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The Significant Decline of Spam

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the no-just-stop-it dept.

Orome1 writes "In October Commtouch reported an 18% drop in global spam levels (comparing September and October). This was largely attributed to the closure of Spamit around the end of September. Spamit is the organization allegedly behind a fair percentage of the world's pharmacy spam. Analysis of the spam trends to date reveals a further drop in the amounts of spam sent during Q4 2010. December's daily average was around 30% less than September's. The average spam level for the quarter was 83% down from 88% in Q3 2010. The beginning of December saw a low of nearly 74%."

16 of 263 comments (clear)

  1. I have a solution by elrous0 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Just set up some email routers to automatically append text that insults Muhammad to all SPAM messages. Pretty soon the spammers will all have their buildings burned down, their families threatened, etc. You just use one set of assholes to attack another set of assholes--the perfect solution.

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    1. Re:I have a solution by fridaynightsmoke · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Russia and Nigeria have oil.

      But Nigeria's oil industry is already owned by Shell. And they're working with US government to plant agents inside the Nigerian government so that the cheap oil keeps flowing.

      The linked leaked cable doesn't say that. What it does say is that Shell are/were concerned about Russia giving missiles and/or other weaponary to rebels intending to attack Shell helicopters and other installations etc, with a view to Gazprom taking over Shell's oil wells in Nigeria. Shell asked the US Gov. if it knew anything.

      --
      This is a substitute for a clever sig that fits within the maximum number of characters.
  2. So... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Are we winning the war on spam, or are spammers(and their comparatively low returns) just being priced out of the botnet market by more lucrative cybercriminals, the DDoS extortion set, espionage agents public and private, various ideological axe grinders?

    Given the fairly low-effort, fairly low-return nature of spamming, I imagine that it is sort of the botnet equivalent of a "screensaver" mode. More valuable than doing nothing; but priced out of the market once a more serious set of criminals comes along(especially now that there are relatively few fully legal spamming locations. This isn't the old days when the world's spam king was some American prick with multiple T1s running to his house, sending spam quite openly right out of his home jurisdiction...)

    1. Re:So... by garcia · · Score: 3, Interesting

      They can claim that spam is going down all they like but I haven't seen any reduction in my inbox and I have seen a HUGE increase (quick estimate is five-fold) in the spam comments which appear in my Akismet filter for Wordpress.

    2. Re:So... by arivanov · · Score: 4, Interesting

      1. At some point this summer FDA started looking into food supplements and actively removing "body builder" supplements which actually were a supplement for that muscle that is not quite muscle tissue and is affected by various sildenafil salts. A lot of SPAM was advertising these semi-legit operations and it is logical for it to reduce in volume as they get closed down.

      2. Facebook, LinkedIn and their like have become easier routes than mail with higher success rates.

      I would expect SPAM to decrease as a result of both of these even without major operations being taken down.

      --
      Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
      http://www.sigsegv.cx/
    3. Re:So... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      While I'm not a spammer in the legal sense, because I'm CAN-SPAM compliant. Most people here would consider me a spammer, because of some mental disorder about curing the world of whatever it is they don't like (in this case marketing). I've made well over 200k this year. Yes, it is down a bit, but that's mainly due to some recent changes in spam filtering, but now those filters have been figured out. Next year will be great again.

      I'm in Las Vegas (spam beach west@!#$!!) and recently there was a guy arrested here for sending scam. It's reported he made over $500k this year and it's completly believable. That's something the antis don't understand there's LOTS of money in it and it's because of them. The tighter the filters get the more money we (that people who can get past them) make.

      This time of year there's 2 schools of thought. The first school of thought says mailing this time of year isn't worth the reward / risk, because most people are traveling and not in front of their computers. Where the risk is getting your ips hammered by blacklists before the new year. The other school of thought says mail as much as you can so your offers fill up their inbox / junk folders and have more ips than normal in reserve for when you get nailed for the increased volume.

    4. Re:So... by CohibaVancouver · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I could probably make a lot of money scamming little old ladies, or working as a hitman or a pimp - However I choose not to because it's morally wrong. Just because I have no respect for you because you can make tons of cash spamming doesn't mean I have a mental disorder - It just means I have you in the same category as cowards who scam grannies.

    5. Re:So... by 1u3hr · · Score: 3, Interesting
      For a while, a couple years ago, I would get 2-3 a week on that account, then google sprinkled some googledust on the servers and it's now practically non-existent.

      Which makes it all the more infuriating the way that Google ignores the deluge of spam sent to Usenet via GoogleGroups accounts. Obviously they could prevent it, or at least not propagate it, using the same methods. Instead their neglect looks like a deliberate policy to make Usenet a garbage heap and drive people to their own forums.

    6. Re:So... by shrimppesto · · Score: 4, Insightful

      yes, but sadly, complying with all U.S. laws does not make you any less of a turd.

  3. Re:Junk filters make it less effective by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    When I first got email in the late 1800s there were no junk filters.

    I should say not. If the Pony Express rider went to all that trouble to deliver the letter, it would be rude to throw it out.

  4. Seasonal variation by oobayly · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've noticed that spam & dictionary attack are seasonal. Over Christmas I saw less than 20% of the usual attacks on our servers. I'm guessing this is due to peoples bot-ridden machines not being switched on as much.

    What really gets me is the amount of of dating spam that gets sent to an account I use for FreeBSD porting & CPAN. One would think spammers would avoid certain domains as they're only used by techies. Then again, maybe we're so desperate we'll jump at any chance of talking to a bird.

  5. Poor detection by OiBoy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've been getting significantly MORE spam in the last month. I would assume that they base their metrics on how much spam was caught and identified. Since apparently more is getting through to me now, the article should really be titled "Significant Decline of Spam DETECTION".

    --
    `fortune -o`
  6. Why not go after the companies hiring the spammers by pak9rabid · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What I've never understood is how come the governments haven't ever gone after the companies hiring these spammers to spam their shit all over the Internet? I mean, if we're so gung-ho about stopping spammers, you'd think the obvious place to start would be the companies that are hiring these scummy assholes to do their bidding for them (I'm sure the spammers aren't just advertising other companies' products out of the kindness of their hearts)...\/1@gr4, I'm looking at you.

  7. Re:Only email spam? by mlts · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Comment spam hasn't slowed down. I think its because E-mail spam is starting to have such a low return ratio compared to getting spam in front of eyeballs via Facebook or Web forums.

    For a spammer, cracking into a Facebook account, posting links up to a malicious website to distribute malware is far more lucrative than just spewing out and hoping the outgoing ISP, the relays, the user's mail server, and the user's MUA doesn't stomp the spam first. A FB account is almost guaranteed to be read, and oftentimes, the link clicked on.

  8. Imperceptible improvement by rickb928 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So instead of 332 spam messages a day, I'm only seeing 296 messages? Not really groundbreaking for me.

    Playing Whack-A-Spammer is a losing proposition. Someone will start up a service at least as big as Spamit, and we're just as buried. I'm not at all hopeful that spam can be contained at all.

    The only real solution is to go after the advertisers, the clients. I get occasional spam from what looks like mainstream advertisers, and if they get interested either in avoiding the bad press of spamming people OR they get interested in spammers using their trademarks without permission, maybe then we get some results.

    But there's plenty of advertisers that don't care.

    The ultimate solution is to make the spammers pay more than their clients will tolerate.

    --
    deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
  9. Re:Junk filters make it less effective by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 4, Funny

    I am so getting off Trip6's lawn. You should, too.

    --
    My blog