Has Microsoft 'Solved' Spam?

MsWillow writes to tell us the Seattle PI is running a story looking back at Bill Gates promise to have the spam problem "solved" in two years. Well, it looks like time is up, and the verdict is -- an emphatic "maybe". From the article: "Microsoft says it sees things differently. To "solve" the problem for consumers in the short run doesn't require eliminating spam entirely, said Ryan Hamlin, the general manager who oversees the company's anti-spam programs. Rather, he said, the idea is to contain it to the point that its impact on in-boxes is minor. In that way, Hamlin said, Gates' prediction has come true for people using the right tactics and advanced filtering technology."

looks better from where I sit

[DeveloperAdvantage]

I wouldn't say the problem is solved, but it is getting better.

Hotmail's Spam Filter is TOO Good

[jbash]

I run an Internet business. I hate when people write me from a hotmail address because there are low odds that my even *replying* to their email will get through their filter. Every once in awhile I'll run into this situation...

Customer with a hotmail address emails me with a question.

I hit reply and give them my answer

A few days later they write me again asking why I haven't responded.

I reply again. They don't get my response. They then get pissed and I lose the sale.

The problem is that Hotmail errs on the side of filtering out too much when you can't even reply to a hotmail user. And many people don't even bother to check their "spam" folders.

I'm no computer engineer, but I would think that merely replying to an email should make it through a spam filter 100% of the time. It's amazing that a company like Microsoft can't hire engineers competent enough to figure that out.

Microsoft? More likely everyone else.

[courtarro]

Even if we've managed to keep spam to a minimum, and we've changed the word "eliminate" somehow to mean "reduce", can anyone honestly say we have Microsoft to thank for all this?

Oh, and that prediction I made 5 years ago about reducing telemarketers' phone calls? You can all thank me now.

Re:Outlook 2003's spam filter has solved it for me

[hgkjhgkjhg]

The only problem with your statement is you're talking about a filter at the end point, and so it only helps those that actually use Outlook. I do not ( and I know I'm not alone). So, to re-iterate what has already been said... Microsoft has NOT "eliminated spam". They may have reduced it in the inboxes of people who use their products, but thats a huge leap in logic to say they eliminated it. I have seen a huge drop in spam in my inbox as well, but since I do not use any Microsoft products, I cannot attribute the change to MS. In my case I believe it is actually my ISP (Earthlink) who is making the biggest difference.

Supply and Demand?

[dada21]

Microsoft and Google and Symantec are not the warriors on the spam battle front. They can do nothing to properly reduce the costs of fighting spam (the costs that the end user doesn't see but definitely pays for). The warriors are us, geeks and techies who know the real solution.

Spam continues to be produced because it is generating income. I like to don my black hat and look at the spam forums and see that there still are people making boatloads of money for little investment. Investing US$10,000 in a spam campaign has net some people US$50,000 in a few months!

Why does spam generate income? Users continue to click. I have e-mail relationships with people all over the world on a daily basis, and it really blows my mind how some very bright people seem to be Internet morons. I honestly believe that the great majority of the world's Internet users have no idea how to properly browse or read e-mail.

Turning off images is a huge step in the right direction (I had already told many people to turn them off if the e-mail programmed allowed it). What other things have you told your friends or family to do to prevent the dreaded "my computer is so slow" phone call? How many times have you EVER clicked spam? The ratio is the answer to the question: teach others proper Internet usage techniques.

Re:close as i get

[forgotten_my_nick]

I get tons of spam in gmail but it all goes to the spam folder. I don't even remember the last time I had spam/phish mails on my gmail inbox.

Solution ...

[StripedCow]

A reasonable solution (imho) is by forcing the every sender of any e-mail message to perform some captcha [wikipedia.org]. The captcha can be posed by the receiving party, or any trusted e-mail routing mechanism along the way. If such a captcha would take say 5 seconds to fulfill, then sending a large amount of e-mail messages would become practically impossible (at least it would consume a large amount of the spammer's time!)

Of course, you still need some whitelist mechanism to be able to subscribe to mailing lists, but this poses no real problem.

And then the only necessary thing is for this type of mechanism to become "common practice". Any ideas how to accomplish that?

Re:Same way they solved Virii

[voice_of_all_reason]

This would be a PR nightmare, even by Microsoft standards.

What keeps them in business is that pretty much anyone over 25 buys a new machine with windows because it's easier. Especially companies. If the mainstream media announced that MS was "locking down" Windows (and they certainly would), it would definitely be enough to make even grandma think twice about getting an upgrade, regardless of how much "safer" it made things.

Microsoft spams me

[yamla]

Not only has Microsoft not stopped other companies sending out spam, they continue to send me spam themselves. I have an open issue with TrustE relating to the Small Business newsletter that Microsoft has been sending me for many months. Every attempt to unsubscribe is met with complete failure. Even complaining to TrustE back in November, and reiterating the complaint two or three more times, has so far only resulted in form letter responses from Microsoft that are completely unhelpful.

In the past, though not for this issue, I have sent unsubscribe requests to Microsoft by registered mail and THOSE were ignored as well.

How can me possibly expect Microsoft to solve the spam problem if they themselves resort to spamming users and refusing unsubscription requests?

got worse in hotmail

[peter303]

If they have "solved spam" they haven't implemented in hotmail yet. I notice the amount spam increasing to be increasing and to be getting through to the "filtered" mail.

I observe this to be cyclic. Hotmail makes an improvement or some spam king gets busted, then it goes done. But it always comes back to above its previous highs once they learn invasion and new spam-asshole fills the void.

Re:Outlook 2003's spam filter has solved it for me

[Deviant]

I don't think it is a fair criticism of MS to judge them by that standard. Fistly, it makes sense that the only people who they are going to help with spam are those using their products. I take "eliminate spam" to mean that they are going to eliminate it from our inboxes. Considering that most SMTP servers are not Exchange and the majority of internet traffic doesn't run through their servers the idea that they can, and should, stop all that traffic pertaining to unsolicited emails is rather ridiculous.

Has the level of spam that I have received gone down? Most definetly it has. Are they responsible? Yes they are. It is that simple...

As a previous poster alluded to with the problems of spam filtering - I am the only one who can really decide whether a certain piece of mail is unsolicited or not and I am glad that some SMTP server or mail forwarder in the middle doesn't filter it out before it gets to me so that I never have the opportunity to decide for myself on my rules/conditions.

Needless to say, there are all kinds of problems introduced when third-parties can start to decide what mail I should and should not receive without my input/knowledge. And that means that I don't want it to be eliminated by your definition - even if it was possible.

Ha! I beat you to it Bill

[shane2uunet]

Too late Bill, I "solved" our spam problem over 6 months ago without the help of your "technology."

1. Greylisting
2. SPF
3. Spamassassin

I now receive 90% less spam (including the Junk folder).

Now go get a day job and stop trying to predict the future.

MSN/Hotmail routinely ignores abuse compaints

[spinfire]

MSN/Hotmail is well known for ignoring abuse complaints. I get a huge quantity of spam originating from Hotmail's servers, mostly 419 scams. More than half the time I report it it gets sent back because "it doesn't reference a hotmail user." All mails travel through hotmail servers, if you report spam to the MSN address they actually frequently reject the mail because they run a content filter which detects it as spam! See this discussion [spamcop.net] for more info. I ended up finding an address that got me a live person once, and after some bitching they took care of one account. I ended up writing a letter to the FTC (these aren't just spam emails, they're scams) expressing my concern with the lax attitude towards the abuse of hotmail's own system.

Sorry Bill, if you want to be tough on spam, start with your own company. It doesn't seem to care about the rest of the internet. If Hotmail cleans up its act, I'll start believing your sincerity in the fight against spam.

Re:Irony

[perp]

It's ironic that in setting out to 'solve' spam, Microsoft all but destroyed the momentum around SPF

I am now seeing SPF records for fully 1/3 of incoming external email on my medium-sized company's mailserver. Of course I also greylist [ee.ethz.ch] (which virtually eliminates the crap fom zombie PCs), but of the mail that makes it though the filters, the percent using SPF is slowly but surely climbing.

Do you know of some evidence that shows that SPF adoption is slowing?

Another problem that would be solved by uPayments.

[hey!]

Imagine if you got paid ten cents per email delivered to your mailbox. You come in in the morning to find a hundred spams waiting for you. Sweet! They just paid for your morning quadruple-mocha-latte and a king sized muffin. And none of your friends or customers would blink twice about paying a dime to send you a message.

Heck, I could live on my spam-account proceeds.

There's a lot of Internet problems that would be solved by this kind of automatic micropayment system. If Itunes has taught us anything, it's that if you set the price right, it will be low enough that people won't think twice about using the system legitimately, but high enough to add up to significant money in aggregate.

For example newspapers -- real newpapers (which I define by having journalistic shoe leather on the ground in your city) are dying because they don't have a practical way to pay for real journalism. Which is why they are increasingly cutting back on journalism and filling out the space with opinion -- syndicated at that. To subscribe to the paper for a year, the cost is enough that you have to think about it, predict what your probable future interest in the paper is. If your browser could be configured to send the paper a dime per page read up to a set daily limit, you'd probably spend several times the newspaper's asking subscription price per year without ever thinking of it.