Email Servers Will Choke, Says Spamhaus

Rub3X writes, "The legal battle between antispam organization Spamhaus and e360 Insight is heating up. Spamhaus has a user base of around 650 million, and its lists block some fifty billion spam emails per day, according to the project's CEO Steve Linford. Spamhaus CIO Richard Cox says the immediate issue is that if the domain is suspended, the torrent of bulk mail hitting the world's mail servers would cause many of them to fail. More than 90% of of all email is now spam, Cox says, and he doubts that servers worldwide would be able to handle a ten-fold increase in traffic." Others estimate Spamhaus's blocking efficacy as closer to 75%; by this metric spam would increase four-fold, not ten-fold, if Spamhaus went unavailable. The article paraphrases CIO Cox as saying that the service will continue "even if there is a short-term degradation."

Comments

Re:I say let the spam come

[misleb]

It would be interesting if all email server admins suddenly opened the flood gates for a day or two. Maybe then the general population will gain a better appreciate of the scale of the matter.

I think most internet users still remember what it was like before spam filtering became common. Wait a few more years. Then users will take the filtering for granted.

-matthew

Re:Use the UK server name!

[Digital Vomit]

...it's not subject to US law

It's sad how this statement is becoming more and more associated with freedom nowadays.