AOL Cans 1 billion Spams In One Day

linuxwrangler writes "AOL announced today that its spam filters hit the 1 billion reject mark for a 24 hour period. This is an average of 28 rejects per day per member. In addition, AOL spam engineers say they receive 5.5 million spam submissions each day from AOL users. Other reports here(1) and here(2)."

Wow!

28 per subcriber per day caught.

Only leaves 103 apeice...

Re:Wow!

Man, what I'd give to only have 28 pieces of spam thrown my way each day. Here's how many pieces of putrid canned ham have been spewed my way in the past few days:


23 February: 1095 spams, 7,821,318 bytes
24 February: 1320 spams, 6,581,776 bytes
25 February: 1700 spams, 6,875,706 bytes
26 February: 1598 spams, 7,910,568 bytes
27 February: 2659 spams, 13,183,247 bytes
28 February: 1436 spams, 6,280,790 bytes
1 March: 1492 spams, 6,917,835 bytes
2 March: 1274 spams, 5,805,475 bytes
3 March: 1488 spams, 6,196,761 bytes
4 March: 1626 spams, 9,023,298 bytes

Thank Ghu for tools like procmail [procmail.org], tmda [tmda.net], and spamoracle [inria.fr].

Re:How?

My spam counts tend to get run up because of how my eight-year-old domain is set up (all incoming mail, regardless of the to address gets directed to the same inbox) and because I've made use of tagged addresses.

Having all email routed to my inbox means that my figures above include dictionary attacks.

Using tagged addresses also runs up the total a lot. Every time I give out my email address, either on a registration form or in a public posting, I use a different tag.

I started tagging addresses in the early days of spam. Remember when we foolishly thought we could attach a disclaimer to usenet posts along the lines of "send me spam, and I'll bill you $50 under the anti-fax laws"? Well, I was dumb. I figured that in order to "prove" that unsolicited email was unsolicited, I had to have some proof [google.com] of how the spammer got my email address, and that I had a clear disclaimer.

The good news: I have a pretty good idea of which of my online activities generate spam (e.g., posts to control.cancel and *.test, my NIC registrations, and usenet group-creation votes all seem to be popular for the spam-database trollers)

The bad news: I can easily get hit 30, 40, or 50 times for any one mass-spewing a spammer decides to do.

The totals above contain NO false positives -- they're all tied to tagged addresses which only produce spam. Not included are the 50 or so false negatives I get a day, which get tackled through other means [tmda.net].

Dammit Dad!

Mom told you to stop giving the pr0n companies your real email address.

*shaking head*

psxndc

But...

...only 15 originated outside of AOHell in the first place.

AOL spam engineers?

Are they responsible for creating the spam, or stopping it?

Re:AOL spam engineers?

The answer is of course, yes.

Re:AOL spam engineers?

They should use this threat in the next Austin Powers movie. Dr Evil spamming everyone's email with 1 billion ads/spams unless he is paid "1 Million Dollars"

Re:AOL spam engineers?

Mustafa: But my plan was perfect.

Dr. Evil: Then why do we have 1 billon cans of SPAM in the middle of my underground lair?

Mustafa: We were unable to predict homonym complications due to the reanimation process.

Dr. Evil: SILENCE! I will not tolerate your insolence!

Dr. Evil pushes the button, Mustafa gets badly burned, you get the idea.

What I want to know is...

...how much of that was outgoing? i.e, how much did AOL users themselves generate? Probably more than they want to let on...

Failure rate?

And how many got through?

Re:Failure rate?

Members are clicking on the "Report Spam" button to send up to 5.5 million pieces of junk email per day to AOL's anti-spam engineers

Your guess is that every single piece of spam that gets through is reported?

Re:Failure rate?

Unfortunately, complaints about unwanted email are considered spam by the filters and never actually reach [e-mail].

Re:Failure rate?

I'll bite. Hell, you already consider me a foe, so what more harm can I do?

To start off with, the information is grossly understated. If we were to find out what is going on with the filtering issue, we would need many more numbers than what they gave us (e.g. total number of mails processed, then broken down by sender, whether the recipient was in the to part of the header or the bcc part, etc).

There are so many factors that go into this that it's not even funny. I run a medium sized hosting company and take care of spam complaints from the inside and outside, as well as deal with filtering. It's not the most interesting job in the world... and yes, I do have clients (business owners) who use AOL for their home dialup service. They tend to be the ones that complain most.

So, to answer your question, yes, from the information we were given, it appears that their filtering is 99.4% successful. Is this at all accurate? Nope.

It's not my fault the moderators don't agree with you. Most of the time, they don't agree with me either. Unfortunately, unless you can think of a better moderation system and get Taco to build it, it's gonna be this way.

Re:Failure rate?

More importantly, how many valid emails were wrongly discarded as spam?

Re:Failure rate?

how many valid emails were wrongly discarded as spam?

I can partly answer that, and say it's probably a huge number. Bigger than they want you to know. I help out with a local church's Web site. This is a church -- they're far too nice and technically inept to spam anyone. But their site is hosted on a machine that about 100 domains use. Other customers of the ISP HAVE sent spam. AOL blocks at IP address, so all 100 domains are blocked.

So. To answer your question, a LOT of legitimate email is not getting through. I had to work with the church's ISP and AOL spam cops to get them to make an exception for the church's domain. They LEFT the other 98 domains that hadn't spammed on the block list, just because those domains hadn't complained yet. And of course, every now and then, they "forget" that they've made an exception for us, and I have to go over it all again.

Really, AOL gets such big numbers because their system is not very efficient.

Some are configured to reject ALL outside email

Apparently AOL users can set up their accounts to reject ALL email originating outside AOL (as if the rest of the internet were worse SPAMmers than AOL folks). Amazingly, this setting is turned on on some accounts (many, I suspect) without them even knowing it. I run a webserver for a few businesses, and we get LOTS of mail bounced back from AOL account for this reason. It's a real pain when, for example, an AOL customer is trying to sign up on our site, and their account activation key gets bounced back to us because of this stupid setting. I bet they're counting all these messages in their total.

AOL members aren't sending 5.5 million spams a day

Well, maybe they are, but that's not what's reported in the article.

AOL users are reporting 5.5 million spam messages a day to customer service.

New notification

I can see it now:
*bing*You got mail!

"You have 10 new messages"
"You have 293 rejected messages"

Re:New notification

More like...

*bing*You got mail!

"You have 10 new messages"
"You have 293 rejected messages"

MSG 1> Increase your breast size!
MSG 2> Increase your penis size!
MSG 3> Loose weight fast!
MSG 4> Re: my naked webcam!
MSG 5> Make money advertising on the Internet!
MSG 6> Your unclaimed money!
MSG 7> Horny babes with horses!
MSG 8> Incest rape! W@W!
MSG 9> Make millions in Real Estate!
MSG 10> Do you hate spam? You need this! Only $29.95!

Re:New notification

Now wait, are we talking about AOL or Slashdot here?

wouldn't it be easier, quicker and smaller...?

To measure the LEGIT email going through AOL?

Re:wouldn't it be easier, quicker and smaller...?

lol, that sounds like the making of a bbspot [bbspot.com] story.

AOL user shocked! "I received a personal message that was not trying to sell me anything! I didn't know this kind of thing existed!"
AOL engineers responded that this anomaly occasionally happens about every 0.264% of regular mail sent. . . .

not to burst your anti-spam bubble, but . . .

unfortunately, i would guess that half of their spam is legitimate communications that get blocked. i have alot of email addys. but apparently, only my mac.com address gets through.

every other letter i write to my mom gets rejected. if i am not allowed to spam my mom, who else should be????

Re:not to burst your anti-spam bubble, but . . .

I have to know why you're asking your Mom if she'd like to add three or four inches to her penis length.

It's mutual.

* ^From:[ ]*[a-z0-9_]+@aol\.com$
#
* ! ^X-Loop:.*mydomain
* ^TO_me@mydomain\.com
#
{
# Make a temporary file of the message to be returned
:0c:formail.lock
# Discard whitespaces, insert a leading blank
| expand | sed -e 's/[ ]*$//g' | sed -e 's/^/ /' > return.tmp
# Prepare and send the rejection
:0:formail.lock
| (formail -r -I"Subject: Rejected mail: Recipient refusal" \
-A"X-Loop: [e-mail]" ; \
echo "Sorry, but your e-mail was rejected because the From: header" ; \
echo "didn't seem to include your real name. This is an automated" ; \
echo "message; replying to it won't work." ; \
echo "--- begin rejected mail ---" ; \
cat return.tmp ; \
echo "--- end rejected mail ---" ; \
rm -f return.tmp) \
| /usr/sbin/sendmail -t
}

This is the most important story of the year

And it is under the most correct section: Your Rights Online.

Today 1 billion voices were silenced. This is not some make believe movie where Alderan gets blown up. It is about the actual usurpation of the Freedom of Speech.

AOL has taken it upon themselves to decide for their users what is appropriate speech and what is not. That is sad. If you think Microsoft is taking away your freedoms because they own 90%+ in the OS market it is time to recheck your bad guys. AOL has just proven itself to be an enemy to Free Speech. That is a much more grave violation of your rights online than anything Microsoft has ever done.

The laughable part of all this is that AOL is the biggest real-world spammer with their tons and tons of CDs that have to be dumped into landfills every year.

Fuck you AOL for making yourself judge, jury, and executioner of the First Amendment.

Re:This is the most important story of the year

Would someone mod the parent up +1 Funny, please? Because the poster can't be serious. Let's look at a few of the more obvious problems with the post:

• You capitalized "Freedom of Speech" being usurped, so I assume you mean the freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment, which you mention at the end. Sadly for your post, that Freedom and that amendment apply only to the Government. Private institutions can suppress (that is, fail to use their own money to allow) any speech they damn well please.

• Nobody is taking away anyone's freedoms, because each and every AOL user whose spam was blocked paid AOL to do it. Those who don't want spam blocked are Free to change to another ISP. (Oh, quit it... AOL is too an ISP. Stay on topic, all right?)

• Finally, tons and tons of CDs, unless they appear as ISO images in your mailbox, are Junk Mail, not spam.

Hope this clears up exactly which "rights" have been infringed here -- the rights of spammers to dump 1 billion pieces of mail into AOL users' mailboxes. And I just can't get too hot under the collar about their loss.

Re:This is the most important story of the year

Exactly. Tell me where it says in the USA Constitution that a corporation is required to pay to support your missguided interpretation of freedom of speech? The government isn't even required to do this.

The only thing the government can't do is supress or prevent you from doing so.

I should be allowed to stand on the steps of the White house and demand that I be given press conference time immediately following the President, just because I am a citizen. But I should be reqected my requests and even asked to shut up and read the Constitution that I tried erroneously to wave in my defense.

And how many spams originate from citizens of USA any way, more from outside I would venture.

robi

Don't exagurate.

Don't exaggerate.

When you compare spam-blocking with Nazi atrocities, you're belittling the horror that Nazi victims experienced.

Many of those Communists, Jews, trade unionists, Catholics were often killed in all manner of horrific ways.

By contrast, AOL isn't killing anybody. If AOL blocks spam, somebody looses some money, and an AOL user gains some time, money & sanity.

There can be no fair comparison of these two activities.

NEWSFLASH: Corporations determine your rights!

I happen to believe in the sanctity of the Freedom of Speech. I do not subscribe to your concept of corporate control of rights.

I don't know where this idea comes from that just because you are a business it means that you can do whatever you want, including infringing upon rights guaranteed by the government.

This is a sad double standard being applied to "unwanted" emails. The KKK and the NOI can publicly advertise their unwanted speech because the First Amendment protects them. They cannot be barred from advertising in newspapers, they cannot be barred from advertising on billboards, and they cannot be barred from posting in open forums. But spammers don't have these rights?

You better think about that position a little.

Re:NEWSFLASH: Corporations determine your rights!

I don't know where this idea comes from that just because you are a business it means that you can do whatever you want, including infringing upon rights guaranteed by the government.

You know, if you're such an advocate of free speech, there's at least a chance that you know what it means, right? So you know that the notion of free speech-- as a literal right, not as a principle-- is embodied in the first amendment to the Constitution. Right? And you know, therefore, that the first amendment defines what your right to free speech actually is. Right?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

See the important part right up there in front? "Congress shall make no law." (Surely one of the most beautiful phrases ever uttered in the English language, by the way. Right up there with "We the people.") It doesn't say "AOL shall make no acceptable use policy." AOL is a private company, not a public agency of the government.

Now, let's talk about your comparison to the KKK. You said,

The KKK and the NOI can publicly advertise their unwanted speech because the First Amendment protects them.

Let's get more specific about this. The first amendment doesn't give anybody a right or the permission to do anything. It merely puts a restriction on what the government can do. So instead of saying that the KKK and the NOI can advertise because the first amendment protects them, it's more accurate to say that Congress cannot prevent the KKK or the NOI from advertising because the first amendment protects them. This distinction is important, as you'll soon see.

They cannot be barred from advertising in newspapers...

By Congress? No. The KKK cannot be barred by act of Congress from advertising in newspapers. Can an individual newspaper refuse to run a KKK ad? Yes. The first amendment doesn't apply here. The first amendment doesn't say, "The New York Times ad sales department shall make no business decision abridging the freedom of speech." The first amendment, if I may personify, doesn't give a damn what The New York Times ad sales department does.

The same thing applies to the bit about billboards and the bit about open forums. Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, and that includes billboards and the Internet.

But spammers don't have these rights?

Yes, they do. Spammers, just like you, me, and the KKK, have the right to speak their minds in whatever medium and on whatever message without Congress getting in their way. The first amendment guarantees that. Since, however, AOL is not Congress, the first amendment does not apply to this situation, and the spammers' right to free speech is not being abridged.

You better think about that position a little.

Right back atcha, OG.

Re:This is the most important story of the year

Although parent post sounds trollish, it has a valid point. Filtering incoming mail by the ISP is a bad idea, atleast much worse than filtering outgoing ones.

• It doesn't help the wasted bandwidth problem.
• Since the users don't know what mail they were going to get, there is much less accountability. OTOH, if my ISP blocked the (legitimate) mail I sent, then I can complain to them.
• The ISP can be forced to implement arbitrary filters like "pro-terrorist", "anti-US", etc by the government and no one would be the wiser.

So this is a first step, but not the Right Thing. I hope ISPs start coming under more pressure to filter their outgoing mail.

Re:This is the most important story of the year

Fuck you AOL for making yourself judge, jury, and executioner of the First Amendment.

Ah, frea speach. What an overrated 'right' that is. Sorry, but your precious Amendment only prevents the government from shutting you up. There's no reason AOL can't censor you, and there's nothing to stop the Slashdot mods putting you to -1. That was settled long ago; Sanford Wallace, the Ralsky of his day, sued AOL and Compuserve for filtering his junk out, and he lost.

It costs AOL $2 per month per user just to handle the spam traffic. AOL's huge userbase makes them a magnet for dictionary attacks. If you want an unfiltered mail feed, then by all means pay someone extra for spam storage, or run your own mail server.

Re:This is the most important story of the year

AOL has taken it upon themselves to decide for their users what is appropriate speech and what is not

No, we have not. Spam is the #1 complaint we get from our users. They don't want the stuff, so we're fighting it. We block what they ask us to block.

But, of course, we're AOL and this is Slashdot, so naturally everything we do is wrong.

Re:This is the most important story of the year

But, of course, we're AOL and this is Slashdot, so naturally everything we do is wrong

You got me on the internet.

Granted, I've since graduated, but *blush* you were my first.

Statistical analysis would be nice...

I would really like to see what kinds of spam are being sent and received. Sorta like the Google Zeitgeist, but for mass email.

It would probably have the same #1 term, though...

More proof...

More proof that spam is a terrible burden on the Internet and its users. We need more countermeasures against spam. I have a great idea for keeping spam out (and even making sure the ISP doesn't get it), but I have to develop the idea and the tools some more (in other words: only the idea exists, and its a pretty rough one).

Its pretty bad when a single ISP gets 1 billion+ spams a day, and that must severely punish their servers. Kudos to AOL (wow...I never thought I'd ever say that) for taking the effort to block the tremendous amount of spam sent to your users.

Spam's not so bad

I don't know what everyone's complaining about. All those hot wet co-eds have really appreciated how large my penis has gotten--not to mention all the weight I've lost--and ever since I helped that nice Nigerian royal, I've had the spare cash to take them out on the town as well. I have to go get my snail-mail now, last week I found out I might have already won!

Wish me luck.

Spam solution

I have a very very good solution for spammingive been doing it ever since i was able to get an email program that supported filters, i rapidly created one filter after another, within one week, there was NO spam in my email box. it was in the trash (used eudora) So here is the solution, allow aol users to use POP/SMTP access for their mail, this way they can block spam at the drop point, and positivley identify spammers before you decide to block them, with this method, spam will die... Spam is simply the scourge of the internet, it needs to be eradicated by efficent technical methods, not just by blocking legit messages as well. Btw- im using evolution now, with only 4 filters, i havent missed one message that was legit yet...

Serious stuff, this...

This may not be the crowd that wants to hear this, but some radical changes need to be made in the email protocol to minimize the amount of spam that users deal with these days. Bottom line is that the goal should be for email communications to be as trustworthy as phone calls - sure, there are some telemarketers and crank callers out there, but if the noise level from your phone was as high as in your email, there would be marches on Washington to demand a solution.

I would think the most likely candidate would be to build-in verification of the sender, and bring about the end of anonymous email. That's sure to raise the hackles of many here, but so far, nothing's working.

Re:Serious stuff, this...

The 'trustworthiness' of phone calls has nothing to do with verification or anonimity. It is pretty easy to make what is essentially an anonymous phone call. Telemarketing and spamming have everything to do with cost effectiveness. It makes people money to spam. If it didn't, they probably wouldn't be doing it for all that long.

Your phone isn't barraged with spam calls because it costs money to have someone sit and talk to you and try to get you to buy stuff. Just enough money such that you only occasionally get a call from a telemarketer. Apparently, the response rate for most spam is high enough that the costs associated with getting a reasonable level of responses/sent messages are less than the profits from doing so. Thus most people get piles of spam.

Much like telemarketing, the way to stop spam is at the termination point, the user. If spammers don't make any money, they won't spam anymore.

The solution isn't to take capabilities away from normal users, the solution is to make it so hard to be a spammer(that makes money doing it), that no one is a spammer anymore...