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Are Spammers Giving Up?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the only-in-our-dreams dept.

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.'"

10 of 327 comments (clear)

  1. My Experience by bizitch · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Gmail completely rocks!

    Spam detection has got to be something like 99.999% accurate

    I sometimes get the occasional Nigerian scam letters - but thats it

    --
    ---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
    1. Re:My Experience by nuzak · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I suspect they're doing it to be cute, and it's probably just recipes contributed by google employees. Here's the link to Hormel's take on it: http://www.spam.com/legal/spam/

      --
      Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
  2. I've noticed... by coldmist · · Score: 3, Interesting

    that over the past few months, I've been getting a lot more spam mail through my ISP's filter, *and* through Thunderbird's filter. Those random words sprinkled throughout the message is even getting it past the Bayesian filtering now.

    It seems that have it figured out pretty good to me.

    --
    Don't steal. The government hates competition.
  3. Yahoo by tmarthal · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I have no other experience with hotmail, but my free webmail experience has consisted of Yahoo! and Gmail.

    Let me tell you, Yahoo!'s spam rate has not improved. I am not sure if their filter isn't as good, or they are just taking money from the wrong people, but I get at least one spam message make it into my inbox per day, maybe 2-3. Oftentimes, the spamming links back to a geocities.com page. Coincidence? I don't know.

    With Gmail, I get one spam message per month (maybe) make it into my inbox. They are so rare, its comforting. And since they are so few and far between, I actually use the 'Report Spam' option, because it looks like get this that their filters are actually updated with my input, and I don't see spam of that same type ever again.

    This is different from Yahoo, I report spam all the time and yet the same exact message types make it past the filters into my inbox. I even report phishing there, but that doesnt' seem to help.

    Can anyone with internal Yahoo webmail operation shed some light into what they actually do with user input? It would be nice to know that someone, somewhere (or at least a script) is using my button clicking for input.

  4. Re:For Serious? by timeOday · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Wrong, because the issue is not whether all spammers have quit (they haven't), but whether there is a decrease.

  5. Bandwidth by The_Craigster · · Score: 5, Interesting

    How much extra bandwidth would the internet have, if there was no spam bouncing around. I say we shut off port 25 on every router for just 6 hours and watch the bit torrents just scream :). Have a moment of email silence.

  6. Re:For Serious? by Mike+Buddha · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I moved my email domain to Google Mail for Domains a few years back. I've notice a great reduction in the amount of Spam I get now, anecdotally. When I first moved my domain over there, I was averaging 900-1000 spam in the folder on a regular basis. I'm now getting roughly half that. It's amusing because now the only spam that gets through to my inbox is so convoluted that I can't tell what it is they're trying to sell.

    --
    by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
  7. Re:For Serious? by TubeSteak · · Score: 4, Interesting
    A closer reading of TFA suggests another interpretation.

    spam attempts, as a percentage of e-mail that's transmitted through its Gmail system, have waned over the last year. If the volume of legitimate mail increases more than spam mail, you'll see a "decrease" in spam as a percentage.

    If the volume of spam grew at X.2% compared to last year's growth of X.9%, that doesn't mean the volume of spam is going down. Hell, one way or another, the volume of spam as a percentage has to go down. It's hard to keep up a healthy growth rate once you've 10 billion a year.

    Lies, damn lies and statistics.
    --
    [Fuck Beta]
    o0t!
  8. I have NOT seen less by Pontiac · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I manage the spam firewalls where I work and track spam statistics every week,

    2 months ago we received 20 million messages pr week and passed about 800,000 as legitimate mail

    Last week we saw 41 million and the same 800,000 passed as legitimate messages.. that's 98% spam!!!

    to break it down more..
    41 million recieved
    32 million rejections on RBL lists
    9 million passed onto the spam filters.. 10% of that gets through.
    This is for 1 week.

    We keep seeing spam double every 2 months.. It's gota stop growing at some point right??

    --
    If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur. --Red Adair
  9. Re:For Serious? by Paradise+Pete · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I just love the freedom to post my email: bill@billrocks.org

    Billrocks? What kind of business plan is that? Do they ever pay?