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Despite Gates' Prediction, Spam Far From a Thing of the Past
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Jan 22, 2009 06:00 PM
from the still-delicious-after-all-these-years dept.
from the still-delicious-after-all-these-years dept.
Slatterz writes "Bill Gates declared in 2004 at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland that spam would be 'a thing of the past' within five years. However, Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, has written in a blog post that 'with the prophecy's five-year anniversary approaching, spam continues to cause a headache for companies and home users.'"
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Submission: Spammers defy Gates's junk mail predictions by Anonymous Coward
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I disagree... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I disagree... (Score:5, Informative)
I agree with this both as an IT worker and an email user. A bunch of junk still comes in, but I rarely ever see spam anymore on my gmail or work email. I have an old yahoo account from around 97 that still gets some in, but even there, not much.
Parent
Agree about GMail... (Score:2)
Yahoo by far gets more spam, and frankly, I don't think their filtering is nearly as good as GMail's.
Re:Agree about GMail... (Score:5, Informative)
I've had my Yahoo account since at least 1996, and have used it in many a web form. I get hundreds upon hundreds of spams a day to that address, but only one or two a day actually show up in my Inbox. All the rest are relegated to the spam folder. I consider that a very good success rate.
Parent
Re:Agree about GMail... (Score:4, Insightful)
I've gotten 2 spam mails since i switched to gmail a few years ago.
The summary is so negative, spam is pretty much gone, gates wasn't far off the mark at all.
Parent
Re:Agree about GMail... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Agree about GMail... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Agree about GMail... (Score:4, Interesting)
The best solution in my opinion would be a fee payed to the recipient. I send you an email, and one cent. You reply and we are even. Even if I talk ALOT more then you, maybe I'm down a dollar a year. But suddenly the spam business model is destroyed (you cannot send 500,000 emails to make $20 of sales).
Parent
Re:Agree about GMail... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I'm intrigued by your ideas. ....and I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter. Several times. Many more several times.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I've gotten 2 spam mails since i switched to gmail a few years ago.
The summary is so negative, spam is pretty much gone, gates wasn't far off the mark at all.
If spam isn't an issue anymore, then you won't mind publicly posting your email address.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I get 2 spam in my inbox every day with gmail.
Mind you I have seen up to 40,000 spam from the last 30 days in my Spam box.
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You both are making me feel inadequate. I've never figured out how to stop receiving spam.
Best I can think of were:
But in practice, my users were still receiving junk mail, and I couldn't seem to do anything.
Any advice?
The list of blacklists I use to reject spam outright:
sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org
list.dsbl.org
bl.csma.biz
cn.ascc.dnsbl.bit.nl
korea.services.net
web.dnsbl.sorbs.net
I've pruned this list to eliminate false-positives, but if you need to receive legitimate mail from China or Korea you'll need to remove those lists.
Next, I use a lot of custom code I've written myself, which is executed by MIMEDefang. I've thrown all kinds of stuff in there.
Finally, I use ClamAV and SpamAssassin (also executed by MIMEDefang). ClamAV can
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
In addition to your suggestions,
a) Set up some honeypot addresses, like aardvark@yourdomain.com and zzyxyzark@yourdomain.com, that will not be used for any legitimate purposes.
b) if you have some old unused e-mail addresses (i.e. people no longer with a company), monitor them to make sure that they only receive spam and notify legitimate correspondents that they are obsolete and, once they've only received spam for 6 months or so, then start using them as honeypot addresses as well
c) seed the honeypot addre
Re:GMail's false positives don't bother you? (Score:5, Informative)
The false positives generated by GMail's spam filtering don't piss you off in the least? Not even the fact that you have no direct personal control over the process at all? Nor the fact that, unlike other services like Yahoo, you can't effectively disable it by passing it through, allowing you to use your own more tuned and effective local spam filtering solution (i.e. PopFile)?
It is easy to bypass the spam system, but the way to do it is not obvious. Create a new filter, with just an asterisk in the has the words field. That ensures the filter applies to all messages, even a sender-less, subject-less, body-less email. Then on the actions page select "Never send it to Spam". Apply the filter. Now the spam filtering is bypassed, and no messages will ever end up in the spam folder.
Parent
ATTRACT MORE WOMEN WITH YOUR OPINIOINS!!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Why spend hours studying for a degree when you can call 1-800-IMAGRADUATE and get College, Masters or even DOCTORATE Degrees within One WEEK!!!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
What is that even supposed to mean? Is it for guys with anti-social dongs? Is there an epidemic of this sweeping the nation that I was previously unaware of?
Re: (Score:2)
the average amount of spam a user sees is nearing zero.
Try using freemail.hu, you insensitive clod!
I disagree with your disagreement (Score:5, Informative)
I would contend that for the average user, spam is essentially a non-issue nowadays.
Just because they don't see it doesn't mean it doesn't cost them. The users have to pay (indirectly) for the cost of the spam traversing the internet, the CPU time for their spam filter to identify and dispose of it, the server space to store it, and the IT employees to refine the filters to acceptable levels of false positives and false negatives.
Just because the users don't see the spam in their inbox doesn't mean it has no impact on them.
Parent
Re:I disagree... (Score:5, Interesting)
Make that strongly disagree. Spam is even more of a problem. Bill Gates should most likely not try to become the Nostradamus of the Internet because the problem is even more rampant. The problem is, we are combatting spam in the wrong way. Legally, the CAN SPAM Act is pointless. We need to make spam an uneconomical way of marketing and advertising. Spam filtration does not fight back because it does nothing to address the inexpensive economics of spamming. The only really effective method for fighting back has been developed by The OpenBSD Project. They have a spam deferral daemon that literally takes the wind right out of the spammer's sails. If a spammer attempts to send mail to an OpenBSD Spamd enabled machine, they are only able to send at 1 byte per second. This causes no problem for the reciever but could potentially wreck havoc on the spammer causing large queue backups and potentially crashing the spammer's server. That is a fight!
Finally, Bob Beck of the project creates and maintains a list of IP addresses of any machine that has attempted to send spam in the past 24 hours to the University of Alberta. This list is freely available to all. If more people took advantage of OpenBSD's Spamd and Bob's list, it'll be a TKO for the spammers.
Parent
Re:I disagree... (Score:4, Funny)
I can't imagine why... "The Internet? We are not interested in it" -- Bill Gates, 1993
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:I disagree... (Score:5, Insightful)
Folks who are saying "spam isn't a problem because I don't see it in my inbox" aren't exactly wrong, in the same sense that the OTHER Bill, Clinton, was not wrong when he said "I did not have sex with that woman".
Certainly spinmeisters could argue that this means Bill Gates was right -- for the average user, who doesn't know jack about computers, spam is largely a solved problem.
Anyone who runs a network or data center of course, would strongly disagree. The cost in technician and programmer time "solving" spam this way, and the cost of maintaining bandwidth that is 90% wasted needs to be quantified so people who have the money understand in concrete terms the value of actually making a major dent in the volume of spam sent.
To use a possibly-irrelevant comparison: Power transmission and distribution losses in the US hover around 7-8%. What do you think our national electric grid would look like if losses were 90%? Would we even have one?
Parent
The funny thing is (Score:4, Insightful)
Most of this spam comes from bot-nets made of Windows computers that have been taken over.
Spam? (Score:2)
What's that?
I have this one folder in GMail called spam... I don't go there much, the grammar is nonsensical and the products are out-competed by the text-based advertising.
Re:Spam? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
I think there's a fish for that sort of thing now (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Ooh, Barracuda....
I've heard horror stories of Barracuda boxes falling over due to the overwhelming amounts of spam.
not for end-user... (Score:2)
At my current work email (here for six months), I have not received any spam nor have I had any false positives when I've checked the spam folder.
For my Yahoo account, I get about one spam message missing the filter per week and my spam folder is completely full. I get about one false positive a month.
For my Hotmail account, I get about one spam
Well, to be fair to Mr. Gates (Score:5, Funny)
He made that prediction on January 24, 2004 - and it's only January 22nd now. So he's got two more days...
Re: (Score:2)
On the morning of January 24th, 2009, hundreds of botnet controllers and spammers will be found dead. All will have died from brute force trauma, with no weapons or clues...other than a broken chair at each crime scene...
Really? (Score:5, Informative)
I've slowly switched all my email accounts (business and personal) over to Gmail, and I almost never have to deal with spam anymore.
I still get a fair number of advertising emails from companies I've placed orders from, but they all provide the ability to unsubscribe.
The only people I know still drowning in spam are the ones who are clinging to some ancient ISP-provided address, or who have a poorly managed company mail server.
If those people would simply find a decent email provider, the spammers' market would dry up and spam might become a "thing of the past" once and for all. But for now there's no reason you can't switch to a decent email provider and forget about spam today.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If those people would simply find a decent email provider, the spammers' market would dry up and spam might become a "thing of the past" once and for all. But for now there's no reason you can't switch to a decent email provider and forget about spam today.
The only way for the spammers' market to dry up would be if THEY STOPPED GETTING REPLIES to the messages they send out now. They still get replies to some (single digit percent?) of the messages they send out, and that makes them money. So they keep fighting (successfully!) against the majority of the Internet population and sending out new spam messages and keep trying to defeat anti-spam measures.
The spammers aren't the problem, the people who reply to spam are the problem.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The only people I know still drowning in spam are the ones who are clinging to some ancient ISP-provided address, or who have a poorly managed company mail server.
I have an ISP email account and a Gmail account. I only use my ISP email account for things like registering with amazon.com or my bank, because if my Gmail account password is hacked or stolen, I'm screwed. If my ISP email account password is hacked or stolen, at least I can call my ISP and have the password reset.
This issue seems like a big problem with web based email: no recourse if your account password is compromised.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
More like a job for...
DUNNH DUNNH DUNNNN
Adding a secondary email to your Google account! [google.com]
But turning SSL on [google.com] isn't a bad idea.
Really? I get virtually zero spam. (Score:2)
Really. When I re-joined my old company I received a bunch of spam at first; however, within a week I'd weeded it out. Maybe they mean "spam for the layperson is still a serious issue if they fail to use a spam prevention method..." ;)
Incentive (Score:4, Insightful)
Spam a thing of the past? Right... (Score:3, Insightful)
He was right! (Score:2)
Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
Bill Gates advocates a
(X) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. His idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to his particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
(X) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
(X) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
(X) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
(X) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, his plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
(X) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
(X) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
(X) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
(X) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
(X) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
(X) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
(X) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
(X) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
(X) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(X) Ideas similar to his are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
(X) Why should we have to trust him and his servers?
(X) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
(X) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
(X) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about him:
(X) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and he's a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to burn his
house down!
A technical solution (Score:3, Funny)
Here's a technical solution. I receive email from a botnet touting v1a@ra. I tunnel back to the infected machine, slip in, and wipe the drive.
Pretty soon, no more botnet. And we also get a nice little econo-boost from all of those people replacing their antiquated virus-ridden computers, systems, and software.
5 years or 2 years? (Score:5, Interesting)
Previous slashdot entry dealing with Gates' predictions. [slashdot.org] It cites two years, not five years, with the spam thing.
I guess "5" looks like "2" and vice versa, but... :P
gmail tag is right on the money (Score:3, Informative)
When I still checked my mail on a BSD machine using pine, I had a complex scheme set up using custom IP filters + SpamAssassin. After all that work, I still had 5 or 6 slip through each day out of approximately 140. Since switching to gmail, maybe one slips through per week.
Ironically, thanks to google, Gates prediction is largely true. For me, at least. Spam is a complete afterthought.
Re: (Score:2)
Here's an interesting article about Gates predictions. [nwsource.com] Some have come true, others haven't (surprise surprise).
Interestingly, it sheds doubt on the whole 640K rumor.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
This one did come true... when is the last time you saw spam in your inbox?
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Indeed I was going to post this myself, however I'll spare slashdotters the spam and post in your thread.
Surely spam would be a thing of the past if his windows operating system wasn't used for massive botnets.
Perhaps he assumed other operating system were going to take over? Hence why he left in the first place.