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Has Microsoft 'Solved' Spam?
MsWillow writes to tell us the Seattle PI is running a story looking back at Bill Gates promise to have the spam problem "solved" in two years. Well, it looks like time is up, and the verdict is -- an emphatic "maybe". From the article: "Microsoft says it sees things differently. To "solve" the problem for consumers in the short run doesn't require eliminating spam entirely, said Ryan Hamlin, the general manager who oversees the company's anti-spam programs. Rather, he said, the idea is to contain it to the point that its impact on in-boxes is minor. In that way, Hamlin said, Gates' prediction has come true for people using the right tactics and advanced filtering technology."
Give me a break, I very distinctly remember Microsoft saying that with the advent of protected mode operating systems that virii would become a thing of the past. Hmmm, do I even need to say any more?
Microsoft has solved spam by ... erm... recommending all the strategies that people were already using before Microsoft set out to solve spam. A hearty thank you to Uncle Bill, then.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Or you can move the goalpost in the middle of the game. That's easier.
Eliminating spam means eliminating spam!
Curb CO2 emissions: Kill yourself today!
Never heard of it. By the way, visit my blog at dvorak.org/blog. Cheers,
John
I wouldn't say the problem is solved, but it is getting better.
FREE - Java, J2EE and Ajax Audiobooks for Software Developers - www.DeveloperAdvantage.com
You solve spam when it stops being sent, not when you stop recieving it.
These technologies wont work until they are nearly 100% effective. If even a few messages slip through to some users, some people will buy things from spam ads. Which is all the economic incentive a spammer needs. So all they do is hide the problem, not really solve it.
Bandwidth is still being wasted.
Michael
There is no cryptographic solution to the problem where the intended receiver and the attacker are the same entity.
I scoff at Bill Gates' "efforts" to reduce spam. What has he done precisely?
Probably just deferred the responsibility to one of his underlings. Aside from that, he talks about crazy methods such as deciding how much money the sender has to pay you before you open the e-mail.
Gates has plenty of articles which detail how much he hates spam. Anyone can sit down and write this, but Gates gets the high exposure interviews with the Wall Street Journal and the AP.
Gates is all talk. If you want to read some articles from some very interesting people, check out A Plan for Spam by Paul Graham. It talks about simple ways to write Bayesian spam filters and does a very good job at describing how they work. Another valuable member of the anti-spam community is Jonathon Zdziarski who has written many books about how to actually get rid of spam. You can also read the Slashdot interview with him.
My work here is dung.
My Hotmail Inbox averages about 2 spams a week. However, my "junk mail" occasionally has a legitimate email dropped in there too. However all things considered, 2 spams a week in my Inbox isn't that bad.
.. but their solution has rounding errors.
So, yeah, Microsoft may have "solved" spam
using thunderbird's filters and gmail is as close as i've gotten to a manageable situation, of course the gmail account isn't as old and grey as the last account i retired due to unmanageable spam.....
Customer with a hotmail address emails me with a question.
I hit reply and give them my answer
A few days later they write me again asking why I haven't responded.
I reply again. They don't get my response. They then get pissed and I lose the sale.
The problem is that Hotmail errs on the side of filtering out too much when you can't even reply to a hotmail user. And many people don't even bother to check their "spam" folders.
I'm no computer engineer, but I would think that merely replying to an email should make it through a spam filter 100% of the time. It's amazing that a company like Microsoft can't hire engineers competent enough to figure that out.
I thought that Paul Graham and some other folks, solved this problem with Bayesian filtering.
Paul Graham has a famous essay, A Plan For Spam: http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
"The problem is solved."
-- Bill
There is this site called Slashdot that reported this just 10 days ago...
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
No.
But, to their credit, that is an extremely hard problem to solve. In many other areas of software engineering, where you "solve" a problem once, the solution is much easier because it is just a technical limitation to be overcome. Spam is different, however, because you're fighting against other people all who have strong financial incentives to defeat your system.
I'd still say "don't promise what you can't deliver", though. As some critics have pointed out, failure to do that just may be a systemic problem at Microsoft right now. Hopefully there will be some internal accountability for this one.
That makes sense because there is a financial incentive to do so:
1. Create the ultimate spam filter: all spam goes to the junk folder with very little mistakes
2. Sell advertising space to advertisers who want to figure in good place on a "white list", so your spam is not filtered.
3. Profit !!!
It's amazing to me how adept markedrones have become in spinning reality to fit their needs.
Spam still chokes mail gateways and causes everyone who uses email a hassle. You still can't advertize your email address. Upwards of 90% of the mail that reaches my mail server is spam, usually. Mail filters have been there for more than two years, though they've gotten better as spam has gotten better.
Spam volume has leveled off, but that's mostly because the system is already saturated.
If Microsoft really wanted to do something about spam, they'd fix the bugs and unthinkable design decisions that has allowed their software to be taken over and used to send it.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
However, my "junk mail" occasionally has a legitimate email dropped in there too. However all things considered, 2 spams a week in my Inbox isn't that bad.
.. it means you might as well count the Junk Mail folder as part of your Inbox .. and count all the spams in there daily .. cause now you have to check the Junk Mail folder in case something went in there by mistake.
So if this happens at any frequency
Oh, and that prediction I made 5 years ago about reducing telemarketers' phone calls? You can all thank me now.
Actually Microsoft has done far more than anybody else in helping me with Spam. The spam filter for Outlook 2003 is very good and Office Update regularly provides updates to the filter that bring it up to date with some of the latest major sources/types to look for. I set it up a level in how aggressive it is, which has resulted in a false positive or two every now and again, and I have not seen any spam in my inbox in some time.
Don't knock MS on spam until you see Outlook 2003's spam filter. The question becomes if they have the technology that they do in Outlook then why can't the incorporate it into hotmail as well? I would ask the same question about Exchange but I guess they figure most people using an Exchange server are doing it with Outlook.
I used to hate Bill Gates, but now I love him... Not only did he fight to stop spam, but he actually managed to do just that for me years before he started working on it. He's a genius!!!
Now, how do I go about paying him for all the hard work he put into all the hours I spent working on procmail-filters, programming and, not to mention, create the wonderful bogofilter-projekt?
perl -e'print$_{$_} for sort%_=`lynx -dump svanstrom.com/t`'
Other initiatives by the company include efforts to teach consumers about what to do with spam when they do receive it.
Here is an idea:
THREE BEAN SALAD w/SPAM!
7-oz can SPAM, cubed 1/2"
1/3 cup choppd onion
16-oz can cut green beans, drained 1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup cooking oil
16-oz can yellow wax beans, drained
1/3 cup cider vinegar
1/4 tsp pepper
16-oz can kidney beans, drained
1 tbsp stone ground mustard
In medium bowl combine SPAM, green beans, wax beans, kidney beans and onion. In small bowl combine remaining ingredients; pour over SPAM mixture. Stir gently, mixing thoroughly. Cover; refrigerate 2 to 3 hours or until serving time. Yield: 6 servings.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Step 1: Make outrageous promise
Step 2: Make sure the media pick it up and spread it around
Step 3: Do nothing
Step 4: Redefine what you meant 2 years on
Step 5: Profit!
A bit more complicated than the underwear gnomes' business plan, but much more profitable.
Work like no one is watching. Dance like you've never been hurt. Make love like you don't need the money.
I am to unpopular to get a lot of spam but the few I get on my gmail account all seem to be beginning with "Re:" clearly seeking to trick me into believing it is a reply.
Of course you could check the headers but these could easily be faked. In seen spams in the past that got through where I had real trouble figuring out where the fuck they came from. Some I even seemed to have sent myself.
The only real way to check it would be for hotmail to keep a track record of everyone you send mail to, add them to your adress book and then let those emails bypass your spam filters.
Silly Hotmail for not doing that. OH wait, they do! When you send an email via hotmail you are asked wether you want to add that person to your contact list. Most people don't bother.
My tip to you? Make it very clear that if they contact you via hotmail it may be filtered. Also check why you are being spam filtered. Is it based on your hostname or is the content of your email to spammy?
I know your pain, I dealt with it myself although in my case I am not depended on hotmail users so simply don't care that much. It is a lot of extra work but that is the cost of spam. No spam, no spam filters. It is something people often forget, it is not just the bandwidth cost and the time wasted sorting through spam but also the fact the real emails get lost in the mess. But don't worry, Bill Gates promised he would solve it. Has he ever lied before?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Sounds to me that Microsoft's spokesman redefined the previously imposed objective (distorted/reinterpreted what the company said before) so that it can be in a position to claim success. To make matters worse, after Microsoft redefinition of it's previously goal, it still isn't in a position to claim victory and defined the company's results as a success. ...which is sad, really. In the end what this action means is that they have failed and that they are claiming a defeat.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
FTA: "Microsoft, which gathers evidence by collecting spam in special "trap" e-mail accounts, has filed more than 100 lawsuits against alleged spammers and reached settlements worth about $10 million."
Sounds clever to me:
step 1: market an OS to the point where it is a de facto desktop monopoly
step 2: combine clueless users and OS security flaws with unwillingness or inability to fix the OS problems
step 3: watch bot nets grow
step 4: sue spammers and settle for $$
step 5: Profit!
Yeah I know, 10 Megadollar is a drop in the bucket for Microsoft, but Microsoft should be held responsible for its share of the blame as well, and they sure as hell shouldn't profit off of it. As usual, the customer is the only one who has nothing to gain from the problem or its solution.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the light cone.
You may be modded as a troll, but you ask a valid question. Can they solve anything themselves? Seems to me they just copy others innovations... which I guess can be considered solving something, albeit not with much honor.
Meh.
"Can Microsoft Solve Anything?" - by abx0r (947785) on Monday January 23, @08:39AM
.dot bubble burst (but, 2004 was bad for everyone from what I read, the worst of it). Jobs are coming back in our field again though, which I am sure you ALL noticed.
Yes, they can put you to work and far more than Linux can, this is certain!
So, you sit around slashdot typing forums replies on your Linux box here all day (while I go make money coding applications in Visual Studio 2005 (mostly VB.NET thin-client apps, but also Windows apps as well) talking to SQL Server 2005 on Windows Server 2003 SP #1 if that suits you).
That works for me, how about you?
Face it - In corporate america, Windows usage far outstrips that of Linux and gives people jobs in far greater numbers than Linux does, and because of that surface area you have a greater chance of being employed if you have good skills on Windows, its applications, and coding for it.
From the home or work desktop/laptop, thru departmental servers, up to Back Office apps like Exchange or SQLServer (and even DB/2 and Oracle)?
They run on Windows operating systems in far larger numbers than Linux and its severe lack of applications (and support of peripheral hardware by comparison to Windows & device drivers for said hardwares) for as many purposes as Windows has.
APK
P.S.=> I feel sorry in a way for students who put their hearts into Linux, until they come out into a corporate world where Windows is in far greater use, and thus, provides them with far more potential for employment. Learning Linux can help them (because it does get used, but in far lesser %'s than Windows does and for less of a range of purposes) & especially for systems like Solaris, HP-UX, etc./et all (older UNIX's)... but then, they aren't making themselves my competitors either, so I can live with that - it's ALL about the choices you make.
I had to make the same ones as a student 15 years ago, when it was a Novell vs. NT 3.5x world, & I chose Win32 development & Windows NT/2000 network engineering-administration - glad I did, jobs abound, even thru the
Anyhow: Microsoft products, since they are so largely used in corporate environs, make a far more attractive target as well - they get attacked because of that, because if you think hacker/cracker types are in it just for 'shits-n-giggle' & just to cause mischief?
Think again: They're out to steal & get power/money, & information IS power & eventually money gained via illegal ends (use your imagination here).
Hacker/Cracker types? Heck - I don't dislike them, like many do - they are doing MS a favor (and the end users of their OS + wares) exposing things they may have missed in testing & once those exposed security holes &/or bugs get patched, MS & its product lines just get stronger... & so do I! apk
My inbox is doing quite well, all things considered. I get one or two a day. If I were not doing any filtering at all, I'd get about 200 a day. So I would say that spam filtering has come a long way. But I would most emphatically deny that Microsoft has had anything to do with that. I use Postini. And I do not use any kind of client-side filtering. Microsoft has nothing to do with my success, and I expect that is true of the majority of e-mail users.
the idea is to contain it to the point that its impact on in-boxes is minor. /i.
Zero would be nice. Thank you.
-- Cheers!
after abolut a year with gmail, and a completely weird name too, i have gotten a total of 5 spam messages. gmail does a good job. my answer to spam: have a different name. something basic is gonna attract more and more spam!
Only tax it. Such as in the way they havent quite eliminated in with hotmail. There are those spammers allowed to spam after paying the hotmail tax.
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
Untill the smtp protocol is rewritten or killed off.
The design is flawed.
By the way microsoft has not solved the spam problem. My hotmail and yahoo email accounts are filled with tons of spam. my hotmail account has alot less spam then my yahoo account mainly due to the fact I dont post it on websites and other stuff. Hotmail even spam there own users, same with yahoo.
So I gather the topic isn't a prediction that Bill Gates made that hasn't come true. Glad people cleared that up.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
if the problem is solved, then I'm sure MS shareholders be very surprised at spending that kind of money on a problem that doesn't exist anymore...
It's not a question of how you define "solved" but how you define the problem. If you mean "much less spam in my inbox" then filters are doing a good job. If you mean "zero spam in my inbox, and no wanted mail in my spam box, and spam isn't consuming 50% of the world's bandwidth" then we have a long, long way to go.
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
Er... how about microsoft just run all its mail through a GMail account? That would filter all the spam.
I kill harmless processes for sport
I block about 99% of my incoming spam simply by doing a whois on each incoming IP and then firewalling the netblock if it originates from APNIC (asia), LACNIC (south america), and RIPE (europe). This works good for me, because I don't expect anyone from overseas providers sending me email. The other 1% is handled by spamassassin and DSPAM.
Well, that's a pretty half assed conclusion.
The problem of spam is solved when people don't have to use filtering options.
Anyone want some of my daily rolex, stock, viagra, or prescription spam?
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
Based on my inboxes, I'll have to say that spam is pretty much solved, a long time ago. But it wasn't solved by Microsoft. My hotmail gets hundreds of spams a day, and they all end up in my inbox. On the other hand, My yahoo account also gets hundreds of spam a day. Only 2 or 3 get to my inbox. The rest go to my bulk mail folder. My other account that I don't post everywhere on the web gets maybe 20 spam per day, but none of it ever gets to my inbox. Maybe 1 or 2 a week. It uses spam assassin to weed out the spam. Neither of the three ever seem to get any false positives. I haven't had a problem with spam in a while, except with hotmail. Which seems to be extremely bad at getting rid of spam, unless you turn on the whitelist feature, which although it gets rid of the spam, is not a very good way of dealing with it, because everybody not in your address book ends up in your spam box.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Microsoft and Google and Symantec are not the warriors on the spam battle front. They can do nothing to properly reduce the costs of fighting spam (the costs that the end user doesn't see but definitely pays for). The warriors are us, geeks and techies who know the real solution.
Spam continues to be produced because it is generating income. I like to don my black hat and look at the spam forums and see that there still are people making boatloads of money for little investment. Investing US$10,000 in a spam campaign has net some people US$50,000 in a few months!
Why does spam generate income? Users continue to click. I have e-mail relationships with people all over the world on a daily basis, and it really blows my mind how some very bright people seem to be Internet morons. I honestly believe that the great majority of the world's Internet users have no idea how to properly browse or read e-mail.
Turning off images is a huge step in the right direction (I had already told many people to turn them off if the e-mail programmed allowed it). What other things have you told your friends or family to do to prevent the dreaded "my computer is so slow" phone call? How many times have you EVER clicked spam? The ratio is the answer to the question: teach others proper Internet usage techniques.
Bill Gates was the person with the record of receiving the most spam in the world, like 4 millions of messages daily http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4023667.stm.
The best test environment is production. - Me
chrome://browser/content/browser.xul
"In that way, Hamlin said, Gates' prediction has come true for people using the right tactics and advanced filtering technology."
We were all using the right tactics and advanced filtering technology two years ago, weren't we? If that's what Gates had intended when he made the promise, he was promising something that already existed.
sig.
And you thought it was a joke... receiving spam is now the Microsoft definition of being spam-free!
When I first registered my Gmail inbox, I got 3 spam messages in a week's period. Now it's 25 messages a day. And I never left my address in any suspicious place.
It strikes me that the same people are sending the same spam over and over again. 40% is 0em s0f7w4re, 40% is p3n1s pi11s, and 10% is University Degrees, and I'd say that all the mail I get is sent from about 5-6 companies, each sending 2-4 emails a day. And these spammers don't even bother to change their subject lines! How stupid they are to think that the more mail I send, the higher chance I'll buy their stuff.
A reasonable solution (imho) is by forcing the every sender of any e-mail message to perform some captcha. The captcha can be posed by the receiving party, or any trusted e-mail routing mechanism along the way. If such a captcha would take say 5 seconds to fulfill, then sending a large amount of e-mail messages would become practically impossible (at least it would consume a large amount of the spammer's time!)
Of course, you still need some whitelist mechanism to be able to subscribe to mailing lists, but this poses no real problem.
And then the only necessary thing is for this type of mechanism to become "common practice". Any ideas how to accomplish that?
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Is that they block emails coming from Gmail especially those invititations to use the service.
In logic circles, we call this "arguement by bizzare definition"
To solve is to find a solution. It doesn't have to be the best solution. Technically, jails solve crime.
However, in casual conversation, "solving a problem" means eliminating it, not downgrading it. Why would the author bend over backwords to spin this in Billy's favor?
How many microsoft engineers does it take to change a light bulb?
None. Bill Gates just defines dark to be light.
Spam is often seen by companies as a method to make another profit. They come up with a box or a product that usually should be able to weed out any spam, and YOU, the customer and/or enterprise, should pony up some cash. This is not "solving spam", this is only getting rid of one of the symptoms of spam, leaving the problem relatively untouched. Messagelabs will continue to report that, how much is it these days?, percent of all e-mail traffic is either spam or virus-infected.
The Microsofts (and Ciscos, etc...) of this world probably think that once e-mail spam stops reaching peoples inboxes, the incentive for spammers to spam will vanish, and with it, the problem of spam. WRONG.
Marketing and salesforces all over the world have somehow gotten it into their heads that they have some God-given right to pester and harass consumers anytime, anyplace to beat them over the head with whatever they have around that should make you empty your pockets. And e-mail has been a relatively cheap way for them to harass us. But if that won't last, they will find newer, even more intrusive ways to get into our wallets^H^H^H^H^H^H^H hearts. Texting my mobile phone, calling me with product advertisements, harassing me while I'm shopping for groceries, Inserting picture-in-picture commercials during television, etc, etc, etc... I could go on for hours about how evil everything involving marketing and sales is, but hey, we all know that don't we?
My point is: Spam is not solved by either filtering messages, or making unsollicited commercial e-mail impossible. If Microsoft really wants to enhance the quality of my life, make sure I can for instance enjoy a half hour of television without being constantly interrupted by commercials, and keep those salesdroids away from my favorite supermarket, and away from my phone. Thank you.
I get an order of magnitude more attempts to deliver spam from msn/hotmail servers than anywhere else, so, no, they haven't "solved" it in their own system yet. My spamtrap addresses get hit so frequently from their servers I had to whitelist their address space.
pimtamf
...other companies/projects had spam solved before Gates even uttered those words. Where I work, we've been using the Barracuda Spam Firewall for over two years now and the spam that makes it through is minimal. Once again, MS is late to the show but their marketing dollars will make them come out smelling like a rose nonethelesss.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
I mean, how is a reply different from a normal email in such a way that the spammers couldn't just make all of their spam emails appear to be replies?
As you said, you're not a computer engineer, lots of other people are and they haven't come up with a solution yet because it isn't as simple as you seem to think it is.
Deleted
I thought Gates' solution was to have SMTP senders solve a simple math equation from each mail item they wished to post to a server, thus causing spammers a massive slowdown.
To the best of my knowledge this solution is not in practice and Microsoft is using Bayesian filtering which way predates Bill's promise.
I wish I could have done that for finals in college....
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
...they obviously need more developers developers developers!
Hey! That's my sig you're smoking there!
Hormel is really the ONLY company that can legitimately do something about the problem of SPAM®
Read any good sonnets lately?
In the year and a half I've been using GMail I think I've had maybe two spams get past their filter. In the last month or so my GMail spam box has received almost 1200 emails and I'm getting a dozen messages a day getting past the filter. They come in batches and are, as far as I can tell, completely unrelated in terms of subject and where they are coming from.
Anyone else getting this or is it just me?
Several others have mentioned that spam will be "solved" once the sending of it has been stopped. I am not sure that Microsoft could ever solve spam in this sense (or any company, for that matter). I don't deny that MS could make great inroads on the problem based purely on their numbers, but when other operating systems, other filters, other mail programs, etc. exist, Microsoft couldn't possibly be responsible for these.
This is not to say they are not responsible for their corner of the world, but the best they can do is fix their SMTP holes, include spam filtering software in all of their software/webware products, and if they are feeling useful, develop a clear and documented solution that could used on other systems/programs.
However asking MS to "solve the problem" is a bit much, even if they did overextend the claim originally.
There are actually at least two solutions that can fit Gates' view of the world:
1. Create a brand new protocol suite to send and deliver email over the net, with a dozen or so of patents over it.
2. Declare that email is evil and convince governments to make it illegal.
Simple and effective.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
Not only has Microsoft not stopped other companies sending out spam, they continue to send me spam themselves. I have an open issue with TrustE relating to the Small Business newsletter that Microsoft has been sending me for many months. Every attempt to unsubscribe is met with complete failure. Even complaining to TrustE back in November, and reiterating the complaint two or three more times, has so far only resulted in form letter responses from Microsoft that are completely unhelpful.
In the past, though not for this issue, I have sent unsubscribe requests to Microsoft by registered mail and THOSE were ignored as well.
How can me possibly expect Microsoft to solve the spam problem if they themselves resort to spamming users and refusing unsubscription requests?
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
If they have "solved spam" they haven't implemented in hotmail yet. I notice the amount spam increasing to be increasing and to be getting through to the "filtered" mail.
I observe this to be cyclic. Hotmail makes an improvement or some spam king gets busted, then it goes done. But it always comes back to above its previous highs once they learn invasion and new spam-asshole fills the void.
Too late Bill, I "solved" our spam problem over 6 months ago without the help of your "technology."
1. Greylisting
2. SPF
3. Spamassassin
I now receive 90% less spam (including the Junk folder).
Now go get a day job and stop trying to predict the future.
This space available for rent.
Not at all. They make darkness the new standard.
Old joke, I know. But their approach to "solve" the problem of spam reminds me of it. We didn't manage to fulfill the promise made, so we simply change its parameters and thus declare it solved.
The problem of spam cannot be solved by changing its definition, though. The problem of Spam is solved the moment when I only get mail that is sent to ME and not a billion other boxes too.
That's the definition of spam. That's what has to cease. Before this goal is achived, spam is a problem.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
...they'd be eliminated by now.
The only decline in spam I've ever had, was caused by using open source spamfilters, blacklists and other stuff no Microsoft-employee has ever touched.
If anything, the main reason spam is still here is because it's just as easy to turn a Windows box into a zombie now as it was two years ago.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
The real issue is that the "journalists" who were there took Gates' statement at face value, without even bothering to ask Gates there and then exactly what he would count as "solving the spam problem".
Oddly enough, my Hotmail account filtered all spam automatically for me just until a week ago...
How many Microsoft executives does it take to change a light bulb? None, they redefine "dark" to be the industry standard.
....
All over America Pointer Hair Bosses issue a menu stating that all non compliant light bulbs must be removed
Science marches on
Another day closer to redwood heaven
It's ironic that in setting out to 'solve' spam, Microsoft all but destroyed the momentum around SPF, fracturing it into several different, incompatible implementations.
Embrace: solve Pronunciation Key (slv, sôlv)
v. solved, solving, solves
v. tr.
1. To find a solution to.
2. To work out a correct solution to (a problem).
Extend: 3. Not actually find a solution to. See half measure, plagarism.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I don't think Captcha is the right thing for this.
;-)
There are legitimate information coming from non-humans, and spam from humans.
With Captcha you only filter mails from non-humans, not spam as you don't look at the content.
But wait, there are those dumb-as-bread humans. They won't be able to send any mail either. Captcha seems a good idea after all.
"Rather, he said, the idea is to contain it to the point that its impact on in-boxes is minor. In that way, Hamlin said, Gates' prediction has come true for people using the right tactics and advanced filtering technology."
My prediction of solving world hunger has just come true! By contain it to a point for those who chose the right tactics, like having a BigMac for lunch...
I lost my sig...
MSN/Hotmail is well known for ignoring abuse complaints. I get a huge quantity of spam originating from Hotmail's servers, mostly 419 scams. More than half the time I report it it gets sent back because "it doesn't reference a hotmail user." All mails travel through hotmail servers, if you report spam to the MSN address they actually frequently reject the mail because they run a content filter which detects it as spam! See this discussion for more info. I ended up finding an address that got me a live person once, and after some bitching they took care of one account. I ended up writing a letter to the FTC (these aren't just spam emails, they're scams) expressing my concern with the lax attitude towards the abuse of hotmail's own system.
Sorry Bill, if you want to be tough on spam, start with your own company. It doesn't seem to care about the rest of the internet. If Hotmail cleans up its act, I'll start believing your sincerity in the fight against spam.
isomerica.net | Foonetic IRC
Yes, I can say my spam problem is solved. I get practically none. However, it wasn't Billy or his money machine that did it for me... It was Google.
Well, two. Same basic idea, but attacking it from two different sides:
1) Execute all spammers.
2) Execute all the imbeciles who buy from them.
Spam is a human problem, not a technology problem. Think of it as the black market, only even sleazier.
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
I guess the new slogan at Microsoft is "If at first you don't succeed, redefine success."
"May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"
While modifying his description of their relationship, Clinton denied that he committed perjury during his Jan. 17 deposition in the Jones case when he denied having "sexual relations" with Lewinsky, now 25, relying on a technical interpretation of the term to argue that his testimony was "legally accurate." It's all in the definition... Although I will say, IMF is really good...
SpamAssassin & Thunderbird heuristic learning, have been keeping my inbox 99,7% spamfree for the last 2 years.
Stupid as i am, i never realized that i have Microsoft to thank for it.
Officially: "No comments"
I think Microsoft's solution to spam is the similar to the Bush administrations solution to torture. They redefined it. It's not spam. It's not torture. Problem solved.
I'll bet this gets modded troll or flaimbait.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
I agree with Microsoft on this. I have been using http://pobox.com/ for some time now and the results are dramatic. With their filters I can log in and view messages that were rejected and those that are held for review, and have the option of releasing false-negatives and putting them on my whitelist. I still get 5 or 6 spams a day but I can handle this easily. The rejects are in the thousands sometimes. This all happens before the email gets to my email account. Pobox.com is a forwarding service. Mail for me goes there and then is sent to wherever I wish (up to 3 redirects).
Any program that can make the impact minimal is IMHO - as the article says - the ojbective. I can deal with some junk mail, I just don't want to spend any significant time cleaning it all up. What pobox.com does not get, gmail usually picks it up and places it in my spam folder. Nice. If Microsoft can do this then I think they are on the right track.
It was once possible to know with some certainty that email was either delivered successfully or that you would receive a notification if the email was undeliverable. The techniques applied by administrators of email systems, allowing messages to be silently discarded by thoughless machines, have essentially broken the utility of email. Since when did computers become so smart?
Unsolicited mail exists because email addressability isn't being established per relationship. It remains a fact that email addresses that are unknown (and that are not easy to guess) do not receive spam. If I gave a unique address to everyone I conversed with, then it becomes possible to terminate addresses without affecting other relationships.
Email systems like Gmail allow "plus-addressing" which is essentially a namespace that you can use to establish single-use (or single-relationship) email addresses. In practice, you do not even need to remember what it is you've appended to your email address.
Its unfortunate that the damage created by email filtering has already been done.
Create folder called "my new mail".
Setup a rule to move all incoming mail to the "my new mail" folder.
There! Instantly I have solved the problem and "eliminated" spam from you "inboxes".
Meanwhile, I'll still focus on rejecting mail at the server level. That way, if it is legitimate, the sender's server should provide him/her with a rejection message so they will NOT believe that I have received the message.
He has cured spam and I am king of the world. Never mind that my world is the tiny part that is six feet by six feet by six feet. But, I am king of this world!.
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
... as I don't believe MS has done a single thing to help. Spambayes (http://spambayes.sourceforge.net/) if it helps.
You didn't supply much of anything in the way of what you do but certainly sounded like a Windows detractor and I would have assumed you were another slashdot anti microsoft linux penguin myself. Do yourself a favor & learn more about Windows as the parent post to yours stated and is correct about and go get yourself a job!
The spam problem is certainly not solved simply because there is a reduced amount of spam in users' inboxes (and even that doesn't appear to be true).
ISPs still have to pay for the bandwidth wasted on spam. ISPs still have to pay for the work required to tweak filters and otherwise maintain anti-spam solutions. Who do you suppose ends up paying for this? Obviously the end customer. I'd hazard a guess that a significant fraction of what people pay their ISPs ultimately gets spent on spam bandwidth and implementing anti-spam measures.
What is wrong with "chomping at the bit"?
Also, is it "if worse comes to worse" or "if worse comes to worst"?
My ISP has used Postini for a couple of years, and the filters are highly customizable and can be tweaked to a certain extent or turned off completely. Postini also provides the ability to create a white list (including mailing lists) and/or a black list, so you can deal with false positives or negatives and eventually eliminate them.
:-)
Postini filters out between 200 and 300 messages per day for me, and I haven't seen a false positive in the trap for several months now. That ain't bad.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
I get blocked by Hotmail and AOL. So now, I simply recommend to ppl to drop them, so that I and others can reply to them. I use to help ppl move to Yahoo, but now to gmail. I have found that doing this is solving a number of issues. Somewhere down the road, I expect that MS and AOL will realize that their attempt to totally monopolize the market is costing them the market.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If we redefine Microsoft's boast to something significantly more lukewarm, then Microsoft beat spam. Wow! So if I redefine my C in trig, I'm now a flippin' math wizard!
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Speaking of Gmail and spam, though, I've been very impressed with their ability to effectively filter unsolicited email ads. With the aforementioned increase, I probably receive close to 20 spam messages a day, 99.99% of which get filtered to my spam box. Also, I've only had two emails get unnecessarily filtered - ever. It appears that Google has already implemented Gates' spam "elimination" (i.e., effective "containment").
On a separate and more consipiratorial note, I've come to wonder if the reason Gmail does such a good job of filtering spam is that the spam is Google generated. Perhaps a secret arm of AdSense is for Google to send spammy messages to users that search for related keywords. The user (usually) isn't bothered because Gmail "caught" the spam and filtered it. The advertiser is reasonably pleased because there is at least a chance that the user will see the email and succumb to its carefully crafted subject line.
-Brandon "How much you wanna make a bet I can throw a football over them mountains?"
Thanks for solving the spam problem, Bill!
I guess this means the v1@gra, C1alis, and junk stock of the day emails my users get every day isn't spam then!
Yes I know, there is a spamassassin sink for Exchange, but it's an ugly hack due to the way Exchange works. Spam is the primary reason I'm dumping Exchange when the next version of Scalix is released. If we didn't need group scheduling, I'd have dumped Exchange for Postfix months ago.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
From the article:
"Microsoft, Yahoo!, AOL and EarthLink have worked with law enforcement agencies and filed a series of suits against spammers under state laws and the federal anti-spam act. The U.S. law doesn't prohibit unsolicited commercial e-mail entirely but rather outlaws deceptive tactics by spammers. Microsoft, which gathers evidence by collecting spam in special "trap" e-mail accounts, has filed more than 100 lawsuits against alleged spammers and reached settlements worth about $10 million."
Why are the spammers making settlements? (Are they effectively released to spam more people until they get caught again?) And why in the world is Microsoft getting the profit from it?! WE are the ones who stare in disgust at our email accounts full of junk from Who The Crap Knows and yet MICROSOFT benefits from the settlement?
Now, I can understand that Microsoft puts in some manpower (occasionally) towards "solving" the spam problem. In that sense, they *might* deserve a little bit of money for their efforts. But $10 Million?! No.
Like we've seen time and time again, Bill Gates is an excellent businessman. Not everybody can promise everything, give nothing, and still stand to profit from it. (Except politicians - they're pretty crafty, too.)
I have a number email. (Here is where you fill in the rest)
.NET Web Services5 &dat=121642
OK, checking over my 1000 latest, there's a spam on:
2005-11-03
2006-01-10
Actually, the irony of the affair are slashdot's message notifications:
Oracle Web Services Manager enables you to secure and manage your Web Services and SOAs in a
non-intrusive manner. Add security and control over already-deployed J2EE and
without modification. Download Oracle Web Services Manager for free today.
http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=10341
Damn man, is it for free too? Thanks big brother that you care for my interest!
In other spam news, the top thing now says DEVELOPER MARKETPLACE, which isn't removable with my zap bookmarklet, there was one thing before which you had to zap twice, and not to forget the flash ones which suck up 90%+ resouerches (seriously, my comp was crawling with 4 windows open with these).
Clicking "add your link here" we find
"Typical Slashdot viewer: OSTG Network users are often influential in their company's purchasing decisions."
"84% are directly involved in technology purchasing decisions made by their companies and responsible for an average of $523,000 in purchasing"
Really? Makes you wonder what the threat to opensource is, and it seems they forgot what that OSTG thing stands for already?
These are fun! Whatever it is will involve 1-or-more of:
1. Certificates from Microsoft!
2. A Microsoft clearinghouse
3. Payment
4. Whatever it takes to make them the email center of the universe
5. Nothing, but it'll cost you more. (Like their annual virus promise)
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
The warriors are us, geeks and techies who know the real solution.
Heh. We might *pretend* to be the warriors on the front lines, but we all know that the real solution is to get out there and start breaking fingers. Imagine what would happen if one night, all 200 spammers on the ROKSO list suddenly couldn't spam anymore? It would be like the night of the long knives for sure, but the entire world would cheer us on.
it really blows my mind how some very bright people seem to be Internet morons.
Not me. But then, I spent 10 years doing tech support for ISPs. The base problem is this: spammers are at their root, scammers. And what scammers do, is they prey on hope with "miracle solutions". The mark doesn't have to be stupid, or gullible necessarily, but they do have to have low self esteem and be praying for a solution to their perceived problem.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
Supposing you're hotmail, if your customer e-mails someone, automatically add him to his "safe list". Ta-da.
How? I suppose one could try to guess them, but adding, say, a 64 bit random element (or just run the original message through a hashing function and append) is trivial, and would make guessing completely pointless to even try.
I forget what 8 was for.
As has been pointed out elsewhere on this thread, Microsoft are taking the credit for people receiving less spam through the use of tools developed by third parties.
So on the same basis, Microsoft can indeed be given the credit for eliminating viruses. Millions of people are now able to operate their PCs on a highly-secure, virus-free basis. The fact they've had to install third party software to do so is neither here nor there...
Gates' prediction has come true for people using the right tactics and advanced filtering technology."
And absolutely nothing of that is thanks to Bill.
It also fails short for many other scenarios, as it requires the people to either have good control over their mail environment, or have the right people do it for them. Point: At home, spam is mostly a non-issue for me. At work, it's horror.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
From the article:
MSN Hotmail says it stops more than 95 percent of the spam that enters its system from reaching in-boxes. Yahoo says it's just as effective.
No, I think that 95% of email that enters its system is filtered out. There's literally no way for them to really know whether or not 95% of the actual spam is getting stopped. Too few people report spam, and too many respond to it.
And my Yahoo account gets so much spam it's not funny. About 75% of the email I get at that address is spam, and the rest are mailing lists I actually asked for. My Yahoo account is just the account I use when I need to submit an e-mail address to a dubious website, mind you, but my proper account doesn't get all that much real e-mail anyway.
As for spam protection for the sites I manage personally (about 300 virtual domains, and 5000 users), none of the measures I take have anything to do with anything Microsoft has ever done. We use (in order of effectiveness) Spamcop's SBL, simscan (which uses spamassassin), a fake secondary SMTP server (it just rejects e-mail unless there's an outage on the primary), and finally SPF - which doesn't technically help our own users. About 90% of the mail we get gets refused. I can't call that "solved" by any definition of the term, since we're still spending vast resources to get even that far.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
Didn't Bill Gates make that speech around the same time Microsoft announced their "ingenious" idea about Microsoft Stamps? If so, Bill Gates deserves no credit, whatsoever, because it had nothing to do with Microsoft. Rather major email providers have introduced spam filtering techniques similar to or using SpamAssassin.
My lame blog.
If your criteria is just that no spam appear in your "inbox", then what I posted is 100% accurate, effective and easy to implement today.
The problem with your criteria is that the person sending you a message will never know whether you read it or not, unless you specifically reply to them or contact them in some other fashion.
If the message is rejected at the server, that person will know (subject to the limitations of his email server) that it was accepted or that it was rejected. That way, the sender can see that his message was rejected and then call you to let you know there is a problem.
Today, spamming is a very profitable business, but it will disapear rapidly when it will cost them more to send their messages than they'll get from it.
To be viable, any solution, legal or technical, has to satisfy this condition : it must be prohibitively expensive to send unsollicited messages.
We still have to find this solution...
My guess is that Spam is at the bottom of Steve Ballmer's Things to Fucking Kill(TM) stack and he just hasn't popped it off yet. Don't worry, he'll get there eventually.
Imagine if you got paid ten cents per email delivered to your mailbox. You come in in the morning to find a hundred spams waiting for you. Sweet! They just paid for your morning quadruple-mocha-latte and a king sized muffin. And none of your friends or customers would blink twice about paying a dime to send you a message.
Heck, I could live on my spam-account proceeds.
There's a lot of Internet problems that would be solved by this kind of automatic micropayment system. If Itunes has taught us anything, it's that if you set the price right, it will be low enough that people won't think twice about using the system legitimately, but high enough to add up to significant money in aggregate.
For example newspapers -- real newpapers (which I define by having journalistic shoe leather on the ground in your city) are dying because they don't have a practical way to pay for real journalism. Which is why they are increasingly cutting back on journalism and filling out the space with opinion -- syndicated at that. To subscribe to the paper for a year, the cost is enough that you have to think about it, predict what your probable future interest in the paper is. If your browser could be configured to send the paper a dime per page read up to a set daily limit, you'd probably spend several times the newspaper's asking subscription price per year without ever thinking of it.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Doesn't Microsoft realize that when taking on such responsibilities as eliminating spam or "creating the internet", all you have to do is contract Al Gore!
Cheesy Movie Night
Yeah - and Mr Gates is going to solve world hunger by 2006...
May be a bit off topic but I have an anonymous email site - is this considered spam? The recipient didn't ask for the email so I guess it is. If this is the case then should these kind of sites be illegal too? Then what about e-card sites?
Did a quick google on definition of spam and got this:
To indiscriminately send unsolicited, unwanted, irrelevant, or inappropriate messages, especially commercial advertising in mass quantities. Noun: electronic "junk mail".
By doing absolutely FUCK ALL about spam in the past two years, rather than aggressively trying to protect its consumers (I use 'consumer' in the force-fed sense), Microsoft have solved their problem (if not ours) by leading their dumb users into accepting spam (if bill gates couldn't fix it, there's nothing that can be done) - their attitude has changed from the questioning human spirit of resistance "this is ludicrous why should I have to put up with this - something must be done!! " to the quite british depressive "ohhh (sigh) spam, it's like rain i just put up with it and make myself a cup of tea". you shouldn't! ATTITUDE!! it's such dumb passive majorities that allow atrocities to be committed. that leaves our majority to fight HARD to make the system better for everyone.
I have long ago switched every computer related thing in my life to Linux, including my career. Linux and opensource is how I make a living. And it's how I play. And entertain. And I love it! Microsoft?! What's that?
Meh.
I have to say, since someone here pointed me to K9, and since installing it and spending a couple of weeks "training it", I almost don't notice spam any more. It's awesome. I must get over 100 spam emails a day (easily), but I can't remember the last time one got through (or the last time a legitimate email got snagged).
If you haven't tried K9, and you aren't happy with your current spam solution, give it a try...
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
Don't add more steps to try to compensate for a broken concept/implementation. Fix the concept/implementation.
There are several email servers that can allow the users to select which filters they want and even allow SpamAssassin to be programmed on a per-user basis.
Exim4 is the one I use right now.
As to things like m/s's senderid, or yahoos domain keys I'm thinking of implementing domain keys, not the microsoft 'solution' - no effort(or money) will be given to microsofts help in solving there problem.
Yep we already have spf.
The problem with Yahoo domain keys (or solutions) is that the tools out there are ok, once you start you then hit a few brick walls, validating keys is easy (but no benefit to us), signing is something I've yet to successfully automate.
So I know that it can be done, but the few extra headers you get our email clients do not take any notice off. Domain keys like spf needs to be easier for users to determine if the message is fake - without going to view the headers in email.
If domain keys (or other insert spam reducing scheme) makes life easier for one organisation say yahoo, but makes very little difference to the end users I see not much point in it.
Sender policy framework is a system to prevent fake sender address in emails. it works by checking the claimed sender domain, in the email, against a TXT record in the DNS system. The TXT record contains information of ip's or hostnames, allowed to send email on behalf of the domain in question.
If the email have a faked sender address it can be bounced or labeled suspicious.
This works amazingly well, and stops all faked sender emails before it's accepted in the server. Effectivly blocking virus and spam sent with forged addresses. Non exsisting domains are allready blocked in the mail servers so if everyone owning a domain was to implement this. It would make me a very happy person. Ofcouse spammers can still send email from domains under their own control, but those go into online blacklists fairly quickly
Unfortunatly it does not have the widest accept yet, but growing all the time. After hotmail implemented it in their DNS records, spam is at an all time low around here. Not getting a single spam email from faked hotmail addresses in ages.
And only 6 months ago I had a dedicated "sent from hotmail" folder since it was 99% likly to be spam anyway...
sepski
A good Bayesian spam filter: http://spambayes.sourceforge.net/ I've been using it for a few months, and so far i think only 2-3 spam have managed to enter my mailbox, and had no false positive (good emails ending up in the spambox).
I'd rather have spam enter my inbox than have legitimate emails end up in the spambox. In that sense, I wouldn't consider a program (like Hotmail here) whose filters are too restrictive (read: put too much in the spambox) as too good, au contraire i would say it's too bad to even use.
If by "maybe" they mean "no", then, well...yes!
Shame on Google.
"using the right tactics and advanced filtering technology." Apple Mail.
Anyone who thinks MS has solved the SPAM problem needs to be jailed.
I've written a set of IMAP, POP, and SMTP extensions which make use of msg-id headers and automatic white/black-lists, much as you've described above.
I believe I've thought the various problems through fairly thoroughly and while of course software will have to be written "properly" (i.e. according to standards!) there is a way to "solve" the problem of spam, and by solve, I mean prevent it from being sent to recipients who don't want to receive it.
"Welcomed Correspondence" anti-spam extensions have recently been submitted to the IETF as an Internet-Draft, and are now in the "Active" state there.
The goal of Welcomed Correspondence Extensions is to provide, in the simplest and least intrusive way possible (both programmatically and to the user), a method of avoiding unsolicited and unwanted email without drastically changing the infrastructure of the Internet's existing mail transports. "WCor" (for short) uses a two-phase evolutionary approach in order to maintain compatibility with existing standard POP3/IMAP4 retrieval/delivery servers, SMTP mail transfer agents, and end-user mail clients.
Phase I allows Welcomed Correspondence Extensions functionality over standard SMTP mail transfer agents. This entails a somewhat basic addition of white/blacklist functions by adding "Welcome", "Unwelcome", and "Pending" lists to mail retrieval and delivery servers. These can be POP, IMAP, or other non-standard protocols which interact with SMTP and choose to implement Welcomed Correspondence Extensions. These Welcome, Unwelcome and Pending lists are maintained on the users mail delivery server in order to avoid duplication of "Junk Sender" and blacklists across multiple mail clients. This avoids client synchronization problems and frustrations to the user, and allows migration of users to new mail servers/services by synching lists between old and new servers and alerting Welcome senders.
Phase II extends Welcomed Correspondence white/blacklist functions to the SMTP Mail Transfer servers, allowing for a more automated method of confirming whether a sender is welcome or not, with less user interaction. This is done by allowing interaction between the SMTP server (or mail gateway), and the Welcomed/Unwelcome/Pending lists directly.
All extensions are based on the standard (RFC-defined) methods for adding to the existing protocols, and all documents have been submitted to the IETF for review towards the Standards-track.
More details, including overviews, forums, and the papers themselves, can be found at:
http://www.mindslip.org/ (be gentle, it's a Cable-modem connected box!)
Please feel free to join the forums there and start discussions! I've announced to various email software mailing lists and groups, and could use the help getting the word out!
David Szego.
(Author, Welcomed Correspondence)
ppWOUAAHH HAHAH AHAHAH ! Microsoft would have solvedppiwwahAAHHAhaha !!
So will I finally be able to filter my Hotmail Staff mail as junk automatically?
Privacy is terrorism.
Have they solved spam? Have they fuck. To test this theory, I left a dummy open SMTP relay on a windows box with 1 static IP, no listings on google, no PTR on the IP. Nothing. After 48 hours over 50,000 e-mail would have been successfully delivered (To either bounce back, or annoy somebody) A stupid claim at the time, now obviously so.
You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
...for a certain subset of users, and a given meaning of spam, problem, and solved.
Microsoft has "solved" spam by:
1) Redefining spam so that big businesses can send out spam and not call it spam.
2) Redefining solved to mean that end-users don't see it
3) Only considering a solution in terms of that group of users who sit in front of a PC, and use MS tools.
4) Redefining problem to mean "profit-making potential."
Spam is not solved by blocking it on the recipient side. There are THOUSANDS of people who have to design, implement, update, manage, and babysit the antispam "solutions" that are in place today, and the problem isn't going away because too many people running the big IT companies can't afford to let it go away. The "solution" that Bill Gates has proclaimed is to take the problem, and find a way of profiting from fighting it but not actually eliminating it.
One of my clients is a moderate sized company, about 3500 employees. They have about $100k of hardware, probably $25k in software, and about 2.5FTE of senior admin people to deal with spam. Actually ELIMINATING spam would destroy one of the biggest growth industries in IT right now.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
We're using sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org with good results, but have had serious issues getting much else to work consistently. It seems that the latest RBL comes and goes.
Are you just chasing them as they come and go, or do you have a few other favs I might consider?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Sure, except most of the filtering and anti-spam advances came from outside of Mircrosoft and not from inside. In fact, I don't even know a single filter or anti-spam algorithm that originated at Microsoft and is in wide use, and is responsible for eliminating at least 50% of junk.
What is Microsoft talking about? Sure, Gates' prediction came true, but no thanks to Microsoft.
in the world according to Bill. This also is influenced by the amount of money you have to change the legal definitions of words such as 'guilty' or 'convicted' and last but not least 'monopolist.' If your definition has been given the correct amount of spin and spewed forth from Redmond with enough marketing force Bill will be able to convince folks that all of those messages in their e-mail box really are 'just for you.' Just like my roommates' continuous offers for 'penis enlargement' for the penis she doesn't have. I hope to read some responses from the Microsoft cheerleading squad on this one, telling me what commerical (proprietary) solutions are available to handle this nebulous concept called 'spam'.
Life is a gift. And my Karma couldn't possibly be 'Positive'
Does this mean we're going to see Bill Gates on the deck of an aircraft carrier in full flight gear in front of a banner that reads "Mission Accomplished"?
If so, can we deploy that carrier to a forward operating area AS SOON AS POSSIBLE?
Insanity is a gradual process; don't rush it.
You're right, this would solve the spam problem, because everyone would just stop using e-mail. I would. Right now, I get things done through e-mail... Bug reports are all done through e-mail. Source code is shared through e-mail. The source code version control server sends e-mail with every check-in by every user. I'd be looking at like $50 a day just to do the work that I need to do. And then at the end of the day, I'd be debating whether or not I can afford to send my old friend an e-mail.
Is the theory here that it would eventually balance out, because people I send mail to would reply? Maybe true for just casual e-mails to friends, but not for work-related stuff – if I happen to be the guy running the bug database, or the source control server, I get screwed.
What if this were combined with a white-list? So only people who aren't in your list have to pay a dime. That way friends and people that I work with could be exempt.
How many Microsoft engineers does it take to change a lightbulb? One to the write documentation explaining the new dead lightbulb feature.
Microsoft says it sees things differently. To "solve" the problem for consumers in the short run doesn't require eliminating spam entirely, said Ryan Hamlin, the general manager who oversees the company's anti-spam programs. Rather, he said, the idea is to contain it to the point that its impact on in-boxes is minor.
Of course! When you discover that haven't solved the problem, just redefine the problem so that you have solved it.
That aside, in some ways things have got worse. There is no guarantee that email will actually get delivered now. After it has been through several spam filters, it might actually get to the destination.
Another way that things have got worse, you often don't get notified when an email hasn't reached its destination (for example because you typed the address incorrectly). With the increase of joe job spam email, chances are your domain or email address has been used to spam lots of people, many of whom don't exist. So you get a bunch of bounce messages. Which you train your spam filter to catch... Even if you don't train your spam filter to catch them, the SNR in the bound messages means that they become pretty useless too.
So the problem of spam has not been solved. And Microsoft claiming that it has been "solved" by spam filters just goes to show how little they understand. If they were serious about solving the problem of spam they would un-encumber sender id so that it can be implemented by GPL projects. Instead, clearly attempting to maintain a competative advantage over open source takes priority over beating spam.
meh
Everyday - I guarentee most of us get real spam through the post (aka - snail mail) - this must cost millions yet is not seen as intrusive.
;)
I hate it just as much as email spam - it also involves a lot more work getting rid of it (trips to the recycle centre etc). Governments have jumped on the net spam-wagon and sprouted garbage without any kind of rational or intelligent thought - just like my comment.
Ho-hum - we're all doomed anyway
To Bill a problem is anything that is not making money. I don't track them well enough to know if they've found a way to make money out of spam yet. Maybe some MS fanboys can say.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
"No"?
To me it infers that, like a herd of oxen, the boxes are only of interest as a collection, and not individually.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
The funny thing is that the headline to the print version of the story read "Spam fillers work, says Microsoft".
Seriously, since buying a Mac a few years ago and using Mail.app, the amount of spam I see is almost nil - maybe one a month, with maybe one false positive every 2 or 3 months. Everything else has been detected by Mail.app's own filters after a bit of training.
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
Hate to make a "me too!" post, but I'm definitely seeing the same thing. I've had GMail for about 18 months now, and from the time I signed up until about December 2005 I was getting spam about one message per week. Since then, it's jumped significantly up to around 10 messages per day. This didn't seem to coincide with anything in particular, I've never posted the address anywhere or given it to any company I was even vaguely suspicious of. It doesn't particularly bother me as they all end up in the spam folder, but it's still frustrating to watch the folder balloon in size.
For very small values of "spam". Or maybe very small values of "solved". I'm not sure which yet.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
If this is thé solution i've seen proposed by both sendmail and microsoft some time ago this could be hilarious since in a way i would be the owner of that IP then. Huhhuh.
Anyone interested in coding for this 'thing' i worked out ? Beat'm to it ?
free dom(inion) - free energy - free your mind - whee!
Nothing woudl stop you you from agreeing with a different party to waive delivery charges.
But you're right -- the purpose woudl be to reduce the amount of email use, by eliminating people who you don't know or don't want trying to grab your attention.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Hurry up it's time to buy all that viagra and flu medecins and whatever kind of weightlosing pills because soon you're no longer able get those in your mailbox.
How could they ever kill all this spam what good will it do to mankind???
Most people will turn fat, lack interest in sex, and worse will often be sick by the flu.
uaaah what an ugly future...
I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid. You're afraid of us. You're afraid of change.