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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.
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.
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.
If it's slowing down networks, then it does effect you.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
That you aren't actually receiving the spam doesn't mean it's not still being sent to your address. The fact that your ISP or Google or anyone else is having to spend a huge amount of resources to combat all this spam is the problem.
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.
I've never had malaria. What's the fuss?
how to invest, a novice's guide
You can go to your post office and request a form to have spam snail mail stopped. There was a story several years ago about a postal working got fired for telling people about the form. I would have given him a raise.
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.
That currently gets abused. I have heard that anybody trying to sell an animal, for example, gets flagged as abuse by PETA assholes. Could the same happen to mailing lists? If one wants to sink a mailing list, they subscribe to it with all their e-mail addresses, and tell each e-mail provider that it is spam...
A cat can't teach a dog to bark.
affect
"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."
Also, let's say that your ISP does catch all the spam. What valid emails aren't you getting because of false positives? What valid emails are you sending that the recipients aren't getting because of false positives?
Not getting spam is only half the battle. Getting all valid email is the other half. Winning the war decisively is an additional problem on top of that.
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.
While this is partly true, it's definitely not the only way spammers make money. Spammers also make money by 1) selling their services to businesses who want to sell products, collecting their fee in advance regardless of any products sold; 2) running penny stock pump&dump schemes; 3) Nigerian 419 scams; 4) Phishing; 5) selling mailing lists to other spammers; 6) other creative ideas I haven't thought of.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
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?