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.
...all that cancer I've wished upon them.
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
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.
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.
will she still love you more than any other guy? Or will your short and flaccid member be the shame you bear?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
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.
I manage the spam firewall where I work, and I have seen a significant drop this month vs last month. In October we processed 20,000-30,000 emails a day, averaging near 25,000. In the month of November, we have only exceeded 20,000 in a day once, with most days falling short of 15,000. This months average is closer to what it was during the summer, we had seen the increase to around 25,000/day during August/September.
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.
Spammer 1: We can't get anything past Google's filter.
Spammer 2: Agreed. [sighs]
Spammer 1: I guess we'll have to give up spamming.
Spammer 2: Seems that way.
Spammer 1: Unless...
Spammer 2: You have an idea?
Spammer 1: Why don't we keep spamming everyone else!
Spammer 2: Rapture! You're so smart!
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Mod parent +2 Optimistic Lovely sentiment, but that's kind of like saying, "It snowed this weekend because I installed compact flourescent lightbulbs in my house".
You remember when Bill Gates said spam would be over by 2006? Boy was he right -- I haven't had spam in my inbox in weeks. Thanks, Google.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
In Gmail, the problem is false positives: when Gmail labels a message as junk, it moves *the whole thread* to the junk folder. So if you have a thread with 20 messages, and the 21st is incorrectly classified as spam, poof, also all the other previous 20, that you had confidently filed away, silently go into the spam folder, where they are silently deleted after 30 days. This is a consequence of how Gmail deals with threads, or "conversations". I reported this bug to the Gmail team long ago, but they haven't fixed it yet as far as I know.
So if you want someone using Gmail to delete an email exchange they had with you, send them an additional message in the same thread offering to sell them Viagra. They will never see the message, but the whole thread will be deleted in one month. Disclaimer: I have not tried this (but I have lost email due to the above problem, and I know I did, as I keep a separate backup of my mail via pop, where the missing messages were still present).
Spammers, please take note that I actually have a large penis. Your assistance and concern, while appreciated, is simply not required.
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.
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.
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.)
According to the Official Google Blog, there has been little decrease in spam, except for the amount in users' inboxes.
Some spammers will stoop to signing up for shell accounts at ISPs to harvest e-mail addresses. A lot of information can be learned just with that access. Not just compiling the results of ls ~/.. to a host name, but also harvesting cat ~/../*/.forward. The contents of a .forward file can also be disclosed via finger if your host still allows outside access.
It could also be that a relay between your mail server and gmail may be snooping on e-mail packets looking for active addresses @gmail and selling them to spammers.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
The way they're making money today with SPAM is through pump-n-dump schemes.
Permit me to break it down for you:
The Phishers will phish usernames and passwords for brokerage accounts, or they will collect the information from personal users by means of a trojan. The criminals log into these accounts and schedule sell orders for whatever stocks they are holding, and schedule buy orders for the penny stock they are going to pump-n-dump. Then they walk away.
They execute the spam, eager traders read the spam, look at the account and see that volume of shares purchased have been bought up in the past n-hours and they jump in. The pumpers have bought their stock before hand and once the volume peaks, they dump. The account holders whose accounts were compromised are left holding the pumped-dumped stock...
The criminals are getting GOOD! They don't need to worry about transferring money out of the compromised brokerage accounts, they are stealing the money and laundering it all in the same step.
And it should be no big surprise that the criminal organizations behind the whole operations is the Russians.
Welcome to professional bank robbery in the 21st century.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
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
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