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Spam Back Up To 94% of All Email
Thelasko writes "A NYTimes blog reports that the volume of spam has returned to its previous levels, as seen before the McColo was shut down. Here is the report on Google's enterprise blog. Adam Swidler, of Postini Services, says: 'It's unlikely we are going to see another event like McColo where taking out an ISP has that kind of dramatic impact on global spam volumes,' because the spammers' control systems are evolving. This is sad news for us all."
send more _useful_ emails to offset that.
Maybe I am a freak, but to quote Davork, I get no spam. Gmail's filter catches pretty much everything. Once on a blue moon one will slip through, but I can tolerate one penis pump add every month or two. It might be true that a lot of spam is passing back and forth across the networks, but from a user point of view, it never makes it to me.
The article seems to be counting whole e-mails, but what about bytes? And what percent of global IP traffic is E-mail? I'm just wanting to get a feel for how much spam is clogging the backbones and not just how much it is clogging the mailservers.
Every email address that is not an actual word doesn't seem to have any problem with spam for a number of years until I inadvertently have myself logged in when visiting one of those cookie catcher sites... generally with lots of chinese letters and related to a recently released mainstream movie... stopped doing that when I realized if I started being patient I could just get it at redbox.
I'm personally glad I don't have to run my own mail server anymore. Having to fight the constant battle against spam can seem like an uphill battle. I'm happy enough with Google Apps, very little spam gets through the filters and it's very rare to get a false positive.
Despite the fact that my mail email address is not published online anywhere and I'm very careful who I give it to (I use different addresses for completing forms online) the amount of spam that Google filters out is still amazing.
There must be a lot of stupid people out there that respond to this stuff, it wouldn't exist if it wasn't profitable.
When can we filter out all the paper junk mails stuffed in my real mailbox?
Just because your ISP is filtering the email sent to your inbox, doesn't mean that it's not been sent. Spam messages are congesting the ISP -> ISP links, and that hurts the companies delivering the email services.
...so I can come and smack you upside the head.
Obviously, shutting down an ISP would have a negligible long-term effect on spam. Intelligent people realize that the people behind spam are themselves intelligent (at least intelligent enough to almost never get caught). Obviously they have contingency plans. If you shut down one mail relay they go to another. If you shut down one ISP they go to another. If you shut down one web hosting company they go to another.
If you shut down their favorite registrar they go find another.
Anyone who thought that shutting down one ISP would have any meaningful, long-term effect on the spam problem needs to read up on how spam works, and why it exists. In short, spam works because it is profitable. Spammers don't sent out spam just because it annoys people, they send it out because they make money off the products that they push through spam. Hence they will find new ways to push out spam, as long as they can still make money.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
They send it to the spam filter programs. Have you ever seen how small penises they have?
Spam filtration is an arms race
That part I agree with.
However, I still say that spam filters will never solve the problem. Spammers will just keep finding new ways around them, and all the while we will continue having to pay the costs of transporting and filtering the junk email (in terms of bandwidth and cpu costs, in particular).
The only way to stop spam is to remove the reason why it exists in the first place:
If spammers can't make money off of sending out spam, they won't send it out to begin with.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Google and Yahoo have inadvertently created a goldmine of email addresses. While I get a lot of spam from various domains, it is these two sites that I have a problem with. See, they use domain keys, which elevates the message above spam filters (or at least helps to). So spammers have cracked the google chacpta (sp?). There is no easy way to report these addresses for abuse. The providers need to somehow only allow domain keys on VERIFIED accounts, or have multi-level domain keys.
I think that a craigs-list moderation style of X spam reports and you're cut off is the way to go. Of course, these reports should only be counted from existing VERIFIED accounts, with the reporting mechanism built into the interface.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
I work for a university, and for many of my students, Facebook is the only way to send messages, unless you count text messaging.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
In other news, 94% of Slashdot comments are spam or spam-equivalent.
Oh wait.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year oldâ(TM)s life: âoeThe Lord of the Ringsâ and âoeAtlas Shrugged.â One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
"This is sad news for us all." -- Adam Swidler, of Postini Services
Isn't Postini Services a service that makes money by being an "outsourced" spam filter?
Not a sad day for them...
I run my own domain and have about 130 email addresses. Usually I just create a new one for new uses (different hobbies, different interests). Every website that asks for an address gets a disposable one, rather than a "proper" address. The consequence of these small and quick precautions means that last week I saw 8 SPAM emails, from a total of all the personal email, forums and *wanted* stuff of over 600 emails. Occasionally I find a trusted address gets an unexpected and unwelcome flurry of emails - it then gets deleted and a new one set up. Friends and family addresses are sacrosanct.
I simply don't understand how or why people only ever have 1 email address and give it out unconditionally to anyone who asks for it. How can people live like that?
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
What about short term pain for long term gain?
When someone as massive as google gets a confirmed spam address, simply respond back with many replies that are as good as genuine replies. Spam them with a few thousand and finding one becomes too difficult, therefore the business model falls away.
I know this is increasing spam short term, but remove the business model and it should stop long term. If other sites (yahoo etc) pick up a similar system for a coordinated effort can't spam be stopped?
on our mailservers 97-98% of the mails are blocked by greylisting, of the remaining a considerable portion is still spam or virus carrier.
yesterday we had about 103000 incoming mail of what as much as 3000 where accepted by greylisting, after that there are the antispam and antivirus...
I believe the term is "randroid".
Put the Ayn Rand fanboyism to some good use and try to earn some cash:
Ayn Rand Institute Essay Contests
open source modern art: laser taggi