Jupiter Forecasts 50% Increase In Spam

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??"

Re:5 to 10 a day?

I get about 250-300 spam messages a day ..... I'd kill to only be getting ten spams a day.

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.

Jupiter Media Metrix == con artists

Consider who [jmm.com] is bringing you this information and take it with a grain of salt. Jupiter is in the business of consulting, and is on nearly every reporter's Rolodex as a source of that all-important statistic to anchor whatever tech story they're writing. So right off the bat they have a potential conflict of interest -- accuracy v. self-promotion as "the source" the data.

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?

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:

• don't put your email address anywhere that web crawlers can find it. change s's to $'s, insert little [REMOVETHIS]'s, whatever. just dont put the real addy there, and make sure you obscure the domain name (they can still mail to jackass@ or webmaster@yourdomain and it'll get to someone). any text files, etc, that have even a remote possibility of leaking onto the net (it happens, you dont even need to be famous, there are tons of blah.net/~someuser/ listings with all kinds of interesting files in them on the net...) irc logs, mailing lists!!!, etc. if your address gets on the net, you will be spammed.
• use a junk address for registrations/etc that might send you junk. common sense.

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:The future of email

You don't care? Interesting.

• 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

If people don't have the mental capacity to fairly easily filter out most spam, maybe they should stick to dead-tree-based mail...

-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?

Bright future for Open Source E-mail clients

'cause they include clever spam filters.

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

I've been trying out the Mozilla nightly builds which have the Mozilla spam filtering features [mozilla.org] in them. It works great so far. I can't until it is release-ready. I'm hoping for 1.3, but I think that's little optimistic.

I kind of like spam

It gives you the feeling that there are people out there who care enough to send you personalized, thoughtful solicitations. They wouldn't send it to you if they thought you didn't really, really be interested in the product they're selling.

Also, it's pink and tasty.

Client filtering has no future.

I write as the postmaster for a consumer email service, who enforces a strict abuse policy to prevent abuse at source. I do not consider client level filtering as a viable solution, it is a temporary stop-gap.

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.

I agree that client-side filtering is done "too late" to currently save bandwidth, but if people start using efficent filtering, the amount of spam they see, and possibly respond to, decreases.

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.

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.

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.

Re:One word..

you only specify who you want to receive email from, and don't receive any other mail.

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.

ISPs should fight back

I think that ISPs might decide to fight back. They're providing all the bandwidth to send this junk, and if they have to raise rates to their customers to do it, people will leave, causing their revenues to drop. It makes sense for them to nip this thing before that happens. Legislation, software filters, whatever...

c'mon

50% over 5 years ? less than moore's law ? lucky are we !

O.

Like we didn't see this coming?

I get more "Enlarge your penis!!!" Emails than anything else right now in my inbox (*sigh* if only it were true...)

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?

I get more "Enlarge your penis!!!" Emails than anything else right now

I've got news for them... you CAN'T sell ice to eskimos.

Sounds like someone is bragging :)

Re:Like we didn't see this coming?

AFAIK most human males enlarge their penis regularly, and it sure doesn't take 3 weeks like the spammers say :).

Hmm maybe I should change the subject line. Maybe not :).

Re:Like we didn't see this coming?

Isn't Ctrl-D bookmark? It is in IE and Netscape for Win32, at least. Why are you bookmarking penis enlargment sites?

Astrology?

It seems we have found a use for Astrology!

Since when can a planet perdict an increase in Spam, read the headline, it sounds just like Astrology!

There's a good side.

meaning the average american will get over 3600 of them a year

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...

... Wouldn't a moderate number of 'Western' countries (North America, the EU, and a few others who might want to tag along) banning the sending of unsolicited mail and the marketing of tools and lists with which to do it make a serious impact on the amount of spam recieved? Sure, a certain amount of it comes from abroad, but quite a lot is domestic, too, and quite a few countries in these areas are prepared to pay for it who might not be if it were banned.

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...

Spam forecast

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...

The future of email is........

A new (secure) protocol?

Re:The future of email is........

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..?

It's because dummies like you keep responding to them! Stop encouraging them!!! They have no way of making you money, or giving you a horse-sized penis.

Re:And the reason..?

I agree that it's crazy that .0001% actually purchase something, then they think it's a success and spam even more.

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 .aol or .msn accounts anyway (and if you have time, those get sent to abuse@aol, etc. -not that they'll do anything, but it's good to annoy them) Overall, after a few weeks of fighting back, my spam has been reduced greatly.

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?

A modest idea...

The problem currently is that there's so many people who are doing a very good job at blocking / stopping most of the spam that the average joe or public official doesn't realize just how much spam is sent to his mailbox every day (or at least would be if it weren't for the anti-spammers).

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.

Good bye privacy?

As a libertarian, I am concerned by the tension between wanting to stamp out the flow of spam, and the two-pronged threat anti-spam forces pose both to free speech and to email anonymity.

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?

As a libertarian, I am concerned by the tension between wanting to stamp out the flow of spam, and the two-pronged threat anti-spam forces pose both to free speech and to email anonymity.

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.

The future of 3rd world countries is?

Modern countries have adopted laws against spam:

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 --

The average person will swallow 16 spiders...

During a lifetime the average person will swallow sixteen spiders while they are sleeping! We all know that that is because there is this one dude in Switzerland that swallows seven trillion spiders per year while he is sleeping. I won't ever swallow any spiders while sleeping, but that one guy messes up the average.

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.