AOL Cans 1 billion Spams In One Day 460
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! (Score:5, Interesting)
Only leaves 103 apeice...
Re:Wow! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Wow! (Score:5, Informative)
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].
Dammit Dad! (Score:5, Funny)
*shaking head*
psxndc
Re:How? (Score:5, Interesting)
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].
Re:How? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Unbeleivable. (Score:3, Interesting)
However, nothing says I can't post a screenshot of my spam-box as viewed via pine.
For the poster who asked about the amount of spam-per-address...to be honest, I'm not sure. I didn't keep a good record of how many different tags I've used, and I'm not entirely sure how to adjust for the effects of dictionary attacks.
I'd guess that I easily somewhere between 70-100 spams per day to the address I originally used in the InterNIC record for my domain, for example, but I haven't kept stats at that level.
I'm unfortunately running a tar pit. But I've got to make up a measurable portion of submissions to uce@ftc.gov...not that that does any good.
So yeah, I get way more than my fair share of spam, because of being curious/stupid and tagging my address. I'm certainly not representative of how much spam Joe Average NetUser is getting. However, I think my spamlog may be interesting reading in the context of the overall growth of spam on the net.
I've been tracking my spam volume in the form above since 10 April 2002. One of these days I need to write up an article on how this is evidence of the expansion of spam.
One encouraging factoid: The rate of spam volume growth, at least for my little cesspool, seems to be slowing, at least as compared to what I saw during the last half of 2002. I don't know whether this is a real slowing, or just more filtering going on upstream from me, however....
P.S. -- 15 spams arrived between the time I pasted the listing from pine and my hitting preview a few seconds ago. :(
But... (Score:4, Funny)
AOL spam engineers? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:AOL spam engineers? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:AOL spam engineers? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:AOL spam engineers? (Score:4, Funny)
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... (Score:5, Insightful)
Failure rate? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Failure rate? (Score:2)
That'd be my guess.
Re:Failure rate? (Score:5, Insightful)
Your guess is that every single piece of spam that gets through is reported?
Re:Failure rate? (Score:3, Flamebait)
They are just doing what they do best.
Re:Failure rate? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Failure rate? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Failure rate? (Score:5, Informative)
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? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Failure rate? (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
AOL members aren't sending 5.5 million spams a day (Score:5, Interesting)
AOL users are reporting 5.5 million spam messages a day to customer service.
New notification (Score:5, Funny)
*bing*You got mail!
"You have 10 new messages"
"You have 293 rejected messages"
Re:New notification (Score:5, Funny)
*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 $29.95!
Re:New notification (Score:2)
Re: Your account status.
When you open it, you see goatse.
Re:New notification (Score:5, Funny)
Re:New notification (Score:3, Funny)
wouldn't it be easier, quicker and smaller...? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:wouldn't it be easier, quicker and smaller...? (Score:5, Funny)
AOL user shocked! "I received a personal message that was not trying to sell me anything! I didn't know this kind of thing existed!" .
AOL engineers responded that this anomaly occasionally happens about every 0.264% of regular mail sent. . .
Spam Engineer? (Score:2, Funny)
not to burst your anti-spam bubble, but . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
every other letter i write to my mom gets rejected. if i am not allowed to spam my mom, who else should be????
Re:not to burst your anti-spam bubble, but . . . (Score:5, Funny)
It's mutual. (Score:5, Informative)
#
* ! ^X-Loop:.*mydomain
* ^TO_me@mydomain\.com
#
{
# Make a temporary file of the message to be returned
# Discard whitespaces, insert a leading blank
| expand | sed -e 's/[ ]*$//g' | sed -e 's/^/
# Prepare and send the rejection
| (formail -r -I"Subject: Rejected mail: Recipient refusal" \
-A"X-Loop: rejected-mail@mydomain.com" ; \
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) \
|
}
This is the most important story of the year (Score:5, Funny)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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:
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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. (Score:5, Insightful)
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! (Score:4, Insightful)
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! (Score:4, Insightful)
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?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 (Score:3, Funny)
I hereby invoke Godwin's Law. This thread is over.
Shame on you and your piddling Godwin's Law for trying to censor this poor citizen's speech. Why, you're no better than the Nazis who... Doh!
Re:This is the most important story of the year (Score:5, Insightful)
-
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 (Score:2)
Re:This is the most important story of the year (Score:4, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:3, Interesting)
None of us will probably use AOL's service, but their abuse department certainly earned our respect.
Re:This is the most important story of the year (Score:4, Funny)
You got me on the internet.
Granted, I've since graduated, but *blush* you were my first.
Re:This is the most important story of the year (Score:3, Interesting)
Besides, if you tried to implement a whitelist for all of AOL, the spammers would get around it pretty quickly - just sign up for a free trial, send yourself spam, add the spam to the whitelist, and away you go. It would have to be per-user to be meaningful, and if they implemented it, it would just mean most AOL users would start using Hotmail or Yahoo instead, as I'm sure many do already.
Statistical analysis would be nice... (Score:5, Interesting)
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...
Re:Statistical analysis would be nice... (Score:2)
Re:Statistical analysis would be nice... (Score:2)
The newsgroup news.admin.net-abuse.sightings [google.com] is home to a massive and continually updating archive of spam. A wonderful informational resource; if you've identified a spammer you don't recognise, you can dig up some of his past crimes to append to your LART as additional evidence.
5.5 million spam e-mails? (Score:2)
Yeesh... just how many pr0n sites did these "spam engineers" sign up for?
As for me, I get about an equal number of those Nigerian e-mails per day.
More proof... (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Welcome to McSpammers: (Score:2)
Go AOL! You actually did something right!
Spam's not so bad (Score:5, Funny)
Wish me luck.
Spam solution (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Spam solution (Score:2, Insightful)
Serious stuff, this... (Score:5, Insightful)
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... (Score:4, Insightful)
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...
But how do I... (Score:3, Funny)
"Allow all mail" doesn't work? (Score:5, Interesting)
But wait... (Score:2, Funny)
Oh wait... you're not even there to blame anymore! Blast!
Save those bits! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Save those bits! (Score:4, Funny)
I assume you're talking about "XP".
XP stands for Jesus Christ. When the Emperor Constantine fought for control of the western roman empire at the Milvian bridge in 312, he supposedly saw the sign "Chi-Rho" (Greek Letters X and P) in the sky, along with hearing a voice which said "in this sign, you will conqueror". Chi-Rho, the way it is usually depicted in ancient artwork, is an X super-imposed on a P. Chi and Rho are the first two letters of the Greek name for Christ, pronounced "Kreestos".
Hence, where we get "X-mas". I once heard a baptist preacher say that x-mas was bad because they were crossing out christ, x-ing him out. This is stupid - since the 500's X has been a sign for Christ.
Hence, WindowsXP is really Windows, version christ.
How do they know? (Score:2, Informative)
But what puzzles me is how they know I have a
small penis?
Yeah, including legit emails (Score:5, Informative)
Our listmaster has been around and around in circles with AOL on it several times. It's almost not worth fighting anymore. Use AOL, accept the fact that email you want will not always get to you.
S.O.L? (Score:5, Funny)
What if.... (Score:4, Funny)
Well, a guy can dream, can't he?
Good (Score:5, Funny)
Intelligent filters (Score:2, Interesting)
If the filter is anything like the filters in use in public schools and library networks, then it would be a fair guess that quite a few legit emails were blocked by the filters. It seems like writting an intelligent filter is pretty hard.
Holy. (Score:2, Interesting)
I just totaled up the logs for the spam graph [dowco.com] I keep for our mail server. In maybe a year and a half, we've caught approx. 1.6 million spams. I thought we were doing well.
But Jesus Christ! Who here wants to start a pool? We'll bet on how long it'll take before AOL has stopped a googol of spam, total. I bet two and a half years; three tops.
Can someone explain to me... (Score:2)
Way to go AOL.
Re:Can someone explain to me... (Score:3, Informative)
- End user reports SPAM to his ISP.
- EU's ISP contacts ISP of spammer and says joe@isp.com is a spammer. Usually through abuse@isp.com.
- If spammer's ISP does nothing and the SPAM continues, EU's ISP blocks entire spammer's ISP.
- Spammer's ISP gets reports from clients they cannot send mail to EU's ISP.
- Spammer's ISP finally kicks spammer off due to pressure from its users not being able to email EU's ISP.
Of course, this is the theory.bandwidth usage (Score:4, Insightful)
But what kind of bandwidth would 1 billion spam messages take up? And system resources to process all that excess mail? I bet AOL spends a small fortune on spam - they gotta pay those "SPAM" engineers too.
I hear people complain about spam, but I generally think to myself "yeah yeah." But 1 billion freakin messages is nuts.
I think the correct word in this case (Score:2)
Ambivalence (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ambivalence (Score:3, Insightful)
It's censorship from the standpoint that they are making a determination for their users as to which content is acceptable and which is not. "Controlling the use of their own property" would be a valid argument if they simply tightened their acceptible use policy in regards to their own users, and restricted access to their own mailservers by preventing open relay, checking for mangled headers, referencing blackhole lists, etc.
The point at which I think it goes too far is when AOL starts analyzing messages and deciding for their users whether or not a particular message is in fact, spam. I think what would be better is to give the users tools that would allow them to filter their own mail (ie, reject messages with specific keywords or combinations of keywords, like penis+enhancement or Nigerian+ambassador).
I would even be satisfied if AOL simply ranked email with a spam meter, and then flagged the message as "Possible Spam" or something. As long as the message itself is actually delivered to its intended recipient. The user can then decide for themselves if they choose to trust AOL's ranking system and simply auto-delete anything flagged, or if they want to inspect it themselves.
Re:Ambivalence (Score:4, Insightful)
> choose to trust AOL's ranking system and simply
> auto-delete anything flagged, or if they want to
> inspect it themselves.
The user can decide for himself whether or not to use AOL at all. By choosing to use AOL he chooses to accept AOL's filters. There's no censorship here.
Re:Ambivalence (Score:3, Insightful)
Agreed.
By choosing to use AOL he chooses to accept AOL's filters.
Agreed.
There's no censorship here.
I disagree. AOL *is* censoring the information that reaches their members' inboxes by filtering that material based on AOL's criteria, and not necessarily the criteria of their individual members. As I said before, I would have no problem with AOL taking measures against spam if those measures were largely passive in nature (ie, flagging incoming messages that meet certain criteria as "Possible Spam" and giving each individual member choices as to how they want to handle those messages). My problem with AOL's approach is that they are preventing those messages that AOL considers spam from ever reaching their customers' inboxes.
Granted, one man's "censorship" is another man's "filtering service." I just think that AOL would be better served by giving their users the power to filter their own mail, rather than taking a "my way or the highway" approach to it. At the very least, the users should be given the option to choose whether they trust AOL's spam filter and want to just let their mail be deleted, or whether they want it routed to a designated "spam" folder of their inbox where they can verify it themselves.
wow that's expensive or is it cheap. (Score:5, Interesting)
I would guess that deleting spam is about as expensive as transmitting it for an ISP. that is the processor intensive task of scoring and removing a spam probably is a wash with the processor light task of tranmitting and storing it. Now for the sake of argument lets just guess a wild number for the cost of filtering or passing along a spam. lets say 0.001 dollars.
if that were true then a billion spam deleted would cost AOL 1million dollars per day (plus the ones that got through). that would be a third of a billion dollars a year. THat seems way to high. So it must be less. SO maybe its 0.000001 cents?? that would come to a third of a million dollars a year.
My guess is that the latter is probably a good guess. why? well how many engineers has AOL assigned to the de spamination? perhaps a third of a million dollars worth every year? it would of course not make sense to spend more on de spamination than the harm it costs.
so anyhow assuming this wild guessing is within an order of magnitude then the proper charge to fine a spammer would be some multiple of 0.000001 dollars per spam sent. which is not an awful lot.
so is spam really that costly to ISPs??? Maybe not
Re:wow that's expensive or is it cheap. (Score:5, Informative)
your assumptions are pretty poor, for example:
how can you possibly assume that the cost of a spam is only in 1) the bandwidth required to receive the spam and 2) the amount of processor time spent to score and delete the messages?
The most costly aspect of spam for AOL is the damage to its image, and the consequent loss of its user base. That in turn, has a consequent loss in stock price.
also, i like how you relate the "despamination" costs of the salaries of the engineers with the costs of spam to the ISP.
here's your logic:
"it would of course not make sense to spend more on de spamination than the harm it costs"
well, this is true, but what can you logically conclude from this? only that the harm it costs is AT LEAST as much as the cost of "de spamination"
this DOES NOT mean that:
(harm done by spam) == (cost of de spamination)
as you imply in your post.
in fact, quite the opposite, if I were company, would I embark on an endeavor if I only expected to breakeven? HELL NO. a company would only try to do something like despamification or new features in a piece of software if it expected to come out ahead. This means that:
(harm done by spam) >> (cost of engineers to de spaminate)
also, I think you severely lowballed the cost of the engineers doing the despamification. a third of a million gets you ~5-6 engineers? If they are sucessfully filtering 1 billion spam a day, they need more than that just for the IT personnel keeping the processing power running.
Also, you are confusing the costs to the ISP. don't forget that AOL will still incur the costs of deleting the spam, the costs of the bandwidth to receive the spam, and ON TOP OF THAT the costs of the engineers.
so instead of:
(harm done by spam) == (cost of engineers to despam)
it is much more accurately depicted by the following:
(harm done by spam) >> (cost of engineers to despam) + (cost of bandwidth to receive spam) + (cost of processing power to score and delete spam)
Re:wow that's expensive or is it cheap. (Score:3, Insightful)
The main costs of spam are probably:
1) the increased bandwidth required to accept all that spam into AOL's network in addition to all the other Internet traffic coming in
2) the increased capacity of their mail servers to store and process all that spam in addition to the legitimate mail they have to process
3) the cost of employing an entire department of people whose job is to try to reduce the amount of spam going around
4) support costs from customers who complain about receiving spam that should have been blocked or about not receiving legitimate mail that was blocked by mistake
5) badwill (opposite of goodwill) due to the association of their company with spam (everybody knows - or thinks they know - AOL users receive more spam than users of many other ISPs)
Did I miss anything?
Re:wow that's expensive or is it cheap. (Score:3, Interesting)
there is a claim that spam costs money. Money to the ISP for bandwidth and money to the end user for reading/deleting. is this really true?
Then later:
I would guess that deleting spam is about as expensive as transmitting it for an ISP.
If deleting it costs money, and not deleting it costs money, then it costs money.
Microsoft ads on Slashdot (Score:3, Funny)
Seriously, now... I always click on the Microsoft ads and then hit the back button once their page finishes loading. It creates extra loads on their web servers. It probably costs them something. It makes them think that people are actually interested in their shit (as opposed to the realistic fact that people only use their shit because they're forced to), etc. And I'm sure that the good guys, like the folks at OSDN, benefit from people like me clicking on Microsoft's stupid ads.
Mailing lists? (Score:3, Interesting)
I had several lists bounce back and forth from my Yahoo inbox to my Yahoo bulk box before Yahoo figured this out and stopped moving legitimate mailers like NYTimes.com, Palm and Apple news into the bulk category.
What does this have to do with my rights online? (Score:3)
My right not to recieve anything unsolicited? Spam is annoying, but I think that's reaching.
Are we claiming some right to get unfiltered e-mail?
Perhaps AOL infringes on our rights simply by existing.
Not So Hard When... (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not sure what the problem is, but I just discovered this evening that all mail from my Time Warner/Roadrunner account is being bounced by AOL. Gives me some truncated error message, so I don't even know what the problem is.
Cute. :-/
If you could press a button... (Score:5, Interesting)
More effective solutions exist (Score:3, Funny)
An efficient anti-spam weapon (Score:5, Informative)
If you want to get rid of spam, do this:
1. Create a "secret" email account from a reputable provider. Make it unguessable. Add some digits or weird long strings. Don't give it to anyone.
2.Go to spamgourmet.com [spamgourmet.com] and create an account. It's free and open source. In the "forward emails to" field, enter your secret email.
3. Give spamgourmet addresses to your friends. If your account name is Joe6Pack, give your pal Jack Daniels an address Jack.Daniels.Joe6Pack at spamgourmet dot com. To greatdeal.com, give greatdeal.com.Joe6Pack at spamgourmet dot com. This way you know who has what address. Those spamgourmet addresses are disposable.
All the emails sent to your various spamgourmet addresses are forwarded to your secret account.
4. If Jack, who is a friggin' idiot running XP and Outlook, gets yet another Kletz-like virus, the content of his Outlook address book will be compromized and all these addresses harvested by spammers. Just go to spamgourmet.com and disable the compromized address. Tell Jack he's a fool. Give him another disposable address if needed... Until next time.
If greatdeal.com turns out to be a spammer, just disable their address.
5. After a couple of months, disable your old email accounts, the ones that are spammed to death right now.
6. No more spam. Or if you get spam, just disable the spammed address and report the spammer to spamhaus.org. You'll never be spammed more than once.
Works for me.
If the Internet is an Information Superhighway... (Score:3, Funny)
Wish I could remember where I heard that. Searched google for it, and found this,
So I still don't know who wrote it, but at least I got a good laugh re-reading the whole piece.Email viruses (Score:3, Interesting)
AFAICT, all those came from the fact that I made the mistake of listing my real email address when I uploaded a Winamp skin. It was up for less than a week in December, and I'm still getting viruses now. The hotmail one I put up to replace it (only ever used for that Winamp skin) gets a similar level.
Damn Slashdot Spam! (Score:3, Funny)
Subject: [Slashdot] Metamoderation Results
From: slashdot@slashdot.org
To: xxxx@xxxxxxx.xxx
<snip>
Some of your past moderations have been meta-moderated by other Slashdot readers. Here are the exciting results:
<snip>
You have received this message because you subscribed to it on Slashdot.
<snip>
SPAM: Spamnix identified this message as spam. This report shows which
SPAM: rules matched the message and how many points each rule contributed.
SPAM:
SPAM: Content analysis details: (6.7 hits, 4 required)
SPAM: NO_REAL_NAME (0.5 points) From: does not include a real name
SPAM: CLICK_BELOW (1.5 points) BODY: Asks you to click below
SPAM: EXCUSE_1 (2.3 points) BODY: Gives a lame excuse about why you were sent this SPAM
SPAM: FREQ_SPAM_PHRASE (2.4 points) Contains phrases frequently found in spam
SPAM: [score: 10, hits: click here, help you, received]
SPAM: [this, thank you, this message, you]
SPAM: [for]
small company stats... (Score:5, Interesting)
Spam became a huge problem here roughly a year ago, and it started taking up too much employee time. So roughly six months ago, we started using Spam Assassin. In that six months, Spam assassin has caught roughly 90% of the spam we get, totalling well over 500,000 spam mails.
Am I crazy, or is 1/2 million spams for only 7 people in less than six months absolutely insane or what? How can anyone argue that these spammers are running legitamite businesses?
I think it's high-time for some legis-fuckin-lation to curb this insanity :)
AOL Haiku (Score:3, Funny)
AOL - both the problem
and the solution.
Those who live by the sword... (Score:3, Insightful)
How can AOL complain? The spammers are just
following AOL's lead!
Does anyone else find it fitting that AOL [those responsible for a flood of "XXX FREE HOURS" discs each week in my snail mail, magazines, and breakfast cereal] should suffocate under an avalanche of their own electronic hellspawn?
There is sweet justice after all!
Re:God Damn It (Score:2, Funny)
Re:dang (Score:3, Funny)