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Good News: A Sustained Drop In Spam Levels
Orome1 writes "Industry and government efforts have dealt a significant blow to spam, according to a Commtouch report that is compiled based on an analysis of more than 10 billion transactions handled on a daily basis. The sustained decrease in spam over the last year can be attributed to many factors, including: Botnet takedowns, increased prosecution of spammers and the source industries such as fake pharmaceuticals and replicas. However, spam is still four times the level of legitimate email and cybercriminals are increasing their revenues from other avenues, such as banking fraud malware."
Even though there is less spam, I have found that most email clients Such as Gmail have gotten very good at filtering out Spam. We forget how much we suffered back in the early 2000's where once we get too much spam our only choice was to change your email address to a name that is more cryptic then a password and only give it to people who you want. And wait until someone gets a virus and starts spamming you again. The email address I have been using for a long time now is an easy email to give however Gmail captures almost all the spam.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Just a personal perspective, but spam levels for me have skyrocketed in the last year on all of my accounts. And I'm careful where I use my email addresses. Fortunately filters are pretty good these days.
Developers: We can use your help.
We have 5000+ users going through Google's Postini service, and up until about 6 months ago spam levels were within normal tolerances. Over the past 6 weeks we are getting CRUSHED with phishing attempts that make it through their filters. The quality of the phishing emails is excellent (they're basically just re-using an actual email from Verizon Wireless, American Express, etc, and substituting their malicious links.) Google shows absolutely no interest or concern - it seems they're looking at this as a commodity service, and trying to get everyone to move over to fully-hosted email in the cloud. Well, that's not us. We're looking at alternatives, including Cisco IronPort and Proof Point. Anyone care to weigh in on pros + cons, and also on cloud vs on premises?
The obvious explanation is that old people in Korea finally stopped using email.
I never clean the spam folder, it automatically erases spam older than 30 days, so I always have a month's worth of spam.
A couple years ago the number of spam mails was usually around 1000, right now it's just 210, so yes, I've noticed a considerable decrease in the spam.
I went through and unsubscribed from all my newsletters, plus clicking on the little "unsubscribe me" on various advertising, but it made little difference. I still get about 25 emails a day that I do not want.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Yes, email spam is dropping. But is it truly because we're winning, or is it because we're not keeping up with the times?
I read maybe 20 emails a week. None of them are spam. But I spend far, far more times on forums, or in comment sections on various blogs or news sites. Spam levels there seem to be rising. And I imagine spammers are finding ways to exploit Facebook and Twitter, as well.
Perhaps spammers have just realized that you get better results spamming Web 2.0 than spamming Web 1.0.
The article is talking about stopping spam, as in preventing it from being sent. Filters do not do that. Filtered spam still costs people money as it still consumes resources and takes up storage space on servers on the internet. Filters have to be adjusted and trained, and they consume CPU time as well.
In short, filtering will never, ever, solve the spam problem. The summary of the article mentions techniques that are effective at stopping spam, and there is a reason why filters are not on that list.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
When I was applying to colleges back in December, I received thousands of e-mails from universities all across the globe. Unfortunately, hardly any of them got caught by Google's spam net.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
Somehow the MAFIAA will try to relate this to anti-piracy efforts.
Well, that must mean that lovely prince who kept writing me finally found somebody who could help him. Poor guy deserves it, after trying so long.
Those of us who have spent the past few decades in the trenches dealing with spam know that this -- at very best -- wishful thinking. The long-term trend line is up, with the only real debate being over the shape of the curve. Momentary decreases, such as the one reported here, are either (a) an artifact of the measurement methodology -- and many methodologies are horribly flawed or (b) real, but unimportant.
Low-end spammers are now fully integrated with malware authors, botnet operators, phishers, purveyors of illicit/illegal content, data brokers, and carders. High-end spammers are now quite successful at assuming the mantle of "respectable corporations" while continuing to do what they've always done. In both cases, the profits are huge, more than enough to encourage them to continue in fact of the largely-insignificant threat of prosecution. (Only the stupid ones get caught, and there is some evidence which suggests that they're being caught because their fellow spammers set them up.)
Have their been some temporary, isolated successes in fight against spam? Sure. But the key words are "temporary" and "isolated". As others with long experience in the field have said, we're only at the beginning of the spam fight, and it's going to get MUCH worse: there are known techniques that spammers have only just begun exploiting, and when they become pervasive, they're going to break every anti-spam methodology currently deployed. (Which is kinda the reason they were developed.)
When will this happen? Dunno. Crystal ball cloudy. But when it does, it's going to catch the ignorant newbies and incompetent amateurs at a number of commercial "anti-spam" operations completely by surprise, because they're too busy selling overpriced, worthless crap to actually do this thing we call "research", where, you know, you LEARN things about your adversary so that you can actually have a decent chance of anticipating their next move instead of getting blindsided by it. To put it another way: if you're running your own anti-spam setup using a combination of firewalls, 'nix, open-source MTA, DNSBLs, etc. then you're in a decent position to adapt quickly when the need arises. If you've made the horrible mistake of outsourcing to the chumps out there who are in it for a quick buck, then you're going to be really screwed.
The spammers are moving on. In the past, there were enough people out there that would click on their links, send money, buy whatever crap is out there, or just be general marks. However, by now, anyone fleece-able is now penniless and in the streets.
Instead, the spam I see is less of trying to sell wanker drugs, but either coming with an attachment payload for a Trojan dropper, or if there is a website included, the website is chock full of exploits. Spam is more insidious because it used to be about selling stuff. Now it is about taking over the computer or device.
The drop in spam is because the criminals have moved from just sending E-mail out to focusing on Web browser exploits and other more lucrative gains. Getting someone to click a link which is rife with zero-days pays far better than getting someone to buy a box of blue M&Ms.
Targeted exploits are more common now. With ID theft so common, combined with the fact that VoIP allows a scammer from anywhere to fake a local number (even 911) in order to demand, cajole, or request information or even money. It used to be only the friend of a friend's cousin's inlaw who would be stung by it. Now, someone calling, saying they are so and so (and able to try to mimic their voice, claiming to have their jaw cracked so it doesn't sound the same), saying that so and so's wife with the name isn't around and that they need cash wired pronto is becoming the norm.
Spammers have moved away from the botnets to the phone boiler rooms, where if one has enough info and targets older Americans, the payoff can be extremely lucrative with zero chance of legal action taken.
What we are seeing is the next evolution in crime which usually goes as follows:
1: xxx crime gets popular
2: Counter measures are taken.
3: xxx crime dodges counter measures.
4: Actual working counter measures are taken.
5: The criminals move onto a new hustle.
This was true back in the 1900s when safes were broken into on a weekly basis until burglar alarm systems became the norm, then burglary evolved into home invasions and knock-and-shoots. Similar with car theft. When thieves were unable to smash a steering column lock for a prize, they went to carjacking.
What we will see instead of spammers are more social engineering attacks, where people use stolen information to target individuals via phone, E-mail, or FB in order to blackmail, extort, or scam cash.
Of course, the next threat after that is when criminal organization "A" a continent away starts making partners with local street gangs. Then, the guys on computers in Elbonia can tell the gangbangers over in a victim's local neighborhood who to rob because their cellphones are a ways away, and the Elbonian gang has access to a method of tracking in real time (perhaps some added "functionality" in a popular app). Or, the Elbonian gang hacks a school's database, then sells that info to a local gang to figure out which kids are "latchkey", and now has a steady ransom source. In return, the local gang does some hits and social engineering for the Elbonians.
I'm seeing a marked increase in SMS spam, which is far more annoying due to its immediateness.
A 2 cent tax on email message routed through a public ISP, payable by the sender, would be one of those elegant solutions that require no content review boards. Suddenly, sending out spam to 100,000 mailboxes would cost $2000.
ISPs and hosting providers are also getting better and better at avoiding to handle abuse complains. Some don't have an email address at all, and you have to use a ticket system. And if you are finally able to reach them (via Facebook(!), or their sales chat), you might get list washed or just plainly ignored. As a spam reporter you're not making them any money, just costing them.
Perl Programmer for hire
My vote is for on premises. Mostly because I used to be responsible for the email system at a former employer.
The key benefit is the amount of logging you can set. I knew EVERY connection that was made (incoming and outgoing).
If someone complained about email I could tell EXACTLY what was attempted / completed and when and what the error/completion message was.
So I was able to set up a lot of spam trap addresses and use those to improve the filtering in real time (bayesian analysis rocks).
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
You don't need to wait for law enforcement to stop spam in its tracks. OpenBSD's Spam Deferrel daemon does an excellent job of combating spam without the overhead involved of filtration. Through a combination of tar pitting and grey listing, I was able to take the family business' spam counts from 1,000 a day to 2 or 3 per week. OpenBSD's tar pitting sets a TCP recieve window of 1 byte per second on known IP addresses that send spam. Additionally, you can create spam trapping addresses and I've done this and placed them in the open on bulletin boards and newsgroups. In fact, I've used spam trapping addresses to harvest IPs of known spammers and add those to a blacklist. There is no performance drop on our end. The most persistent spammer hung in for nearly an hour before giving up the ghost.
Based on a survey of daily reports from my employer's Ironport box, we have seen a 15-20% drop in the amount of spam at the Ironport box, from ~50-70% of all emails (ranging from ~200,000-250,000 on weekdays, about half that on weekends) received to ~30-50% of all emails received each day are tagged as spam by the Ironport appliance.
It's impossible to say with just that information whether there is less spam or if Ironport is just catching less of it. From my personal experience, spam still gets through, but our MUA filters spam out pretty effectively.
So FWIW, based on my experience, I have to agree with TFA's contention.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
Uh, perhaps spam is decreasing because people who receive spam are getting a clue that they tend to lose money and get screwed when they reply to the spam? Always a possibility. All the people cannot be stupid all the time, can they?
Exploits of blogs, social media, search-engines and other such things have replaced traditional spam.
Try looking for a way to unlock an iphone on Google or Bing. Most of the top pages are just fake news/info sites that are trying to sell something (often products that don't work)
I recently emailed an educational institution to let them know that their CMS system was being hijacked by spammers peddling fake ebooks
Wordpress and other blogs are constantly being attacked, often with exploits used by either those intending to hijack the server, a viewer's PC, or the content in order to post spam.
We all know that spam is typically served from infected machines. With Windows 7 deployment growing, Windows machines have been harder to break into.
So now virus writers have the Flashback virus getting into Macs so they can get spam servers.
I guess this shows that even spammers can't get much done with a Mac.
Seems that every time there's a drop in spam reported, I see a rise in my inboxes, and vice versa.
Make it legal to punch people who buy ANYTHING that comes as spam. Once we stop the Stupids from giving money to the spammers, they will go away. Until then, nothing will stop them.
Businesses--or rather small businesses that are more prone to vulnerabilities due to poor maintenance--are largely going over to cloud services which filter outbound and inbound e-mail. The cloud service anti-spam engines gain more data for heuristics which applies to all customers.
IT administrators have probably also become more aware of restricting outbound SMTP traffic at the firewall or client level.
I've been keeping track of all the spam I have received in a GOOGLE Document.
The mail is from four accounts and has been pre-filtered by the ISPs, which probably skews the data. So, for what it's worth, here it is:
Spreadsheet Graph