Jupiter Forecasts 50% Increase In Spam 474
Mr. Sketch writes "According to Yahoo, the amount of spam is expected to increase 50% in the next five years, meaning the average american will get over 3600 of them a year. The future of email is??"
whitelisting (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:whitelisting (Score:2)
Re:whitelisting (Score:2)
Spammers can't use 'em the wrong way. How does a spammer know who's on your whitelist?
Re:whitelisting (Score:2)
Bright future for Open Source E-mail clients (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm trying out POPfile (Naive Bayes text classifier and a POP3 proxy) [sourceforge.net] these days, it's looking good so far.
Re:Bright future for Open Source E-mail clients (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Bright future for Open Source E-mail clients (Score:3, Funny)
That's three months of daily beatings, and people are loving Bayesian filtering already - I think it'll be just dandy by 1.3 :-)
I kind of like spam (Score:4, Funny)
Also, it's pink and tasty.
Re:Bright future for Open Source E-mail clients (Score:2)
Client filtering has no future. (Score:5, Insightful)
It cures the symptoms not the cause, around 90% of all inbound traiffic to our email system is UCE and somebody has to pay for this, in both traffic charges and server capability. This is a hidden cost passed on all email users, ultimatly the consumer.
It is for this reason that client side filtering is not a long term cure, it addresses the symptom not the roor cause. The long term solution must be the introduction of a trust network. The technology to make to possible is readily available in public key cryptography, what is lacking is the WILL. A system like this need not compromise anonymity, there are cryptographic protocols that allow for the establishment of anonymous trust with virtual identities. These same system can also be used to ensure email is cryptographically secure.
This system requires the introduce of a core network of trusted directory servers as part of the MTA backbone, a network of authoritive MTA's which can and will vouch its users.
This system is also vastly superior to the current black lists, which are far too centralised, clique and arbitrary, and fundamentally ineffective.
This proposal does no even prevent commercial email, if anything it allows this to legitimise, punishing the fraudsters and crooks whilst rewarding the responsible. It is entirely feasible to choose to accept commercial/bulk email from their bank, or OSDN.
Given time this will also provide participants a two fold advantage reduced costs and superior service.
Re:Client filtering has no future. (Score:3, Insightful)
Which isn't to say I approve of the bandwidth waste in the meantime, but short of passing tough anti-spam laws (which I'm all for) I doubt there's much direct action that can be taken to cut off the supply of spam. Gotta dry up the demand instead.
Re:Client filtering has no future. (Score:4, Insightful)
As response rates go down, the profitability of spam goes down, and people stop spamming. So in the long-long term, it will decrease the bandwidth spam consumes.
A quicker solution would be if (all) "regular" servers blackholed known spamhauses and open relays, but unfortunately few commercial ISP are ready to do so...
Re:Client filtering has no future. (Score:4, Insightful)
I really, really wish you were right. Over the last year or so, the profitability of banners and popup ads on the Web has decreased significantly, and the effect of that has been a frightening increase in the amount, persistency, and content intrustion of ads.
Service costs aren't the only problem (Score:3, Informative)
All you have to do is look at the data services offered by cellular providers - Spam could easily double or triple (maybe even more) your monthly cost with such services due to the bandwidth it consumes.
As a result of spam, I can't check email from my phone. My phone (Kyocera 6035, integrated PDA/phone) is more than capable of reading mail, but the 14.4 per-minute connection (And even the unlimited Vision connection if I sacrificed coverage and got a Treo 300 on Sprint) just can't handle the 50 or so messages I get a day, 95%+ of which are spam.
One word.. (Score:2, Interesting)
That would be a start!
Re:One word.. (Score:5, Insightful)
That would be a start!
Yeah, a pretty bad start, since it would take away most reasons you leave out your e-mail address; to let people you don't know contact you.
If we have to start whitelisting people to make e-mail usable, we have clearly lost the battle against spammers, since it would make e-mail much less usable than it is today.
Re:One word.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:One word.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Besides, whitelisting isn't all that horrible of a concept when you really think about it. In an offhand way, many of us use the same concept by using a Hotmail or Yahoo email address for everything and only giving our REAL address out to the people we trust. It's just a different way of thinking from the "good old days" - which definitely sucks, but so do banner ads, pop-ups, et al...and they aren't going anywhere.
Re:One word.. (Score:2)
Although, I'll freely admit that probably half of the "choking" servers just need to be properly tuned for their intended job. Too many folks just throw as much CPU/disk/RAM at it as they can, without actually thinking about how the data all flows through.
Re:One word.. (Score:2)
It would also be the end of any usefulness for email. Back to snail-mail or phone (i.e. if direct marketers still want to target you, make 'em pay).
ISPs should fight back (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:ISPs should fight back (Score:2)
Re:ISPs should fight back (Score:2, Interesting)
Some of the decent open source ones do the first two but store a copy of the message in each of the mailboxes.
Some of the database-like mail proggies only stores a single copy of the message for all of the recipients.
c'mon (Score:4, Funny)
50% over 5 years ? less than moore's law ? lucky are we !
O.
Re:c'mon (Score:2)
Really? (Score:2)
Spam, spam, spam. Spam, spam, spam.
In the future, they'll look like this:
Spam, spam, spam. Spam, spam, spam. Spam, spam spam!
Far out.
Like we didn't see this coming? (Score:3, Funny)
Here we have the ultimate triumph of the marketdroids. These people think we would buy their stuff for sure, if only we heard the sales pitch. Hmmm... how about "not."
I've got news for them... you CAN'T sell ice to eskimos. This kind of ridiculous crap makes the sellers look like a bunch of charlatans (if the shoe fits...), and annoys the audience.
When I get carpal tunnel from pressing Ctrl-D, somebody's going to suffer.
Re:Like we didn't see this coming? (Score:4, Funny)
Sounds like someone is bragging
Re:Like we didn't see this coming? (Score:5, Funny)
Hmm maybe I should change the subject line. Maybe not
Re:Like we didn't see this coming? (Score:2)
I'll thank you not to make sport of my personal inadequacies (*sob!*)
Re:Like we didn't see this coming? (Score:2)
Whoops... well, OK... I guess I did read one or two of those spam emails...
Re:Like we didn't see this coming? (Score:4, Funny)
Astrology? (Score:3, Funny)
Since when can a planet perdict an increase in Spam, read the headline, it sounds just like Astrology!
Re:Astrology? (Score:2, Funny)
There's a good side. (Score:5, Funny)
But at least my penis will grow by an inch or two.
And it'll always be hard thanks to those free viagra trials.
IANAL, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
There needs to be a mechanism for the governments to pick up the excess cost of people recieving spam, rather than Jo Punter paying for it in a few extra pennies every time he dials up to check his mail...
Here I go again... (Score:2, Informative)
Spam forecast (Score:5, Funny)
Thus concludes the 8 o'clock news.
And now for the Spam forecast for tomorrow we switch to our techie in the basement.
john?, John are you there?
Yes margret, we're here in the basement of one of our nations largest ISP's, are we're looking on the screen.
As you can see, most spam will be concentrated in the north-west, and will slowly decent into the more southern regions of the nation. We can expect particulary heavy downfall of explicit spam, so parents, keep your children away from their mailboxes tomorrow!
As for the rest of the week, I am sad to say that it doesnt look good. we're likely to see a further increase, as we have seen in the last 5 years in a row now.
This has been John Geek from the basement of the heart of the digital world, back to you margret...
Simple, mail will evolve to an offline IM (Score:2)
Some online services already offer this due to the overwhelming ammount of spam you get. I have a Hotmail acct i use to sign up to stuff online since '95. It gets around 10~15 spam daily which is caught by the spam filter and around 4~5 that get thru "misterioulsy"
The future of email is........ (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The future of email is........ (Score:4, Interesting)
Nice idea but very difficult to implement. The problem is not the protocol. It's the content. No matter how secure a protocol is, a pinhead can always use it to send ads. It just arrived through a "secure" route.
I guess the best way is to slow down e-mail. That way it would take days to send a million messages. This would hurt mailinglists but exceptions could of course be made. Let certain known behaving servers send e-mail faster. That way you have to earn the right to send e-mail fast.
And the reason..? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:And the reason..? (Score:4, Interesting)
But what I really can't stand is when tech people run around and say "never, ever respond to spam, or try to opt out. You will only get more once they realize your email address is good." This is just BS. It can be confusing to explain the best way to remove spam - learning to decipher legitmate companies (Buy.com, Hickory Farms, Citi Bank) from the viagra ads, but you have to try. The legit ones will truly remove you when asked - so that's done. The ones with broken links and return addresses that go nowhere get filtered - (they can't verify squat because you couldn't reply anyway). And for some of the porn that have either web links or reply requests, just try them. It's a pain to keep track of those you reply to then check to see if they come back, but if they do, that's when you type "remove me from your list and any other list connected to you or I will forward this message to my state's attorney general". I've done this a couple of times, and it's like a big swoosh sound as the spam gets sucked off of my computer. Those few viagra and hot teen things that come to me I just delete. These are mostly from fake
Ironically, out of all of the articles and how-to's I have read, very few explain how to try to opt out. The National Enquirer, of all rags, actually had a very good article on spam and included opt out instructions that pretty much follow my method - when to do it, when to not bother. They have also had good articles on keeping kids safe online, identity theft, alerts on kids modeling sites that border on child pron - who would have guessed to find decent tech stuff there?
Re:And the reason..? (Score:3, Informative)
"...But what I really can't stand is when tech people run around and say "never, ever respond to spam, or try to opt out. You will only get more once they realize your email address is good." This is just BS..."
Really? What evidence do you offer in support of this claim? I've tried, as an experiment, using the 'unsubscribe' link or address in a couple of spams. The result was predictable; Lots more spam, from an even wider array of sources. It got bad enough that I had to close down the 'bait' address I used.
There's plenty of at least anecdotal evidence, such as that found here, [arachnoid.com] that I think is more than adequate to counter such a sweeping generalization. I'm sure a Google search could turn up lots of other examples.
This also caught my eye...
"It can be confusing to explain the best way to remove spam - learning to decipher legitmate companies (Buy.com, Hickory Farms, Citi Bank) from the viagra ads, but you have to try. The legit ones will truly remove you when asked - so that's done..."
'Legit' companies won't send you marketing E-mail without you asking for it to begin with. That's what confirmed opt-in is all about.
A modest idea... (Score:5, Interesting)
What if for a period of time, maybe a week or a month, a day isn't long enough, the anti-spammers just quit. All of them. Let the spammers have an internet-wide orgy. Let people see how much of a problem this is - let the lawmakers make better spam laws, and then have the law enforcement stop them.
Blocking the spam is counter-productive, it only encourages the spammers to come up with better ideas on how to get it into your mailbox. The spam needs to be stopped at the source.
Laws won't work... (Score:2, Insightful)
American laws don't usually concern people in other countries; especially countries that aren't our tightest allies.
The Internet is global and it would be next to impossible to stop it once and for all. What's to stop somebody from popping up rogue servers for a day or so, blasting out spam, then taking their server down and moving it to a different IP address?
There are so many ways to evade the law in this area, and, ultimately, while we're fighting the "War on Terror" nobody is going to commit any real enforcement resoruces to chasing spammers.
Making it illegal would have a very small effect, in my opinion. Heck, those "Send a buck to each name on the list" scams are illegal but that doesn't stop them. So is the "I'm a Nigerian Prince with $20 Billion and I've chosen you, a broke college student, to help me get it out of the country" scam. Hasn't stopped.
Ultimately we're stuck with it until it becomes unprofitable to do it. Until that day comes better filters and a lot of [DELETE] are probably the best we can hope for.
-Coach-
Re:Laws won't work... (Score:3)
Re:Laws won't work... (Score:2)
First, no halfway legitimate Western business is going to go to a spammer in Kazakstan.
Second, since an IP address can usually be fairly accurately mapped to a country, the large ISPs here could simply make a decision to block off all access to a country that is known to be spam friendly.
Tupperspam (Score:2)
Good bye privacy? (Score:4, Insightful)
The ability to send unsolicited email to practically anyone has long been a valuable online tool for everything from online protests (like filling your Congressman's mailbox with anti-DMCA flames) to communicating with intriguing personalities. A good deal of anti-spam legislation can be interpreted in ways that infringe on this basic cyber-right. Worse, the anti-spam cause could also be used by authoritarian interests to crack down on all unsiolicited emails.
Likewise, anonymous remailers and open relays have been used by people to protect their privacy almost as long as email has existed. These valuable tools of freedom can also be targeted by the Ashcrofts of the world in their bid to tie back our liberites, all in the name of crushing "spam".
Let us hope that privacy-loving interests will continue to develop technological solutions to the problem of spam, thereby keeping the solution to the problem market- and freedom- based rather than relying on the "good graces" of the State to keep junk mail out of our inboxes
Re:Good bye privacy? (Score:2, Interesting)
I consider myself to be Libertarian as well, which to me means (among other things) that I get to do as I please, so long as I'm not infringing on the rights of others (like pestering the crap out of them when they just wish to be left the hell alone).
Injunction (Score:2)
Re:Good bye privacy? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're a libertarian, then you know perfectly well that you don't have a right to "free" speech on my dime.
The ability to send unsolicited email to practically anyone has long been a valuable online tool for everything from online protests (like filling your Congressman's mailbox with anti-DMCA flames)
Any communication to your Congressman about federal legislation is inherently solicited -- it's part of the job.
Worse, the anti-spam cause could also be used by authoritarian interests to crack down on all unsolicited emails.
The anti-crime* cause in general could be (and is) used by authoritarian interests to attack privacy, the right to keep and bear arms, the right to keep private property, etc. However, nobody in his right mind suggests that crime should be tolerated as the price of liberty.
(*I am referring here to real crimes such as theft and assault, not to politically invented ones such as drug possession. Spam, being a theft of services, properly falls into the former category.)
Likewise, anonymous remailers and open relays have been used by people to protect their privacy almost as long as email has existed.
Reputable anonymous remailers have always limited message flow, precisely to prevent them from being used to steal bandwidth from others.
Let us hope that privacy-loving interests will continue to develop technological solutions to the problem of spam
Technological solutions and legal solutions complement one another. We lock our doors and arrest burglars.
Re:Good bye privacy? (Score:3, Informative)
"The ability to send unsolicited email to practically anyone has long been a valuable online tool for everything from online protests (like filling your Congressman's mailbox with anti- DMCA flames) to communicating with intriguing personalities. A good deal of anti-spam legislation can be interpreted in ways that infringe on this basic cyber-right..."
Ahhh... Excuse me? Can you point to any existing law that declares the sending of E-mail, or the use of ANY Internet resource for that matter, to be a fundamental "right," as opposed to the privilege (similar to a driver's license) that it is?
You are forgetting that the majority of the Internet is made up of PRIVATELY-OWNED servers, routers, switches, etc. No SysAdmin or server operator is required to accept ANY traffic that they do not wish to.
For example: The spam problem is so widespread in some Pacific Rim countries (Korea and Taiwan come immediately to mind) that I have chosen to block all mail coming from those countries. I realize that this may offend your sensibilities. Well, all I can say to that is 'My servers, my bandwidth, my rules.'
When a spammer craps in my inbox, or that of my other users, they're stealing MY resources to do it. They're shifting the cost of their advertising to me. I will not tolerate that under ANY conditions.
As one very wise individual once pointed out; "Free speech is not free when it comes postage due."
The future of 3rd world countries is? (Score:5, Insightful)
Spamming is illegal throughout the European Union - I don't get hardly any spam from Europe (I get about 60 a day!), and if I get some, I am entitled to cash 250 Euros from the spammer... it works!
Unfortunately some third-world countries like Korea, China, Brasil and USA (!!!) still allow spam or are reluctant to fight spammers, so spam is still a big problem to the whole world.
Until those countries don't wake up and outlaw spam, the problem will persist
PS: I recently have put most of APNIC in my sendmail access-list - it eliminates 60% of the spam, but spam from USA is still an issue.
Greetings,
ms --
Re:The future of 3rd world countries is? (Score:3, Informative)
This is probably because one of your 'friends' used a 'free' SMS service.
Thanks, vodaphone. (My number is listed *nowhere*)
Complain to ICSTIS, who regulate this.
http://www.icstis.org/
The average person will swallow 16 spiders... (Score:5, Funny)
Same theory with spam. Except my amount of spam will increase 1000fold, and yours won't increase at all. I'm messing up the average. I should probably stop soliciting impotence advice from Dr. Spam-alot.
Moore's Law (Score:2, Insightful)
If I only had time to respond to all those fine offers from Nigeria, I would own 850,000,000 (eight hundred fifty million) bits of email already.
Spam the spammers (Score:2)
Re:Spam the spammers (Score:2)
whenever you respond, the spammer gets more money, since the "response rate" will rise, and yur e-mail address will be marked as "active".
compagnies should see that this kind of advertising will not result in any actual orders made.
but since the cost of spam is for the recipient, selling one viagra pill is likely to make break-even.
Flooding the compagny with fake orders would:
a. be illegal
b. could cause some innocent bloke to receive a package causing him to have to explain alot to his girlfriend.
c. i'm not willing to even read all the vulgarities in the spam to get to the part of "how to order".
just get me an easy to set up filter, for free, with 99.9% accuracy, deleting the suff before i have to see it.
the resulting "weapons race" between spammers and spammies will result in such cost and effort on the side of the spammer, that by the time he/she is smart enough to get through all the filters, he/she is smart enough to get a real job. Hence, the cost of hiring him/her is so high, the market for spamming wil reduce
Spammers defeating the filters (Score:2)
I've got so frustrated with the vast quantities of spam I receive that I installed SpamAssassin. It works surprisingly well.
How About a Thousand Spams per Month (Score:5, Insightful)
There are about 12 million businesses in the US alone. If one tenth of one percent of them sent you one email per year, it would amount to 1000 messages per month. Just a single, polite inquiry once a year by a tiny fraction of the legitimate businesses in the US, none of whom would suspect that they are causing a problem. As common as spam may seem, most businesses haven't discovered unsolicited email as a marketing tool.
That's the main reason we need anti-spam legislation. Not especially because of the aggressive efforts of a few assholes, but because of the clogging potential of even light usage by a vast number of businesses who mean no harm.
The future of email is... (Score:3, Interesting)
The more people blow this problem up, the more likely it is that legislators will try and tackle it.
And you know what that means; more bad "cyberlaw".
Much better to concentrate on solutions to a problem, rather than making repretitive and useless noises about the problem itself.
50% in five years???? (Score:3, Interesting)
I see a Moore's Law for spam - spam power will double every 9 months
So if you want to get into a growing industry work for/found an anti-spam company.
as ever with a
how about a sane upgrade to SMTP? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm no fortuneteller but a good start would be an email protocol that fucking authenticates the sender so that you could be guaranteed that every email in your inbox has a from header that doesn't lie. No more untracable spammers. No more viruses that claim to come from your friends. As an added bonus, this would stop the flood of emails from various postmasters warning you that an email you never sent was not able to go through.
Seriously, SMTP needs to be redone and the sooner the better. I know there are things like TLS and SMTP auth floating around, but they are not pervasive or mandatory, so they do no good at all.
Could we all just stop spreading gloom and FUD? (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course spam is an important issue. And it's damn annoying too. But I simply don't believe all these stories about how email is going to become crippled by it.
There are spam filters. More importantly, the use of aggressive blacklists forces ISPs themselves to take a tough line.
The questioner asks what the future for email is. Well, it's simple: email is fine as long as the user is sensible. I have several accounts. I know that my hotmail account is entirely unusuable because of the level of spam it recieves. If I need to give my email address to someone I don't trust fully, I give them that.
I have a work address. This gets a little spam from time to time as the organisation gets targeted. I filter out these spams with my own spam filter.
Mailing lists tend to go to another address. So far, I haven't had too much spam from that quarter.
My personal address is known only to a few friends. So far, no spam.
The rule for keeping your address spam free is the same as it ever was: don't publish it.
Now, what about people who want to advertise their address for open source projects and the like? Well, put it in the source code, in the README files, wherever you like. Just not on your web page.
Re:Could we all just stop spreading gloom and FUD? (Score:5, Interesting)
People shouldn't have to spend their time dealing with spam. Why should I have to? Why should I have to get multiple e-mail addresses because of spam? Why should my employer have to spend lots of money and resources on fighting spam, when it could have been spent elsewhere to improve performance rather than trying to prevent performance from deteriorating because of spam?
How does spam cripple e-mail communication, you ask? Again, you said it yourself. People have to start hiding their e-mail address. It will be harder to find a contact address to get in touch with them.
You are talking about spreading FUD. At the same time, you kind of contradict yourself by showing that yes, e-mail addresses can become unusable because of spam and yes, spam can cripple e-mail communication.
So where's the FUD? Spam is a serious problem to many, and you, as someone else I responded to, don't seem to understand this. You only seem to be able to see it from your own point of view. Maybe spam doesn't bother you. Well, I can inform you that it does bother me, my friends and my employer. A lot. It costs us money. It costs us time. This is not "gloom and FUD", it is reality.
Spammer jokes (Score:2)
A drug dealer, an axe murderer, and a spammer are traveling together. One night they stay in a small farmhouse near a barn. The house only has two beds, so it is agreed that the drug dealer will sleep in the barn, while the axe murderer and spammer sleep in the house. So they go to bed.
15 minutes later, the drug dealer comes in from the barn. "With all that hay and all those animals, my allergies are acting up. I can't sleep in the barn!" So the axe murderer agrees to go out there and gives the drug dealer his bed.
15 minutes later, the axe murderer comes in from the barn, saying, "Those animals are making too much noise! I can't sleep out there!" The spammer sighs, saying "Ok, ok, I can sleep through anything. I'll go out there."
A few minutes later, the cows, horses, and pigs all come in to the house, screaming "There's a spammer in the barn! We can't sleep with a spammer!"
No chance (Score:5, Interesting)
The truth is it's increasing at a much faster rate than that. Recent research [zdnet.co.uk] has shown that it's going up about 400% per year!!! And my personal email account verifies that sort of increase.
I suspect Jupiter is going to be eating its own words. In 5 years I suspect we'll be seeing perhaps 50 times more spam, not 50% more.
SpamAssasin (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:SpamAssasin (Score:3, Insightful)
A serious quality of life issue... (Score:2, Interesting)
Surely we're all supportive of freedom in the marketplace, but we don't have to be such market fundamentalists that we can't talk about legislation that would tell advertisers where they *can* advertise, rather than where they *can't*. We could settle this question of whether or not money equals free speech once and for all. We could create forums for advertising, and the market could be more equitable.
Why take such a step? Advertising is taking over our lives, and it's displacing many of the more meaningful aspects of human culture that have been developed over millions of years. It's all going away...
Use your imagination to see 50 years into the future...the people who are pushing the desceptive ads of today are just trying to be competitive....they and their successors won't stop pushing advertising further and further into every moment of our lives because their competitors won't stop pushing advertising further and further into every moment of our lives.
Imagine...we could actually end this spiral that's quickly taking human civilization down the toilet.
If I sound like a radical to you, it's only because we're all so perfectly accustomed to it, and we have no idea what things might be like without so much of it. As I type this, I can see logos and slogans on my screen, to my left, to my right, behind me...just look around...it's everywhere!!! AAAUGHHH!!!
An Honest Question (Score:2)
Now the average joe is not in the position to run a mail server and deal with spam in the many ways that some slashdotters can. . . Leading to my question. .
Would you or better your mother pay a small monthly fee to have an email account that was free or almost free from spam? Employing such techniques as spam assassin or better something like tmda (tmda works like this, you add people you want email from to a whitelist, those not on your list can email you but they get a message which they must respond to be added to your white list).
Would you be willing to pay $5 a month, $10? How concerned is the average person with spam? Or are they just use to it and are willing to click delete over and over again.
Why client filtering will not solve the problem (Score:2)
The reason it will not solve the problem is because it validates your address, when the email is not rejected by the destination server.
That means that your address is "in play": it gets added to lists, and passed around, until everyone has your address. A percentage of what these people send *will* get through to you: client filtering can only go so far, before it blocks everything.
Client filtering requires that you download the email -- paying for the priviledge, eitheir directly, or indirectly, in term of time and resources.
Client filtering means that any given SPAM can be pre-tested against any set filtering algorithm, and modified so that it does not trigger the filter, before it is ever sent to you directly, in order to get around the filter.
Client filtering is an idea that's appealing only to people who don't really understand email technology, or who are acting willfully ignorant because they have a secondary agenda.
Everyone who keeps suggesting client filtering has one or more of these attributes:
1) They sell client filtering software
2) They are an SMTP service provider, who does not want to burn compute cycles on their server by doing acceptance filtering, and rejecting the email
3) They have a broadband link, and thik that everyone else has one, too
4) They are a SPAMmer
-- Terry
Not as much as I expected (Score:3, Insightful)
Story on Yahoo? This will be the same yahoo... (Score:4, Insightful)
.. that refuse to disconnect anyone spamvertising yahoo store URLs? I'm surprised yahoo has the gall to carry the story.
Central spam check servers? (Score:3, Insightful)
The DNS servers return an ip address for a given domainname. The spamcheck servers would return a value for a given emailaddress.
This value could be modded up by the number of people reporting this emailadress as spam and modded down in time when people stop reporting this address.
Your provider will check every received mail with the central servers and store their spam value.
Your mailclient will receive only mail from your provider with a lower value than the value you configured. The rest will be removed from server at that time or only the headers of the bad mails will be send to your mailclient and put in a spamfolder where you can approve or remove them manually.
In Other News: (Score:3, Funny)
It is expected that in the year 2020 one out of every three people will be an Elvis impersonator.
In related news... (Score:5, Funny)
Venus Predicts: A slashdot reader will not get laid tonight
Earth Predicts: You are here X
Mars Predicts: Continued fighting in the Middle East.
Saturn Predicts: More pictures will be taken of its rings.
Neptune Predicts: An unsinkable ship will eventualy sink.
Uranus Predicts: Someone will relpy to this post with a Goatse link.
Pluto Predicts: Disney characters [videocds2000.com] will not enter the public domain any time soon.
-
Ah yes, SPAM.... (Score:5, Insightful)
So IMHO I think the story should really be...
FUD increases sales of SPAM related services by 50%
SPAM is annoying, it's true. However, filtering it out is not rocket science - but then most people pull out the cheque book before engaging their brain.
Blame your ISP (Score:3, Interesting)
Why is it that they feel responsible to filter out Napster, Kazaa...filter out port 25...filter this, filter that, monitor this, monitor that....
Yet none of them can do something as simple as an opt-in spam guard. It's turned on by default..and you don't need some fancy enterprise edition. You need Exim, Exiscan and SpamAssassin. Done. Should take a half-competent fresh college grad admin about an hour to do.
Sure, some ISPs do it already. I remember when I was on Earthlink (2+ years ago) they had it...worked ok. How about everyone else? How about doing it FOR FREE?
You don't win the war on drugs by going after drug dealers or importers. You win the war on drugs by poisoning the drugs so noone wants them.
You don't win the war on spam by going after spammers or Asian servers. You win the war on spam by doing your part to educate end users and block it for them, thus removing the spammers' audience.
Corporate MS/RIAA/MPAA/FCC-like nonsense happening. When are these people going to wake up and do their part?
FYI, system stats to date for just my personal server at home:
SPAM caught to date: 4193 in 84,397,706 bytes
Viruses caught to date: 1018 in 277,420,970 bytes
Yes, I'm donating my spam collection to spamarchive.org.
Re:5 to 10 a day? (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder how accurate that statistic is. Frankly, I'm amazed the "average" number of spams isn't already around ten a day or even higher. Almost everyone I know receives this much, and the ones who don't are pretty close. Maybe it's just because the folks I know use email more extensively than all the Grandpa Joes out there who only get a message or two from their grandkids in their mailbox every week? Such is the curse of email, I suppose...the more you spread your address around, the more spam you're likely to receive...
DennyK
Re:5 to 10 a day? (Score:5, Informative)
No need to get violent. No need to kill. The solution is simple, cheap, and pretty easy.
Just start using SpamAssassin [spamassassin.org]. It's free and installs easily on modern unix systems using either sendmail or procmail. If you're stuck with Outlook on Windows, there's a company selling an installshield-based version for only $30 (considerably less that even the cheapest of murder plots). They claim to be working on support for other windows based clients, so if you're windows based and using another program, relief is probably on the way. They have a 2 week free trial version.
Spamassassin really works. They claim it filters about 95%, which should put your spam level between 12.5 to 15 messages per day.... very close to the desired goal of 10 (and nobody needs to die).
With SpamAssassin, every message gets a spam rating. Legitimate messages usually score under 3 points, and SpamAssassin's default threshold is 5.0 points. You can adjust the threshold where messages get filtered... I personally set mine to 7.0 because I'm a bit paranoid of losing any legit messages. But even 7.0 works great... most spam scores well over 10 points. If all your legit messages are scoring very low (quite likely), you might be able to safely lower the threshold a bit and get under that magical 10 per day. Personally, I find it filters nearly all spams even at 7.0.
Be sure to turn on all the "network" tests including the blacklists and razor. By default, these might be set to 0.0 points each, so they won't get used. They do take some time because they involve communication with other sites (very large ISPs with one mail server for thousands of uses don't want to spend that much time per message, but as an individual you almost certainly do). The blacklists often block legit messages, so give them low scores, but it's safe to set Razor (a database of known spam messages, with "fuzzy" matching) to a high value like 4.0 or even 5.0.
There's been a lot of hype lately about Bayesian filtering... and maybe someday lots of email clients will have it built in. And maybe large numbers of users will go to the trouble to sort their messages properly so the filters on each machine "learn". Maybe.
But right now, you can download SpamAssassin for free (or pay just a bit for a commercial much-easier-to-install-on-windows version), and instantly 95% of your incoming spam will be gone. Well, most people just have SpamAssassin modify the message and then they use their mail client or procmail to deliver the message to a "spam folder" (so you can occasionally look through it and remember the bad-old-days before you finally broke down and went through the not-really-that-difficult process of installing SpamAssassin).
It really works, it's free (or cheap), and it doesn't involve killing anyone.
That's not a solution, that's a bandaid (Score:3, Insightful)
It's still wasting the bandwidth my company pays for.
On another note, spampal [spampal.com] is a free solution for windows. Works like a champ!
Jupiter Media Metrix == con artists (Score:5, Insightful)
If you listen carefully, nearly every time a web usage statistic is cited it will be attributed to either Jupiter or Forrester Research [forrester.com] -- another (surprise) consulting firm. Listen to the news for these names and you'll be impressed how lazy and naive reporters can be, they often do a lot less research than it appears.
Next, the NYT profiled them a couple of years ago in the Sunday Magazine. I don't have a link, but recommend you consider buying it (and I never do that!). Basically, it detailed how little experience the average analyst has; how difficult and unscientific it is to come up with data on things like banner ad clicks or to extrapolate tech trends; and quoted one analyst admitting that they were instructed, should the media call with a question they couldn't answer, they should make something up. Often they are spectacularly wrong, but who calls them on it? Again, the all-important goal is to get their name in the press, Jupiter is willing to give an opinion, it's free advertising. Note how Jupiter's name made it into even this short posting?
I hate to think of businesses making important decisions based on such loosely-derived bits of data. So when I see a spam prediction such as here, I know there's a fair chance it's either an uneducated guess or simply pulled out of someone's ass. Maybe they're right, but I'd like to hear about their methodology. If they say they just went to the Oracle at Delphi [oracleofdelphi.com] (don't those names sound familiar?) then get on with our lives. Spam will still be a problem either way; there are proven ways to fight it; realistically we will never allow it to get to such levels.
I encourage anyone interested not to believe me and do their own research. IMHO, this is one of the biggest scams this side of the pollsters and brokerage houses. I am deeply contemptuous of their work. Just a statement of opinion, not libel, no siree.
P.S. May I throw in that I don't like seeing spam victims blamed for their plight. I have been scrupulous with my email for years and still the spam is inexorably growing, largely because of some idiot who opted-in to a dozen things mistakenly typing in my email address instead of his. Now my address is burned into a CD somewhere. Fault is unnecessary; and regardless of fault, the blame lies with the spammer. Naive users do not "deserve" to have their email paralyzed, rather they deserve our sympathy and help.
Re:5 to 10 a day? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yahoo: some "war" against SPAM... (Score:2)
Is it really a war, when you have to manually delete crap out of your "bulk mail" mailbox, instead of having it automatically deleted?
I understand that this is done in order to drive up your total usage, to get you to pay for more disk space, but still...
-- Terry
Re:5 to 10 a day? (Score:5, Insightful)
Same here, i get *maybe* one email a day, and thats usually from a mailing list or something.
i only recently got a couple spams on my "real" email account (the one i run myself), my yahoo account i dont check for weeks or months on end (its one of those spam catching accounts for registering places, etc.) and my email at myrealbox.com never gets spammed.
i have never done any sort of spam blocking/filtering/etc.
here are some tips in case you dont know them already:
andeuh.....thats about it! so, to recap, do type your real user@host email address, anywhere!, and don't sign up for shady stuff with a good email address. man, this sounds so easy, why is it people have such a hard time...
Re:5 to 10 a day? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:5 to 10 a day? (Score:3, Informative)
i actually forgot 2 things (i knew i was forgetting them i just couldnt remember what they were)
ok, i'm pretty sure thats all of them now ;)
Re:5 to 10 a day? (Score:3, Insightful)
Notice how most postings on slashdot are real comments and not a bulk dumping ground for adverts. They have something here by not taking bulk posting to this forum. Those who do FLAME, SPAM, or TROLL can't do it in bulk. It's one submission to one site, not 5 million. There are no bulk spams here that also hit 5 million other websites with one click.
Soon my e-mail will be like, "Fill out the form at slashdot.org/~technician"
Simple: (Score:2)
Since I moved my primary account 18 months ago, I have got no more than 1 spam mailout per month, which I just blackhole.
Thing is, if your address appears anywhere "visible", it'll end up on spammers' bulk mail address-list CDs - so they can spam you to offer spam-blocking software. Go figure.It's handy to have a few disposable free mail accounts...Re:The future of email (Score:5, Insightful)
- Are you on a dialup?
- Do you receive lots of e-mails every day?
- Do you find that your own mail drowns in incoming spam?
Probably not. Not only do I get plenty of spam every day. That extra minute of having to deal with spam really bothers me, because I shouldn't have to waste my time like that. It might lead to me accidentally skipping a valid message because I mark a lot of spam messages for deletion and don't notice that important e-mail from a friend from long ago who's trying to get in touch with me because he has important news... Down the drain.Spam doesn't bother you? Fine, but don't pretend that it is not a problem to others. Don't try to blow it off like that.
It is, in fact, a major problem to a lot of people. Not only for personal e-mail, but our network administrators have to deal with absolutely huge amounts of spam that affect the network and its stability and reliability.
Our company has to spend considerable resources on fighting spam - resources that could have been spent fine-tuning other parts of the network to make everything run smoothly.
And then there's the amount of spam written in HTML and with images. Why should I spend money on downloading a huge spam message over my dialup connection?
Spam costs me money. It costs my employer money. It costs a lot of people money.
Spam is a real problem to a lot of people.
Re:The future of email (Score:2)
Re:The future of email (Score:3, Interesting)
Not everyone is in your position. It is not about mental capacity, but about time and money. When I check my mail on a dialup connection, and if I haven't checked it for a day or two, I have to download large amounts of spam. So much, in fact, that it drowns the e-mails I actually want to read.
The address I'm talking about now is not a very active one. It's mostly for friends and relatives. So rather than deleting the occasional spam amongst a number of valid e-mails, I have to spot the occasional valid e-mail in-between lots of spam mails. So I'll just point you back to the example with an old friend who tries to get in touch through e-mail, but never gets a reply because it was accidentally deleted, being hidden in tons of spam.
Snail mail? Sure, I'll just write a letter, take 50 dead tree copies of it and send it through snail mail to the 50 or so people on a private mailing list we run. That's sure to save me both time and money, right? Sigh.
I've already explained how spam is a serious problem to me personally as well as my employer. I forgot to mention how ISPs also have to deal with spam. If I am on a large ISP, you can guess how much spam they have to cope with. The spam wastes their bandwidth and disk space. The result is that running the ISP becomes more expensive, which again might lead to a lesser quality service or increased subscription fees.
How serious it is depends on the person, but you cannot deny the fact that it is a very serious and very valid concern to a lot of people, me and my employer included (I don't know about my ISP). People have all the right in the world to "whine" about spam. Why? Because spam is a serious problem to them.
(And your comment about dead-tree-mail is obviously nonsense. I don't even know why you bothered to try that one.)
Re:The future of email (Score:4, Insightful)
-1, Utter Bollocks...
Why should I have to put up with endless financial scams and obscenity laden drivel whenever I check my email? Saying "oh, it's not hard to hit delete" is a cop-out. If you don't object to deleting 10 mails a day, what about 50? 100? 200? 1000? Presumably you have a limit on how much you'll take personally, so what are you planning to do when you start getting double that?
You wouldn't put up with it in any other medium (phone, post, people coming to your house), so why email?
Go away! (Score:3, Insightful)
Normally, I read my mail on a machine with good filtering on a cable modem connection.
Problem is, I'm not always reading my mail at home. Sometimes I'm mobile, and often using my cell phone as a modem. That's a 14.4 connection that I pay per-minute. Eventually I could upgrade to a 1xRTT solution, but even with something like the Sprint "Unlimited Vision" plans, those only average 40-50 kilobits/sec. Thanks to spam, I cannot afford to check my email from my phone, and even if I could, it would take a half hour to download all the shit in my mailbox.
There are also plenty of dialup users in this country. It's not an issue of not wanting broadband or not being able to afford it, it's an issue of simply NOT BEING ABLE TO GET IT EVEN IF THEY WANT IT. This was my case until last February or so.
Simply put, these people PAY to receive spam. Even over a cablemodem, you pay in the form of increased ISP rates to offset their bandwidth/server disk space costs due to spam.
In short, client-side filtering is NOT the answer.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:When in Doubt (Score:2)
What the one that applies only to Usenet? That's fine by me; the real problem with email is UBE anyway - *not* just UCE, although that's pretty foul crap anyway, but anything unsolicited and sent in bulk (read: not targetted at you specifically). This includes crazy charity/religious-headcase mails as well.
It also means that a mailshot from a company to "just say hi" to someone is still undesirable.
Besides which, it's still the ultimate in cheek to assume that someone's email connection is free - it's *NOT*, dammit, so any senders-of-UCE are stealing resources in order to try and sell you something.
I'm expecting to change bank *again* for exactly this reason.
Rewrite the definition: stamp out UBE!
Your right to speak... (Score:2)
Next, you will be telling me that it's illegal for me to wear headphones and listen to music while you are speaking publically, because you have a right to have me hear you.
And then you'll tell me it's illegal to change channels when a commercial comes on.
That's just utter BS.
Commercial speech may be protected under the first ammendment, but I'll be damned if that means I have to listen to it.
-- Terry