap-ons.
The average spam messages per day is 18.5 and the average time spent per day deleting them is 2.8 minutes.
You can tell if it is spam by reading one line. It shouldn't take that long to delete spam unless you are using Ximian Evolution.
'Same speed C but faster'
Thank you SurfControl.
The thing even checks the ldap to see if the message should even be allowed on the network. If the user isn't in ldap, the message disappears.
Ever feel like you are driving the getaway car?
They have to average the few people like you with the ones like me who get perhaps 2 per month. If you don't want spam, don't put you email address out on the net.
Of course they also say people get 18.5 spam per day, and I'm tipping in at 20x that.
My SpamTaco(tm) campaign must be working, then! Muahahahaha!
bork bork bork!
Someone should do a study about how much Slashdot cost companies in productivity each year.
I get almost no SPAM everyday. It either ends up in my spam folder or is deleted right away. So I NEVER see it and I lose no productivity.
What is wrong with the rest of you? You think that SPAM e-mail is important business sheesh
I am running Spamassassin 3.0 (using qmail-scanner) with Razor, Pyzor, clamav and F-prot. 90% of the email coming into my server (with 10 or so users) is spam, but with the Razor rules and the URI blacklists turned way up one a day or so gets through, and no false positives yet that I have found. (I won't even talk about the 30+ viri a day.) Qmail-scanner can be set to reject mail at the SMTP level too, which doesn't save much bandwidth but does prevent extra work from bounces bouncing etc.
12:50 - press return.
I think that reading about the losses incured from receiving SPAM should also be tracked. I know I just wasted some more time...
"What I need is an exact list of specific unknown problems we might encounter."
I suspect that, while the figures these studies come up with are dramatic, they don't actually reflect very much actual loss of "productivity." If time is money, and each minute equals a certain amount, then millions of employees taking several seconds to delete each spam over the course of a year is going to add up. But time isn't money; time is time. American companies need to chill out a bit.
You'd be surprised. Some people can't necessarily tell the difference between an e-mail ad from a company with whom they've already conducted business and something that looks very similar. I don't necessarily consider them all to be stupid. They may just be naive about the whole thing. I know that I've taught friends and family some of how to differentiate junk from real, and to always be suspicious of anything that comes in advertising something or asking them to validate credit card, bank account, or other financial information.
If they can be so immoral as to spam you, aren't they more likely to be crooks and defraud you as well?
Not if they're trying to be a legitimate business, or at least maintain a valid business license in the US. I won't do business with spammers, and I tell friends and family the same. They're adults, and can make decisions for themselves. Once I warn them, I've done my part.
OCO is Loco
How is it that everybody gets so much spam? HOW? Seriously, I know everybody here doesn't have an AOL account, and most likely not Hotmail or the like. I have a couple of main accounts, one of which is out there in the ether and gets ZERO spam. The other might get up to three pieces of spam every few days, but filters take care of that. I use these for sign ups, registrations, purchases, whatever. I don't plaster it on message boards or register spyware or anything. If something is suspicious to me I create a throwaway account and kill it when I'm done.
What is everybody doing to get so much? You don't actually go to and sign up at pron sites? Register stupid, spyware infested programs? Plaster your email on message boards? What is it, because I feel I'm missing out on something.
Thanks,
"Never Been 409'd"
How do they actually figure those $s? I mean, I don't doubt that spam is a problem and it does costs us, but do they really know how long it takes each of us to delete, ignore, *woops!-open* or similarly waste our time on it? I've never actually seen a study that does figure these things properly. With the virus industry for instance, I am very suspicious that the "computer viruses cost us $X" lines are way over estimated on purpose just to get more business for the anti-virus firms. But for that to be the case with spam, there has to be companies that can profit from such studies. Who would that be? Besian (sp?) filter firms? Mozilla? Were they even supporters of the study to begin with?
Just seems like a waste of time at this point. Everyone already knows this stuff is hurting us anyway.
My personal solution (and this is not a paid promotion) was to use Firefox. Instead of spending nearly an hour every day deleting spam, I now spend about 5 minutes. That's my solution. And seeing as the government won't do anything about this anytime soon, I think it's one that most people will end up using.
and make a fake email account and then try to fill it with as much spam as you can find.
after about a year i`m 15,000 messages strong and it's keeps my real email box clean and useful
I know it isn't because it was sent by my Mom! I don't know where she gets the time to research so many products, but damn do I ever appreciate it!
--- What?
Six months ago, I was getting about 500 spams/day across them all. Last week's daily average was 46,000.
Thanks to spamassassin, my costs are low. I once rolled my own RBL, SPF, and keyword blocking, but SA's coverage of them all is outstanding. I also recommend the SARS filters for SA.
What is really interesting to me is how much the distribution of delivery varies so widely over domain and username spaces. Some get none (literally zero), others get bombarded, with nothing different except the domain name itself.
So truly, YMMV.
$0.02,
ptd
I'm an animal lover -- they're delicious!
"Of course they also say people get 18.5 spam per day, and I'm tipping in at 20x that."
I can see that being accurate because of grandma's who only check their e-mail once a month. They also never post there e-mail address on web groups and web pages, and they never go into chat rooms. They have almost no Internet presence therefore they have almost no exposure to Spam harvesters.
The same thing is true of pranksters who sign up with services like Hotmail or 2d.com. They sign up, send a stupid message and never check it again.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
About 4-5 months ago, apparently a script-kiddie spammer misconfigured his spam mailer and I got 2,762 spam messages (all from the same mailer with the same content) in a three-hour period.
And they said zombies weren't real!
It troubles me that the highly ranked Computer Science department at College Park (Alumni, go TERPS!) doesn't seem to have a hand in this. I guess 4.5 years of hating the business students for having free time on there hands and still maintaining a high GPA has sullied my perception of the business school.
Ehh...this is the life we chose.
As much as I'd like to see the spam problem in exaggerated terms in order to motivate something to solve the problem entirely (and that includes 'accidental death of spammers' either financially or otherwise) I just don't buy it.
I mean there are individual industries out there losing money of that magnitude due to other internet activities (music, movies, software) and the response to that heavy loss is new legislation. I don't see a strong response to the spam problem... in fact, I see government response as 'careful' to the point of making spam legal.
I don't think the term "loss" should be used so easily. I do not believe for a second that $22Billion would return to our economy if spam ceased this very minute. The same goes for the earnings of the entertainment and software industries -- if their complaints were answered with an instantaneous halt to whatever activities they are bitching about, I don't see billions of dollars rushing into their bank accounts... at least not added billions.
A "loss" should be measured carefully and stated even more carefully. It's rather like saying "this court activity cost the tax payers $XXXXX money" and they include the regular salaries of those who are involved and would have been paid that same amount had they not been involved. So I'd like to see these types of operational costs left out of the equation. A loss should be any cost ABOVE normal operational costs should the problem magically disappear.
How much money are US companies making off of spam?
Does this study take into account the amount of productivity of all the spammers out there? Surely some of them are getting paid for spamming, so that should be added to (or subtracted from?) the total...
And they said zombies weren't real!
What about the loss of time it took workers to complete the phone survey?
Oh, and I don't want a free iMac, iPod or iMiniMac either. Stop it. Just stop it.
Lets say an employee takes 12 minutes per day to delete spam and then thats 60 mins per day. If each employee costs $20 per hour then each employee costs $20 per week. If the company employs 2000 people then it's costing $40,000 per week.... and that's just one medium sized company
If you ran a company and you were told that each employee was going to lose 12 minutes a day whilst on your payroll you wouldn't call this just the usual cost-hunting nonsense
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
Same problem with the bandit signs along the streets. If people would quit calling to buy something from them, it'd almost crawl to a halt.
. html
see www.causs.org, www.uglylitter.com or for a good story on the problem, http://www.cockeyed.com/workfromhome/workfromhome
Perhaps most striking is that this figure is 0.2% of GDP. Assuming that this money is lost production, then we could boost GDP by 0.2% a year by solving the spam problem. This is a big boost! Of course its really not that simple, but you get my point.
does this include people who destroy stuff out of frustration?
By reading this, you have given me brief control of your mind.
...when there are so many good Open Source and, mor important, FREE programs out there. I use DSPAM, which works like a charm. It catches my spam far better than the crap we have at work, learns on its own, and is a very powerful system. After a little while of using it, it was catching nearly all of my spam and now I get < 1 spam mail a week in my inbox of that. It's even better than than gmail's spam protection (although not by much).
And I run my own domain, my own mail server, and my own website.
Some of those gurlz are worth at least ten seconds!
$22 Billion? Hell, that's about how much the nation's corporations spend in ONE DAY on their employees reading Slashdot!
No, seriously!
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
My spam inflow is increasing each and every month:
Jul 2004: between 22000 and 23000
Nov 2004: between 38000 and 39000
Dec 2004: 45663
Jan 2005: 59097
Feb 2005: ~3500 so far
I may be a lowly AC here, but these are real numbers. (I'm not in front of my email right now and I don't remember the numbers for other months.)
Needless to say, it gets annoying to delete ~2000 unsolicited commercial emails each and every day. My legitimate emails number less than 50 per day.
What if you were required to give a physical street address to set up an email account? Say they asked for your street address when you register, and two days later you get your first password in the mail.
Then if someone reports that they are getting spam from meaninglessLetters@provider.com the email provider can have them shut down, and their physical street address can be blacklisted. No more passwords will be mailed to that address.
How often do you change addresses? This would be a slight inconvenience for most of us, but it could cripple spammers...
Okay, let's discuss antispam products. Now that we're getting big enough, the money people are letting us set up a system. We're testing NetCleanse and Barracuda.
Opinions?
I started agressively firewalling off spammy isps sometime ago, and its really paid off for me. I get maybe 1 spam a week (i check 10 different accounts). 5 different rbl's catch whatever spam my firewall doesnt get.
By carefully white listing people dumb enough to host on a spammy isp whose email i still want, i dont have a problem with collateral damage either.
http://mail.btfh.net/spam.txt
http://mail.btfh.net/asia-spam.txt
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
Yeah, but how much does /. cost companies annually?
If you get two of those nigerian mail scams in one day, tell them both you have a friend who could help them, but they have to be very discreet about their offer and get to know the person first. Then send them the mail of the other spammer.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Ever tried the mail filtering on Mozilla Thunderbird or Apple's Mail.app? After a bit of "training" the program, it can do all of the deleting for you. Both are free for their respective platforms, so no real cost there.
2.8 minutes x 200 days x 100,000,000 workers with email = 56 billion minutes ~= 1 billion work hours. The median hourly wage is $18.
you mean to tell me that 400 people bought penis enlargement pills?
I just haven't seen any exaggurated lumps in my coworker's pants lately. But then again since I bought my penis enlarger from that great internet ad campaign, maybe everyone else's just seems smaller...
trumping? ignoring the vital lessons that some people are just too stupid to live more like :)
Fortunately for us all, dilligent corporations are applying an old remedy to bring these costs down.
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
Studies like this always annoy me. The monetary value is based on the assumption that people spend 100% of their day working when in reality it is more like 60%. Most employees simply aim for the status quo and plan out their days so they just do what needs to be done for that day. The 2.8 minutes per day is probably taken out of their Solitare time anyway.
Also, I doubt this study takes into account the money that goes into IT/consulting for setting up systems and procedures that block spam.
Either way, I'm not much of a fan of spam and if people want to use republican-esque scare tactics to raise awareness of the problem, I'm all for it.
Remember: Statistics is the hands of the ignorant are more dangerous than a gun in the hands of a child.
Since I read about a new spam study every other day, I'm wondering if that $22B price tag includes the cost of all the studies being done about the cost of spam?
/.?
All of these "annual amount of money lost due to X" studies are bullshit.
This is saying that $22B a year is "lost" due to people spending an average of 2.8 minutes a day deleting emails.
Well, how much paper has email saved over the years? How much time has email saved? How much does taking a dump cost businesses annually? What about reading
I've been hearing these "take a miniscule amount of thing X and multiply it by the number of people Y and report REALLY BIG NUMBER Z" studies all my life.
Who cares?
Lets do a more interesting and relevant study for people for a change. How many hundreds of millions of dollars would be saved if we switched to a 4 day workweek? How about the quality of life for everyone having at least 3 day weekends every week? That sounds interesting.
Not surprising, considering the US of A send out most of it.
Oh, and I have this hilarious email that you just have to read. Make sure you pass it on to everyone in your address book, and make sure you do not use BCC so everyone can get my address as well.
Solution to SPAM, change your address with each new President.
Um... K.
It's only *lost* productivity if they *would be* doing something else its place. I'd wager that most people do what has to get done, nothing more. If they didn't have to delete spam, they'd simply spend more time at the water cooler.
sig
"How many hundreds of millions of dollars would be saved if we switched to a 4 day workweek? How about the quality of life for everyone having at least 3 day weekends every week? That sounds interesting."
Actually, they sound like the same thing...
But if you have 4000 mail accounts you need both a antivirus and a antispam server. It needs to be seperate serveres due to the volume of email and you need two of each for redundancy. Then you need to allocate people to maintain them. Spam filters for 4000 people is not a fire and forget issue. It needs daily maintainance.
All these figures do show up directly in the list of expences
Well at least recieving spam can inflate your popularity like nothing else can. You don't have to cool or in the lastest fashions you can just simply advertise how much email you get in a day. All you need to do is let the world see your email address or the domain name that your email address runs on and then you can compete with others for web popularity.
Maybe we all look at this the wrong way? Maybe the SPAM is meant to help us increase our self-esteem? I know it sounds crazy but you know advertising people always have our best interests at heart.
Hey you got spare time?! Why not spend it cleaning out your 1000 email inbox daily?! At least you don't have to visit websites to get this information they feed it directly to your inbox! Who ever said being popular would be easy...
"Hey Bob I got 10,000 emails today."
"Geez Eric that's not fair I only got 1,000 I must be doing something wrong."
lost worker productivity among end users is just one important factor in the total cost of spam.
there are a number of other important factors, including:
Assuming 92% of the users use IE and default to MSN.
2/3 of the workforce 100 million
5 minutes per day
245 workdays per year
$20 / hour
$40.8B
See there's the real threat.
So if users would just give up IE, we could kiss the Social Security Issues goodbye
Come on GWB, you just aren't trying, think outside the box
If you want a 4 day work week you need a union not bullshit "studies".
I think the author just outed himself as a major part of the problem. If he gets 20x the average amount of spam, then he is costing his company a disproportionate amount of efficiency. Maybe the best solution for them is to just fire him.
Now I need to find out what he does for a living to determine if I just found a way to open up a potential job for me.
Via news and events info at website of the Center for Excellence in Service at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business
As some employees claim to read the mails in question, some have even purchased the products advertized, it appears that the bulk of this cost isn't that the mails are sent but that the employees are willfully seeking distractions in the first place. I would call this the usual cost-hunting nonsense, because people sitting in front of modern computers are not machines.
These are web-connected, multi-tasking, bright-colors-and-lights computers, and expecting employees to stay constantly focused on the task at hand is folly, at best.
I mean, look at me. I'm checking out slashdot while waiting for my build to finish when I could be answering work emails or reading code that I'm about to change. It is a personal decision that one could construe to have cost the company money, but it's really more a part of conducting business with human employees.
If you had read the article in question, you would have found that, of those surveyed, the average time supposedly spent deleting the 18.5 spam messages received per day was 2.8 minutes, rather than 12. I spend more than 2.8 minutes per day going to the restroom.
Do we see reports on CNN saying that allowing employees to use the facilities costs businesses $44 Billion/year? Should we all be in diapers to increase productivity? Would it increase productivity to be in diapers? I know that this is an inevitable result of employing non-slave labor, but the point here is that attempting to quantify these costs in an attempt to demonize spam is an exercise in futility.
OpenBSD's spamd can be configured to protect any sort of RFC822 MTA running on any platform, and it will put an end to spam. I hear that Postgrey does pretty well too.
If you are willing to live with a 5 minute delay in email from a previously unknown sender, then why torture yourselves any further?
Easier way to find out the bulk of the cost is to see how much enterprise-level anti-spam software product was sold. Then consider costs like server hardware upgrade, training, $ub$cription fee$, cost of staff time to complete white/black lists and false positive searches. And this doesn't take into account personal computers either!!!
Or you could start your own business. Of course, you'd go out of business rather quickly, since your competitors would have an extra day up on you every week.
Your comment would be taken more seriously if you linked to a domain that wasn't for sale.
4 percent of the recipients have bought something advertised through spam within the past year.
So, the 22 or so billion $ in spam generated economic activity. Was this economic activity good or bad for the economy? Was the economic activity generated more than the expense of the spam?
Don't get me wrong - I'd like to see spam go away as much as the next person, but doesn't someone need to ask the question?
Average spam per day .. 18.5
.. 10 seconds
.. Priceless
Time to read each one
Having a bigger penis
What the article says:
"Companies losing billions because of blah blah blah"
What the article really means:
"Companies will soon be sueing for billions because of blah blah blah"
I generally agree with you, but I think there is a bit of a difference between an employee dealing with spam and an employee otherwise being nonproductive. The thing is, most office jobs these days are *dependent* on e-mail -- in other words, an employee *needs* to deal with spam in order to do their job. Imagine if you had to run through an obstacle course in order to do your job. It's not really the same as surfing /. or playing Solitaire because you could still do your job if you didn't do those things -- you couldn't do your job if you didn't deal with spam.
Further analysis reveals 14% of those surveyed are complete idiots. 4% of those surveyed are utter morons and should be removed from the gene pool immediately. The news article supports these findings.
I don't know, but your mom really likes to scream my name!
Instant Karma's gonna get you...
Of course they also say people get 18.5 spam per day, and I'm tipping in at 20x that.
My 9 year old domain was getting flooded with over 5000 emails a day. I finally screamed to my ISP and was given a way to stop some of the emails at the server. Now I'm down to about 300 a day, with filtering in my Mozilla mail client taking care of the rest. It's frikkin' ridiculous what the average email user has to put up with. I'm for any and all legislation that shuts these rat bastards down.
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***
*sniff* mommy?
The whole point is to build a social network, which can be used to target marketing at peer groups or sell to uncle sam.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Last year CBS News reported on its website that the adult entertainment is a $10 billion industry. The frame costs more than the painting.
I'm not a Troll, it's reverse psychology.
If it costs the companies this much, it's really a cost that the customers are paying. Do you think your ISP doesn't charge customers for the extra bandwidth and human resources wasted by SPAM?
The "$22B" is pretty crazy, but it's nearly impossible to stay 100% productive during the workday anyhow. Let's face it, between checking personal email, using the restroom, buying coffee/soda, chating with your peers, sitting in useless meetings, reading SlashDot, and zoning out, most humans (let's not just blame Americans) don't do a whole lot at work. Period. So what if we lost a few more minutes a day deleting our "generic viagra" SPAM. Of course, if the "$22B" quote causes a change that punishes SPAMMERS, then I'm glad it was found. On a side note, how can a SPAMMER be happy with himself/herself? Pissing off the world isn't a very fulfilling career.
Certainly SPAM sells products and services otherwise we wouldn't be inundated with it.
Lisa: "That's specious reasoning, by that logic, I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away."
Homer: "Really? How does it work?"
Lisa: "It doesn't! It's just a stupid rock! But you don't see any tigers around, do you?"
Homer: "I would like to buy your rock."
------------
So, how many rocks can I put you down for?
/. has cost US companies $220Billion per year due to loss of productivity
I am harvesting funny/good quotes. Please help by putting them in your sigs
Most SPAM is transmitted from Windows (anyone have exact figures). This is due to defects in Windows that should not have been shipped. Perhaps we should send the bill to Microsoft, the main contributing factor to the problem. If doctors have to pay for not ordering C-sections Microsoft can pay for its messes until the offending Windows systems have been replaced oe repaired.
You only use 2% of your DNA
Of course they also say people get 18.5 spam per day, and I'm tipping in at 20x that. Probably because you're dumb enough to post your real email address on the front page of slashdot. That is the equivalent of joining a 10,000 person orgy and complaining about STDs.
"they also say people get 18.5 spam per day"
Now does this mean that they were sent 18.5 spams perday, or on average they received 18.5?
Their is a huge difference between what is sent, and what the person will auctially receive in their inbox, be it from the ISP blocking it for some various reason, spam software false emails used on websites (could a person be sent a spam, but not get the spam because it can not read their email address correctly (someoneATsomeplaceDOTcom)).
I only receive about 2 spams aday, this is after my spam software on my PC, outlook doing its thing, and our exchange server, as well as virus protection on server skimming out the bad ones. But im sure I have hundreds a week sent to me.
TruePunk | Games
I have my own domain too.
I have a "catch all" which routes all emails to a couple of accounts.
Then I split them back up with the non-legitimate account names going directly to the trash.
Every email I send has a return address that identifies who I sent it to. If I didn't write to you, I don't want to hear from you.
If I do get Span from that account, I email the Spam to the originator warning them that it has occured (secure your servers) and change the account name.
Since then my Spam count has gone to nearly zero.
I should be getting more Spam (more names on the emails) but instead I find that my connunications are left alone.
I don't even know why but its working.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
A 1999 survey making news in 2005? Wtg cnn, way to keep up with the times.
Why do overlook and oversee mean opposite things?
Rather then go after the SPAM generating operations (who seem to hide with great skill), companies who are supporting the SPAM services should be charged with heavy fines.
This should kill the SPAM market very effectively.
I get 2000 a day... THough i admit that its to my entire domain and not just me personally..
..
Personally, i guess its several hundred.. Thats what i get for using a common name i suppose
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Even if you have great filters that can get rid of 99.999% of the spam, without dealing with the source, the number of spams will just keep increasing.
Eventually, it will become a DDoS attack on your mail server.
It doesn't take too many xDSL/cable zombies with 256Kb/s capped upload to flood a company's T-1 for email.
We need to start focusing on actually solving the problem rather than just filtering the effects.
I would have said the same thing. Like, why do I always get these viruses? Have you considered a firewall?
You're making a sexist assumption that only males get Spam.
There should a Spam report breaking things down by sex, age, national origin, whatever, so we could gauge the effectiveness of Spam lists.
Selling Viagra knock-offs to 4 year old girls is just wrong.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
No, it merely assumes that 100% of the time an employee is working is paid time, which it is unless you get paid in proportion to your productivity rather than by the hour. The article refers to "average U.S. wages" without regard to work efficiency.
That's impossible to tell in general, as it probably varies a lot between workplaces. If the employees of one company have so little to do that they read e-mail just to kill time, then sure spam isn't affecting their work. At another company, e-mail may constitute a crucial part of the corporate infrastructure. The junk mail simply won't wait for the coffee break, when the recipient is no longer doing anything important. And if my boss told me to use my spare time to delete junk mail from my office mailbox, I'd forward all my mail to him and ask him to print out anything I really should spend time on and leave it on my desk.
As soon as the spammers catch on to that one, I'll start additional filtering, refusing mail not encrypted to my obnoxiously long PGP key. Though I expect that doing that will cause ALL mail to stop...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Don't take it from me. The onion has this exclusive story featured appropriately this week.
this is nothing. My company still claims that any network traffic passing thru our firewall costs them $3/MB.
doesn't make the news.
Lots of Spam-purchasers (the client base for the Spammers) see NO RETURN ON THEIR INVESTMENT. They can afford it for a while because its so cheap compared to previous channels but the ultimately close up shop and go away.
The problem is the new suckers out there who buy Spam services to prop up their sagging sales.
Advertising is an inherently inprobable business on the Net.
Traditionally you justify advertising with the argument that "If nobody knows you're selling this [widget name here] nobody's going to buy it. And it IS true.
The problem is with the Web, you can search and find. There is NO JUSTIFICATION for any outfit with a Web presence to advertise. That's what Search engines are for.
Its only the companies without a web presence (either through ignorance or insuficient resources,) who thing they NEED to Spam.
The Spammers client base deserve pity, and a quick dose of reality, to stop spamming.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
How much for
People reading Slashdot at work? $5 billion?
People replying to Slashdot messages? $3 billion?
Web sties sideline while be "slashdotted"? $3 billion?
Hell ya, that was one marketing scheme that backfired as far as I'm concerned. Google wants me to have to "know somebody" or grovel to someone for some fricken free webmail? Fuck that shit! I have more email accounts than I need already.
A) No spam at work.
I guess the intranet monkeys who work for Deloitte & Touche are doing SOMEthing right.
B) No spam at home.
After getting fed up, I redirected my spam-infested email address to an autoreply which posed a simple riddle to determine my new email address, that humans who knew me could figure out but not machines. My new email address is owned by my domain, and THAT in turn gets redirected to my GMail account. When I picked the account, I made sure it wasn't easily guessable, and longer than a few characters... and when I need to enter in an email address on ANY site online, I use a mailinator.com disposable email address if at ALL possible. Hey, no spam at all! Zilch! How about that? Why is this so hard in this day and age???
Maybe I should start an antispam consulting practice. Clean all this shit up real fast...
Every time a spam study comes out, everybody seems to want to one up the last person
and claim that they receive more spam than anyone else. When will they realize that
they're just advertising their stupdity to the rest of the world.
Hint - don't give your email address to the all the porn sites you visit, all the dating
services you subscribe to, to get Viagra for more than your DR would charge, or to
get a software crack that doesn't even work
It is not rocket science people.
If this happened more often my mailbox would be a lot happier.
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. - Martin Luther King, Jr.
If each employee costs $20 per hour then each employee costs $20 per week. If the company employs 2000 people then it's costing $40,000 per week.... and that's just one medium sized company
That assumes that these companies hire the employees for 12 minutes more per day due to spam. This is highly unlikely.
As the sage said:
Lies, damn lies, and statistics.
However, this kind of study is the reply to the "just hit delete" people. Spam is not just a couple of seconds. It adds up to billions of dollars lost, so that a very small handful of people can make millions, and a few companies can make a few more sales. This is a negative gain for society, which means there is every reason to do something about it. The point is not the number, but the order of magnitude (which may be off by one or two). If the study isn't too fundamentally flawed, then it will give an indication of how big the problem is.
There are a lot of better things to study, of course. Many of them have been submitted for grant money. The democrats will say that Bush is funding the war instead of useful research. The republicans will say that the democrats would raise taxes to fund research into the wrong things. The libertarians would say that the government shouldn't fund any of it, and private companies will have so much tax savings that they will fund it themselves. The scientists just submit applications and then work on the ones that get approved.
Even my piddily little domain, because it has a catch-all for invalid addresses, rakes in about 3700 messages a day. Spam killers help get rid of it, but what a nuisance.
It's getting to the point where the web traffic for a typical domain is less than spam traffic.
BOSTON--According to a report released Monday by Boston University's School of Lifestyle Management, more than 180 trillion leisure hours were lost to work in 2004.
Read more at the onion.
This should've been the title... "The Spam industry added $22B to the IT business"
As about all of us can attest to, the amount of spam email is far greater than the amount of real email. This means that our real communications with each other (the signal) is difficult to find within the mass of spam (the noise). In order for Big Brother to keep track of our email and internet communications (a dream of the national "security" bulldogs), they need to find this signal within the noise. The less spam, the easier it will be to find the signal, and the more exposed your sensitive communications will be.
I say keep the spam and work on developing spam filter tools. Its best for all of us we keep most of the flashing lights on the internet just white noise.
-Dave
6th Street Radio @ddombrowsky
How much would it cost businesses annually to prohibit the taking of dumps?
So, it would only take 7 zombies (at 256Kb/s capped upload) to completely flood it.
254Kb/s * 7 = 1.792Mb/s
See? You do learn things on
This has to do with companies receiving spam sent by zombies.
Again, it only takes 7 zombies to completely flood a T-1 line. And with higher bandwidth available for home users, this is only going to get worse.WTF? There are fewer Linux boxes connected to the Internet than there are Windows boxes.No, you do not have the background to understand the problem I'm identifying. There's a big difference there.
You don't understand what "bandwidth" is or what a T-1 is.
You don't understand that spam takes bandwidth.
You don't understand that more spam means more bandwidth.
10 years ago, I could (and did) run email services for companies using a single 2400b/s modem. Now that would be impossible. Companies get more spam than that size pipe could move.
Nor would a 56Kb/s modem work and for the same reason, too much spam.
So, over time, the amount of bandwidth taken by spam has increased to the point where larger pipes are needed just to handle email.
Is that simple enough for you? So the problem is how do we cut off the supply of spam at the source, rather than just filtering it once we've already received it.
Here's a good trick to illustrate how it works.
On the email server for your company, cut down the threads handling incoming email to 2. Then see how many problems you have receiving legitimate email because your server is too busy processing spam.
Exactly! I see these "fill in the blank" cost businesses X billion dollars articles all the time, and I always think they are a joke. It's been new Star Wars movie releases (really, workers were going to take days off in droves, costing businesses $500 billion or something), Super Bowls, itchy butts, and who knows what all. These things aren't stamps. They aren't salaries, they aren't even workers comp. I think it creates a historical whiny attitude that does no service to the idea that spam is really annoying and can't we do something about it?
San Francisco Photographers
How can you tell the difference between a legal and illegal cab? Time for a Public Service Slashdot Post. :)
I have wasted at least 15 days of my time because of spammers over the years. That's just my personal life. Do the math; 10 minutes a day is about 2.5 days a year. That's counting everything from finding and maintaining filters to going through the crap that gets through to going through the tagged stuff to improve the filters, etc. It doesn't count the time spent helping my wife do the same thing.
The scumbags basically killed me 15 days before I would have died. And they keep killing me a little bit earlier every day.
I say, put their heads on pikes. They're murderers.
... a study says.
Aren't these studies a bit arbitrary?
So if spam stops, suddenly companies will be richer and pass that money to the employees and consumers?
The formula is a bit more complicated.
And what all the people employed to remove spam?
Yes, spam sucks and waste a lot of time.
The other the person in front of me in the grocery store cost me $10 in time, by running back and getting toilet paper with no price tag.
$22 billion? They must be using the same loss accountants as the RIAA. How much does it costs for everyone to scratch thier arse and get a cup of coffee in the morning? Any company with sense builds unproductive time into thier estimates, 8hr day ~ 6.5hr productive work and everyone goes home on time.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
The book "Demon haunted world" by Carl Sagan expresses your point well. However I'm not sure about "civilization trumping evolution". Evolution is what drives civilization and the blind driver is not bothered by the environmental brick wall ahead, it has gazillions of "blue dots" to experiment with.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
No one is going to be 100% effective 100% of the day.
On the other hand, have you ever tried telling this to a manager or executive? Even in physically demanding jobs such as assembly lines, companies have spent millions (billions?) on how to squeeze out another tenth of a percentage of work out of people. Most likely, they spend more money that they would compensate for, and in the long run this has a negative affect on the worker, which lowers their productivity even further than it would have been otherwise.
Basically, you are giving the slack argument, and there is something to it, but the majority of managers and executives have their heads so far up their arses that they can't see it.
On yet another hand, dealing with spam is not pleasant. Yes, it is a break from real work but it is such a nuisance that it probably frustrates most people a lot more than real work issues.
And now I forget whose point I'm defending?
And I don't care anymore.
Forget it.
You're both right.
I hate Liberals and Conservatives.
If you are a Liberal or a Conservative, then HAVE A NICE DAY!
Courage.
Mexico? all my e-mails tell me to go to Canada!
Hey Friend!
I can tell you the best place to go to get those "special pills" is actually in Mexico.
Convient shopping right across the border.
I'm talking about Bun-Bun's Black Market Viagra.
Buy our viagra or a cute little bunny rabbit will cut your throat!
ka-klick!
I hate Liberals and Conservatives.
If you are a Liberal or a Conservative, then HAVE A NICE DAY!
Courage.
Generally they are those who would have been eaten by wolves long ago if it weren't for civilization trumping evolution.
With any luck, the people buying from spammers will win enough Darwin Awards that they die out, and then the spammers will die out when they have no one left to prey on.
We can only hope.
I hate Liberals and Conservatives.
If you are a Liberal or a Conservative, then HAVE A NICE DAY!
Courage.
http://shit.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/04/1 542250
Where are these posters coming from, the ones trying to trivialize the evilness of spam?
Are they spammers trying to justify their existence? Maybe some of them have relatives in the spam business, or have worked in the business? Are they just the kinds of people that go out in the street early in the morning and sing LA-LA-LA and spin in circles?
How can any right thinking person not realize that spammers have cost us a lot, a whole lot more than any one person has figured out yet.
How can you add up the number of people that have changed their world view, their opinion of their fellow human beings because of the outrageous behavior of these spammers.
Lets say you are the kind of person that likes to help other people so you hang out on Usenet in help groups. Or maybe you put together some web pages just to share stuff with the rest of the world. Then one day you find that what seemed to be a logical thing to do, using your real email address has opened you up to a world of hurt. You get hundreds of spam messages a day. Maybe that person starts to think those strangers that he was helping aren't such nice people after all.
Do you think there is a cost to that?
Come on now, enough of this "not so bad" crap. Get yourself justifiably outraged.
Imagine you're waiting for a critical email and all his crap keeps getting in the way. Imagine a secretary receiving hard porn (and no, that isn't funny, it's very distressing for them) - that will eventually cause extra expenses to keep it away or an expensive lawsuit for failing to prevent sexual harassment. If it's the odd one or two, fine, but most professionals get anywhere between 50 and 600 spam emails a day.
.. but not by the neck ;-)
Also think of all the bandwidth taken up by this rubbish - YOU pay for it.
Whatever way you turn it, it's long distance theft. As in any community effort, you will always find criminal scum abusing the system.
Personally, I think we should bring back hanging for this
But the part you keep missing (did you fail math?) is that the zombies have more bandwidth than the regular companies.
So, if only 7 zombies out of all of them can more than flood one company, eventually, the zombies will be sending enough spam to create a DDoS against companies.No. Here's where your failure at math is the problem.
10,000 zombies (capped at 256K) mean 2.56 BILLION bits/second potential for spam.
If they're capped at 512K, that means 5.12 BILLION bits/second potential for spam.
Now, those zombies won't all be focused on any single company, like you keep assuming I don't know.
Now, try looking up what size of pipes are available and how much they cost.
Oh, do you finally understand? 7 zombies can flood a T-1. 10,000 zombies (at only 256K) can flood an OC 48.
When the backbones are flooded, NO ONE gets any email.
Or do you believe that your Internet connection just magically appears and feeds into some wonderous place beyond the reach of physical laws?Bullshit. I don't see many companies paying for a T-3 or OC3 just because they're running a Linux box. I do see lots of companies running Exchange with T-1's.Really? And what's wrong with SMTP? Be specific.
I've heard lots of fools make that claim, and they didn't know the first thing about how email flows.
You say that it doesn't need to be done.Those "fast connections" are T-1's.
There are more home users than there are individual Linux websites hosted on T-1's or greater.Can you possibly keep track of your own arguments? Are you saying that all of those Linux websites do NOT have firewalls?
Go ahead and say that. If you won't, then your point about a firewall on a T-1 to an Exchange server is idiotic.Look at the "envelope". It will tell you which machine you're talking to.
Look at the TCP/IP packet, it will tell you the address of the machine you're talking to.
What is this magical "authentication" you're talking about and how would it be used?
Does my machine have to keep a list of every other machine's name and password?Wow, some anonymous person on the Internet claims to know everything about SMTP, yet has trouble understanding basic concepts such as an envelope, bandwidth and SMTP.
Yet you believe that a worm hitting the few Linux servers on the Internet would be very bad.
There are more Windows boxes connected to the Internet than there are Linux web servers.
Look at how slammer and blaster affected Internet traffic. Yet they weren't Linux-based. But many Linux webservers were unavailable because of the traffic.
Here's a hint, because you can send email to mommy does NOT mean that you know "SMTP inside and out".
Meanwhile, the facts are:
#1. Corporate usage of email is increasing.
#2. Spam, as a percentage of email is increasing.
Let me know if you want to argue either of those points. If not, then you admit that you were wrong.How many OC 48's do you believe there are?
Answer that.
Bandwidth is not an unlimited quantity.Actually, the zombies are responsible for most of the spam right now. A third time you are wrong.That statement applies equally to both Exchange servers and Linux web servers.
A fourth time, you are wrong.No, there are not.
You are confusing web sites with web servers.
www.drizzle.com
An ISP running Linux and hosting a lot of web sites. But still only one Linux web server and only 2 T-1's.
A fifth time, you are wrong.No. HTTPS is about encryption. It allows an encrypted channel between the client and server. Encryption is NOT the same as authentication.
I thought you knew all about SMTP.
HTTPS only provides an encrypted channel so some other means of authentication can be used.And that is your sixth (or is it seventh) mistake in that one post.
Netcraft counts domains. There are almost 60 million domains hosted on Apache boxes.
To you, that means there are lots of Linux boxes.
www.drizzle.com
They host about 100 domains on their Linux box.
So, while you will consult Netcraft and see 100 domains and believe that Linux is everywhere...
The fact is that it is a single Linux box. Not 100.
Meanwhile, how many single Exchange servers do you know of that handle email for 100 different companies? None? I didn't think so. Looks like you're wrong again.
Oh, no comment on blaster or slammer? http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030126-0430
No, there just aren't enough Windows boxes on the Internet to cause problems with bandwidth, are there?
Need more? http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,114380,
And those were just the machines running the service that could be exploited. There are far more home machines connected.
Not to mention that was 2 years ago. Not some time in the future. 2 years ago.
But that won't mean anything to you because you don't understand basic math. You can't grasp the concept that 2 years ago has already happened.
But there's a lot of math so you'll probably choose to continue your ignorant existance.
I asked:To which you replied:
You might want to go read RFC 2554 http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2554.html since you claim SMTP doesn't have authentication. I seem to be using it all the time.The first half of that statement is correct. But the references I posted show that the second half is a lie.
So it does seem that I know what you don't know. You don't know what authentication or encryption is and you don't understand how https works.Right here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=138335&cid=11
I proved that it does.
But then, you also claimed to know SMTP "inside and out".
As for being "terribly useless", it is in use every day on systems from Exim to Exchange.
Just because YOU don't understand it does not mean that others have that same problem.
I'll be going now. Feel free to keep spouting other ignorant bullshit that you've heard from the kiddies on
Here's a hint, kid. There are lots of people just like you who like to pretend they know things they don't. Grow up and learn to read the material for yourself.
Our world becomes darker, as we now have to start much more heavily policing outgoing mail.
Who would have thought that outgoing mail restrictions would have to be put into place to stop spam?