RSSStudy: The Internet's spam problem is getting worse
by Ed Oswald
A study finds that only one out of every 20 e-mails is from a legitimate source, and business professionals now rate it the top form of junk advertising.
Barracuda Networks found that nearly 95 percent of all e-mail sent today is spam. This is up from just five percent of all e-mail in 2001, and 85 to 90 percent of e-mail in 2006.
In 2007, spammers seemed to favor the use of attachments, a change from last year where inline image and botnet spam seemed to be popular. Additionally, techniques used by spammers have become more complex, which make them harder to stop and harder to track.
For now at least, the relentless battle against what has probably become one of the biggest scourges of the Internet seems to a losing one. Security vendors are now being forced to watch new spam mails continuously for potential malware and security concerns.
This increased vigilance does have a positive. "[Continous monitoring and defense] can block a new spam attack within minutes of its start, virtually at zero hour," Barracuda president and CEO Dean Drako said.
Among business professionals, over half -- 57 percent -- consider spam e-mail as the worst form of junk advertising. This easily eclipsed junk postal mail at 31 percent, and telemarketing at 12 percent.
29 Comments
I have several email accounts, and all of them seem to be doing a pretty good job of filtering spam, almost all of which is porno and drugs. The only problem I have is that some of them have a spam folder it goes into (gmail gets about 50 a day)and it is making it difficult to find one that is safe for my kids to use.
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Identical figures to snail mail... what else is news? Only difference is the mail(wo)man doesn't filter for us.
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Just need something like SPF to become a standard. That alone would cut back 90% of spam.
http://emailuniverse.com/ezine-tips/?id=1202
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I think, many people are just waiting for a new standard for electronic messages. I hope, it will happen soon. Even if I would have to pay for sending e-messages (e.g. $0.01 per message with one addressee) to my Internet provider. It is going to be a drop in the bucket for the majority of people. My time worth more to me than a few dollars per month.
For large companies that should be a fraction of the cost per message per addressee, and only for Internet, not for Intranet e-messages. Otherwise, it may become costly to them. After all, they may save more money on IT support.
Many may and will disagree, but give ideas, propose something new instead of bashing, whining and complaining. Especially, if you do not have to pay for it.
Meanwhile, I can recommend using a free e-mail account when you register on web sites. That's where lot's of spam is originating from.
Don't use your real name in your e-mail address. Use numbers and special characters like underscores, dashes and periods. Such addresses are much harder to generate randomly.
Another approach is to use temporary e-mail addresses. You can find some useful sites that offer such things at: http://www.email-unlimit.../temp-email-address.htm
Regards,
McBit
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I didn't know BugMeNot had a temp email service... Hm. DodgeIt went down the crapper, I'll have to give BugMeNot a shot.
There are thousands and thousands of servers up that allow you to bounce emails off from them. It makes them hard to trace, especially when the servers are located in other continents.
I've used my email address for years, and I never got spam until last Christmas. Even then it was only a handful of spam a week, but I could pretty much pinpoint where and when my email address was added to someone's list. Beware when shopping at seemingly legit sites. Everyone's out to make a buck.
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Al Capone was only captured after they created a special law just for him: income tax evasion. But Al is long dead and we are still living with that law.
How do we stifle the BotMasters without over-empowering government? A government tax of email is like the camel's nose in the tent.
On the other hand, if email cost a penny per, the owner of a zombie machine would be motivated to get it fixed.
Suppose email cost a millionth of a penny per, payable only after it accrues to $10. Most people wouldn't care, but it would convert the BotMasters' social crime into an economic crime... and economic crimes the law can deal with.
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Another tax? Very bad idea.
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SPAM should not even exist anymore if software vendors would just implement some simple techniques to prevent it.
I have found a very simple solution:
1) setup allowed-user list - let them through
2) deny everyone else that does not use a published "KEY" I make available on my web site. That KEY must be in the subject-line somewhere. If not, the Email is bounced. If anyone abuses the key, I change the key.
End result: I get ZERO SPAM.
I have to believe there could be a simple modification to Email standards to support such a "KEYed-access" concept on a wider scale.
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Unfortunately, this is not going to work for large companies. And, that's what the article was mostly about.
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deleted
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I like this idea :-)
One way to maybe improve it is to make the email address same as the website where you need to look for the KEY
EG info@www.mywebsite.com
And then add to the signature of your outgoing emails the KEY and instructions of how to look up the KEY if it changes
One question tho - if the KEY is changed, how do people know, how do people know that their emails have been bounced and they need to look up the new KEY (how do you bounce emails)
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Steve,
I do have this associated with my business web site. I don't do it with hotmail or such. I implemented this strategy to prevent the previously overwhelming junk hitting our corporate Email address.
The key changing doesn't impact people. It's only the *first* time they ever try to contact us (as a company). They get the "KEY" from the web-page where our company contact information is shown. Once they contact us with the KEY, they are on the "OK-List" from then on (if legit). Thus, it can work for large companies or corporate email or whatever.
Also, we tell people we will respond within two business days, and to call if they don't hear from us. And, we do respond, so they know they got through or not.
Just an idea.
It really works wonders for us and stops ALL SPAM dead in its tracks.
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No spam here. Then again i tend to keep anything worth considering "private" out of the internet.
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Gmail has the best spam filters. All other failed on me. Yahoo was good, until they "upgrade" their mail, then I all received are spams. Many legitimate one were blocked. I stopped using them. My friend said their premium one is spam free, I wonder if this is one of their tactic to push their users to pay for the services.
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Duhhhh!
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I agree - Gmail has been nearly flawless at detecting SPAM. Love it!
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If ever the was a more stupid 'industry' then I've yet to hear of it.
They just render email addresses unusable.
They don't get any business from me, ever.
They just make sure I give a very brief glace at one email address I used to use for very general stuff before just deleting the lot.
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It's not the email spam that bothers me too much, as Google Mail sort that out. All I see is "Spam (3846)" and that's it.
It's the endless spam posting on my website that bothers me! I deleted thousands of mainly sex-related posting a day, it's bit annoying.
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Nothing a simple CAPTCHA can't fix.
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Or even better, reCAPTCHA, so not only is your site spam free, but you're users help convert scanned books into digitized text.
http://recaptcha.net/
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You'll be surprised to find that alot of this spam isnt used AS spam per say to promote a product, it is used to detect if the email account it is sent to actually exists. You get dumb people clicking on links in these emails that say "unsubscribe" thinking it will stop when in fact they let the world know the email account is active..
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...and when they find out the email is "real", then what?
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Then the person with a list of active email addresses can sell the list to anyone who wants a list of validated active emails.
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Let's be real here, people who have a clue get little to no spam at all coming into their inbox. In the one email account I use to sign up for all sorts of stuff (mailing lists, product registrations, shopping sites, etc.), I get probably no more than one or two dozen pieces of spam in my inbox all year. In the other two accounts I only give out for personal or business purposes, I probably get less than a dozen all year. It really isn't hard at all to block spam. Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and AOL all do a very good job of blocking nearly all incoming spam, so maybe people who are not smart enough to properly control where they give out their email addresses to should stick to those four email providers.
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The problem is, family want your e-mail and they don't necessarily have a clue. One clueless cousin opens up a virus attachment and *boom* your address has been mailed out to half the state. There's no sure-fire way to completely block spam other than to not use e-mail. Even if you could block 100% of all spam that still doesn't stop it from being sent to you, which consumes bandwidth. Think how much faster the internet would be without all this spam clogging the virtual highways.
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Not for people with a real email spam filter, I get zero.
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Yeah, but you are a real man!
Anyway - I could swear I saw a study the other day: 'The Internet's spam is getting less'
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My spam filters work. I think I get maybe 12 a year now... all accounts combined...?
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Still wasting bandwidth though - either at your PC if it's a local filter or at your mail server. Something has to download the mail to assess if it's spam or not, then quarantine/delete as necessary.
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