Slashdot Mirror
Are Spammers Giving Up?
sfjoe writes "Are spammers giving up the game? Google seems to think so. In an article at Wired, Google, '... says that spam attempts, as a percentage of e-mail that's transmitted through its Gmail system, have waned over the last year'. They think their own filters are so good that spammers aren't even trying anymore. 'Other experts disagree with Google, pointing out that overall spam attempts continue to rise. By most estimates, tens of billions of spam messages are sent daily. Yet for most users, the amount of spam arriving in their inboxes has remained relatively flat, thanks to improved filtering.'"
All one has to do is glance at a mail log to see that no, in fact, spammers are not giving up. This one does not require reading tfa.
Technology tips and tricks.
The spammers are still sending the spam. They aren't giving up.
But the filters are getting good enough to filter most of it so the users do not have to see it.
But the spammers are still sending it.
They won't give up as long as there's a monetary incentive for them to send out spam. As long as they can sell something through spam, they will continue to send it out. We can talk about how wonderful filter ABC is, and compare it endlessly for false positives against filter XYZ. But in the end, its just a matter of time until the spammers defeat both of them, and we're on to filter ABC version 2.
So no, in the end, nothing that most people are doing will do squat to bring about the end of spam. You can filter until you're blue in the face, and spam will still be sent. You can shut down all your mailboxes and open a new gmail address every week, and you'll still get spammed.
Spam is sent because spammers can make money by sending it. Period.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
It's hard to imagine that spam filters have gotten to the point where spamming doesn't make economic sense. After all, the business model is something like
Even adding a couple zeroes to the recipient number (which improved spam filters should be doing) doesn't make much of a dent in the total expenses, if I understand correctly. Lawsuits under the CAN SPAM law, however, could make it too costly to get past step 1. Unfortunately, it seems like the judicial system still needs a little help here.
Hormel has been very cool about the whole "spam" label. I know, if they were to fight it now, they'd lose, but they didn't fight it even when there were commercial "Anti-Spam" products just hitting the market.
All they ask is one thing: that you not spell it in ALL-CAPS when referencing the email variety of spam. That's still their trademark. And I don't think it's too much to ask.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
Let's even imagine that spam filters were 99.99% accurate, what would be the benefit of not spamming anymore? It costs them nothing, so if they send out millions of spams per day and only get a few bites, they're still making a profit.
There's no incentive to stop spamming unless it becomes arduous to do so. Nether technology nor litigation are close enough to make that happen.
Google may do all kinds of malicious things, but disclosing your email adress to anyone is not on that list, ever. It would be trivial as you point out to prove that Google sells this kind of information, so it's almost guaranteed it's going to be publicized. And then the public would burn Google at the stake, as slow and painful as possible.
No, I don't think spammers are doing that. First, it's probably been guessed by dictionary attacks. Botnets should have the CPU time they need to exhaust the search space up to a dozen characters. (Remember: email is case insensitive and restricted to standard english alphanumeric characters plus a handful others. This is no NSA-safe keyspace.) And second, they probably obtained a list from somewhere. Some inbox on some PC that was rootkitted or an entry in a not-negative list that some other spammer sold them. (Remember: all adresses that do not bounce are valid mailboxes.)
If Bill would be hit on the head each time one of his prophecies was completelly off - he'd be long dead with a bashed-in skull.
Seriously, betting on the opposite of whatever he says has been a fairly profitable route for at least 10 years.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org