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Spam Volume Jumps 35% In November
gregleimbeck writes "Spam volume soared another 35% in November, an e-mail security vendor said Thursday, and the month saw spam tactics that reduced the efficiency of traditional anti-spam filters.
'There's been a huge increase in spam volume,' says David Mayer, a product manager at IronPort Systems, 'from 31 billion spams a day on average in October 2005 to 63 billion in October 2006. But in November, we saw two surges that averaged 85 billion messages a day, one from Nov. 13 to 22, the other from Nov. 26 to 28.'"
"Two years from now, spam will be solved" - Bill Gates
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
And that's why the US Treasury announced a surplus, from all the fines collected from all that spam violating the CAN-SPAM Act. We're funding free WiFi for every American, while exterminating all the spammers!
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make install -not war
He's got 9 days left!
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I don't know, but it looks like you get more than 100% spam... over 198%. How did you manage that?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That seems only fair. According to a random sample of spam headers, Outlook Express has sent an average of 100% of the spam I've received.
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
I'm sure that it'll go back down to normal levels real soon now. Why heck, it may even withdraw from the Internets.
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My God! It's full of tubes!
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Wow... Yeah, umm, wow.... What more can one say?
Anti-MS zealot: "The increase in spam is caused by Vista".
MS Fanboy: "Don't be silly - it was obviously the 2.6.18 kernel release that did it".
IT Professional: STFU, both of you.
nt
He's got 9 days left!
Nine days ought to be enough for anybody.
ACK NAK RST
I'm writing this from my chateau in France. I flew here earlier today from my horse farm in Virginia in my new Gulfstream. Can't believe my good luck: couple of months ago, I discovered this unsolicited stock tip in my email. The stock was cheap and the tip seemed pretty solid, so I invested my life savings in it. And my grandmother's life savings, too; I have her power-of-attorney. The next day, I got nervous. Remembered the old line about if it seems to good to be true, it probably is. So I decided to unload the stock. Damned if the price hadn't gone up 6000 percent! In one day! Incredible! Anyway, I sold it all ... and here I am. Grandma's taking a round-the-world tour in her Gulfstream -- we bought a matched pair.
Your post advocates a
(x) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
(x) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
(x) Users of email will not put up with it
(x) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
(x) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
(x) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
(x) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
( ) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
(x) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
(x) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
(x) Extreme profitability of spam
(x) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(x) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
(x) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
(x) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
(x) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
(x) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!
When I moderate, I only use "-1, Overrated". That way, I never get meta-moderated!
Maybe it's just me, but my spam volume seems to have jumped at least 200% in recent months.
Ah, but my spam volume decreased by 130%. So it all works out, you see?
Your courageous and selfless spelling corrections have made me a better person.
That's right "Nail some sense into 'em".