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Science & Technology
Spam email still on the rise
2006-12-06
Junk emails are still clogging up Inboxes, with spam accounting for 89.73 per cent of all email traffic, new figures claim.
Sounds about right to me. I don't think my legitimate messages have outnumbered the spam messages for about the past ten years. My Google mail account currently has 3344 messages in the spam folder, and this was after I cleaned it out Saturday night. Most of my mail is forwarded through the Rantburg mail server, which filters out a lot of spam, so that's 3344 after being pruned.
According to security company SoftScan, spam containing pictures increased dramatically in 2006 and is becoming more sophisticated to confuse anti-spam software.
That's the crap with nonsense sentences masking a graphic with an ad for Viagra or penny stocks or whatever else they're scamming.
SoftScan said that spammers are using more complex images and colours to trick anti-spam filters. According to the figures, more than 60 per cent of spam comes from Europe while only five per cent is from South East Asia.
I'd set the proportion higher than that coming through China and Korea.
“It seems hard to believe the amount of people that do respond to spam messages... I'm sure it won't be long until [the spammers] start using more sophisticated images, along with their current techniques,” said Diego d'Ambra, chief technology officer at SoftScan.
I have a hard time understanding why anyone would respond to the pestilence. Email is no longer a viable method of communication — I'd hate to think of the number of legitimate messages I've missed as I've been clearing out the hundreds of junk mails.
Posted by:Fred

#8  A couple of years ago, I read a suggestion that instead of tracking down and killing spammers, it might be easier to track down the handful of idiots who actually responded to a spam-email by purchasing something... and kill them, instead.

Har! Trust a military mind to suggest a functional solution.

Personally I am sick and tired of spam and spammers. I think they should get some hard time for wasting peoples time. I am also tired of vurus writers and think they should be locked up for a long, long, time (including script kiddies). They are not 'folk heroes' but assholes.

The lack of strong law enforcement against virus and worm writers is damning proof that our legislators know jackshit about computers. The fact that virus writers often go on to secure high paying jobs in the computer industry represents a conflict of interest of gigantic proportions.

It is as if the computer industry wilfully allows a pack of ravening animals to rove the virtual world inflicting untold damage in order to coerce computer users to buy their firewall and other security products (no to mention replacing damaged equipment and purchasing backup devices).

The computer industry must be prohibited from ever hiring anyone convicted of virus writing. Furthermore, virus writers all too often end up getting a slap on the wrist. That little bastard in Germany who wrote the Sacher virus didn't even see the inside of a jail cell!

Lifetime bans from industry employment, hard time in federal prison, huge restitution awards and lifetime bans from internet access all need to be put in place as penalties for virus writing and spamming. These practices, especially spamming are strangling one of the most important business tools ever made and also decrease workplace productivity to the tune of BILLIONS each year.

The computer industry needs to have its feet held to the fire until they unanimously begin a crusade to increase penalties and implement employment bans for these digital cretins. This needs to be a top priority.
Posted by: Zenster   2006-12-06 22:10  

#7  Why doesn't corprate america start offering bounties for these assholes?

lol, CF! I your comment and then scrolled to see the Pulp Fiction blogad with a gun pointed at me head right below it! Classic timing of comment to blogad, mods!
Posted by: BA   2006-12-06 13:18  

#6  I'm afraid the problem with SPAM is the SMTP protocol which allows pretty much anything (forged headers, etc...)

I don't think SPAM will be going away until we tighen up the protocol. Using some sort of assigned-key authenication (i.e. some authority - the postal service for example) gives your email address a public/private key pair which is used to sign the headers - kind of a 'I approve this message' sort of thing.

Receive a message which contains a authentication id, fetch the id's public key from a well-established server (and cache it) and use it to decrypt the headers. If the key is false or the headers don't decrypt properly its spam.

Personally I am sick and tired of spam and spammers. I think they should get some hard time for wasting peoples time. I am also tired of vurus writers and think they should be locked up for a long, long, time (including script kiddies). They are not 'folk heroes' but assholes. I am sick and tired of having to have a good chunk of my work computer's power used for virus checkers and scanners because these fuckers are out to have fun.

Why doesn't corprate america start offering bounties for these assholes?
Posted by: CrazyFool   2006-12-06 13:00  

#5  Sgt. Mom,

I had a pretty elaborate filter setup running here, that I started back when Boris was erupting here daily. It eventually got so intricate I pulled the whole thing out and threw it away. I'm using a single array to do the spam check now, and it seems to work pretty well. I'm willing to share, so email me (if you can get through the spam).
Posted by: Fred   2006-12-06 12:10  

#4  Most spam is criminal in nature, trying to gain access to a website or credit card numbers or social secuirty numbers. SMTP makes contacting millions of people via email easy. The spammers only have to hit a very small percentage to make money.

That 89.73 number is just incredible. It looks like all the measures taking place the past ten years ( outbound smtp blocks, non-relay mail servers and RBL lists ) aren't working.

It appears SMTP is broken.

A lot of spam that gets through my mail server header checks appear to be from residential ADSL connections in eastern Europe, Belize and in the USA, like comcast.com, using compromised computers which are being used for Spam.

With companies like ATT and cable internet people hard selling broadband, the problem is bound to get worse.
Posted by: badanov   2006-12-06 10:03  

#3  A couple of years ago, I read a suggestion that instead of tracking down and killing spammers, it might be easier to track down the handful of idiots who actually responded to a spam-email by purchasing something... and kill them, instead.

Our website is plagued with automated comment-spam, for porn, drugs, insurance plans, payday loans, that kind of crap. We accumulate about 500-600 overnight, none of which gets actually posted to the site, so I wonder why they even bother any more. A lot of bloggers have had to go to a turing system, have registration, use typekey or put in spam-killing software, otherwise their sites would sink like the Titanic under the weight of comment-spam.
If they ever crack down on the auto-comment spammers, I wish they would bankrupt them with fines, and recompense us blog-admin types for the time we've spent cleaning up after them.
Posted by: Sgt. Mom   2006-12-06 08:44  

#2  The saddest thing is that the spammers wouldn't be doing it if it didn't work. There have to be some seriously stupid people out there who really should not be allowed unsupervised access to a computer.
Posted by: Glenmore   2006-12-06 07:11  

#1  How much more spam would it take to simply clog up the internet's bandwidth and interfere with legitimate traffic?
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418   2006-12-06 06:19  

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