Forty Percent of All Email is Spam

PCOL writes "There's an interesting article on spam in today's Washington Post which includes an inside look at AOL's spam control center in Northern Virginia. The story reports that roughly 40 percent of all e-mail traffic in the US is now spam, up from 8 percent in late 2001 and nearly doubling in the past six months; that AOL's spam filters now block 1 billion messages a day; and that spam will cost U.S. organizations more than $10 billion this year from lost productivity and the equipment, software and manpower needed to combat the problem."

Good percentage

[Anonymous Coward]

Compared to Slashdot posts!

sure, sure.

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

And 90% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

Another stat

[techstar25]

Ironic. Forty percent of spam is pork.

Re:sure, sure.

[oldmacdonald]

Not true, your statistic was made up ages ago.

40% ...?

[DaneelGiskard]

So who gets the 60% of the regular email I'm supposed to get?

Only 40%?

[mgs1000]

I seem to get a lot more spam than "legitimate" email. I guess I must have fewer friends. :(

Cost/Benefit

[rcs2]

Are there any estimates to the total revenue generated by spam for spammers? If it were less than $10 billion, we should be able to simply bribe them to stop spamming.

in my inbox today:

[greenalbatros]

Did you know 40% of all email is spam?!! to find out mo...

Re:40% ...?

[scott1853]

It's deleted by the spam filters.

Well...

[borgdows]

I have no friends, 100% of my emails are Spam!

Re:Only 40%?

[scott1853]

Maybe you have lots of friends and they're all filling out those "notify my friends" forms?

4% of all users are Trolls

[Hao Wu]

According to some study I read somewhere.

Re:Accuracy

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if its only 70% accurate, thats still 700,000,000 emails. At a cost of $10bn per year, its about time that its was illegal country wide, made a felony and a section of the FBI setup and funded by a $1 per quarter employee tax on companies. They should then track down, arrest, beat and torture these non-people, put them on a stinking shithole island, Australia well do and then let them rot in hell. Forcing them to listen to the Canadian screamer, Celine or even worst, Witney...

in other news ...

[borgdows]

after renaming "french fries" Congress has just decided to rename "spam" as "french email" !

Re:Another stat

[tm1rules]

So, 16% of all email is pork? Tasty!

Re:Optimistic

[grylnsmn]

Oh yeah? Well I send over a million emails a day, and I'm lucky if 10 of them are legitimate!

Sturgeon's Law

[handy_vandal]

Forty percent? That's nothing. Sturgeon's Law [jargon.net] states that ninety percent of everything is crap.

Lengthen your fingers today

[nelsonal]

Are you tired of not being able to play the piano or type as gracefully as you should be able to? Are your stubby fingers not as dexterious for those little jobs? You need our herbal finger lenghtener! When used over a five week period most test subjects lengthened their fingers by more than 20%.
It's all natural and quite inexpensive compared to the productivity increase you will have with longer more graceful fingers.

Not true

[roman_mir]

95% of all email is spam. The rest is my project manager sending out emails about TPS reports.

Re:Another stat

[billybob2001]

Forty percent of email is em

Works in Ascii, Ebcdic and Unicode

(no, there isn't a null at the end)

Several Easy Solutions

[$criptah]

For every action there is a counter reaction, right? Fight back! You can do it passively by setting up filters (Mozilla does an excellent job in that department) or spam back the spammers. The trick is to find spam that originates from a legid address. Send an email to that address and see if it goes through. Then set up a script on every single computer on your home network (which in my case is several FreeBSD boxes) and mail random crap to spammers (a cron entry works beautifully). Believe it or not I actually got a reply from a person saying that they got the point and removed me from the list. The other guys were persistent. In order to get rid of them (they did have actual usernames in the email address) I had to go to every goddamn gay porn site and subscribe them to free porn and a newsletter. I know, some of you will say that I have a lot of free time on my hands and may be I do. But every person who gets spam does something about it, including calling a senator and pushing for laws, I think we can fight it.

yep, we're all doomed

[gse]

One billion spam email a day, just through AOL. Gosh.

I figure I get about 425,000 a day myself at this point (er, give or take). It's at the point where it's getting painful to go through my SpamAssassin "caughtspam" folder. But there are still enough false positives (really, one is enough) that I can't send the whole thing to /dev/null.

Meanwhile, I'm accruing a great collection of classic spam subject lines. Some examples (all real):

• "I don't need your social security number yet"
• "this mom loves to stick hot dogs up her cooch"
• "Pill to Increase Your Ejaculation by 581%"
• "i am not perfect but i suck c0ck"
• "I got revenge by fucking! Here's proof :)"
• "Mission: To fuck as many mothers as I can!"
• "Fucking Machines! 13IN, .5HP, 350RPM"
• "Your slut wife boss need some action!"
• "#1 COLON CLEANSER! SEE PROOF"
• "Maybe your pets dream of intercourse with you"

Mmmm, society at its finest.

I get a lot more than 40%

[gergi]

I (if you want to me, email at [e-mail]!) don't know why I get so much spam ([e-mail] if you know of a good solution to get rid of it!) I'm very friendly and social ([e-mail] to reach me) and I don't know why people would spam me at [e-mail]!

Later,
[e-mail]

Terrorism!

[fredrikj]

$10 billion, that's a lot of money, and therefore an argument that George W. Bush might listen to. So, how about lobbying the US government into declaring spam "terrorist activity"? Just imagine the concept of special troops hunting down spammers, then locking them up without without a trial and throwing away the keys. Unless you bombed them off the face of the earth directly... In either case, we could even laugh our asses off while watching it live on TV!

Re:Another stat

[cHiphead]

then what's the other 60%?

thats the secret ingredient you simply dont want to know about.

soylent green is.... PEOPLE!?

Re:How much "real" mail is lost?

[dubl-u]

The problem with filters at the ISP/Mail Server is that one persons spam is anothers desired mail. How do correct for this?

Those few people can type "enlarge my penis" into Google and click on a link that comes up.

Re:Why does spam work?

[forkboy]

Just who are the people who are responding to spam?

-Men with small penises who are insecure about them

-Someone who wants a diploma but is too dumb to go to college

-Someone gullible enough to think that they can buy pure human growth hormone for 29.95 a bottle.

-A person who really doesn't know how to find a teenage beastiality plump asian tranny webcam on their own with a search engine

-Someone who wants to "make money fast" and has never been burned by a scam before. (Or is too dumb to see that this is one)

Should I go on?

Think about how many complete fucking morons you run into every single day, now understand that about 75% of them have email addresses and receive spam. Out of 10 million spams, all it takes is a few gullible fools to give a return on investment.

People sometimes ask my why I rag on stupid people so much. It's because their ignorance causes me inconvenience in many forms...spam is one of those forms. (others include needing ID to buy liquor, pot being illegal, and car insurance in denver being so fucking high)

Re:Sounds about right to me

[Mr Guy]

Sysadmin for the comp sci department my college set up scripts to change any .vbs file sent as an attachment to, .vbs.ifyouclickonthisanditsreallyavirusIwillholdyo upersonallyresponsiblefordamagetotheschoolscompute rs The IT department for the school, running exchange servers, had to wait for microsoft to issue a patch. While the IT department got pounded with help requests, the comp sci had 0 virus reports. Wonder why...

Spam has historical roots...

[wirelessbuzzers]

WIZARD: Why, anybody can have a brain. That's a very mediocre commodity. Every pusillanimous creature that crawls on the earth or slinks through slimy seas has a brain! Back where I come from, we have universities, seats of great learning--- where men go to become great thinkers, and when they come out, they think deep thoughts--- and with no more brains than you have --- but! they have one thing you haven't got!

SCARECROW: What's that?

WIZARD: A U N I V E R S I T Y D I P L O M A !

Do you want for a prosperous future, increased money earning power, and the respect of all?
We can assist with Diplomas from prestigious non-accredited universities based on your present knowledge and life experience.

Call Today -->> 1 - 415 - 276 - 2393

No required tests, classes, books, or interviews.

Bachelors, Masters, MBA, and Doctorate of Thinkology (ThD) diplomas available in the field of your choice - that's right, you can become a Doctor and receive all the benefits and admiration that comes with it!

No one is turned down.

Confidentiality assured.

Call us 24 hours a day, 7 days a week! (including Sundays and holidays):

Universitatus Committeeatum e pluribus unum
1 - 415 - 276 - 2393
Contact us NOW to receive your diploma within days, and start improving your life!

Re:Good percentage

[MikeDX]

AOL's spam filters now block 1 billion messages a day

Is this per user?

Charge Spammers For Spell Checking

[kotku]

I just created a web site [geocities.com] whose terms of service are that if you send an email to the email address listed then you will be charged for spell checking the email at £10 a character. Anybody want to advise on what my chances of collecting are ?

Re:Accuracy

[Tackhead]

> Even if its only 70% accurate, thats still 700,000,000 emails. At a cost of $10bn per year, its about time that its was illegal country wide, made a felony and a section of the FBI setup and funded by a $1 per quarter employee tax on companies. They should then track down, arrest, beat and torture these non-people, put them on a stinking shithole island,

Hey, hey, hey.

What did a pit full of decaying fecal matter do to deserve being filled with spammer?

Have some respect for shit, man.

Re:Why don't I get spam ?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whats your email address again?

Spammers and SMB

[mikecole]

Has anyone else notice that most spammers use windows and leave their port 139 wide open? I have great fun deleting their files and sending them a good old smbnuke.