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Comments:
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- on Sat 02 May 2009
- 01:53:08 PM UTC
You're saying?
So you're saying that users should complain to ISP's about spam? That would take a massive groundswell of complaints to get an ISP to do anything, especially considering that they get revenue from spammers.
I've only seen an ISP react (not to complaints) when spammers are predominate users of that particular ISP, and a spammer using that ISP is convicted (a pretty rare circumstance). The ISP's reaction is usually "We didn't know" . . . yeah, right!
BTW, my compliments on your discussion of the costs. Very plausible. But other than massive complaints, which I don't think is very realistic, can you suggest any other ways to stop these clowns?
I think part of the problem is that something like your explanation is NOT realized by most users and the public in general, only tech savvy people like yourself. And then there's the apathy factor, which you touched on. "If it doesn't seem to impact me as an individual, why should I care?" is the thinking I bet.
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- on Sun 03 May 2009
- 02:07:06 AM UTC
Elaboration
BobJam: "So you're saying that users should complain to ISP's about spam?"
Well, that depends on how much you know. But almost all would know their ISP,
so it's a place to start. Of course they could also contact the registrar,
but how many knows that..? 5 years ago I were equally ignorant...Bobjam: "That would take a massive groundswell of complaints to get an ISP to do anything, especially considering that they get revenue from spammers."
Well, why not? Everybody's been spammed countless times,
so everybody ought to complain at last. At least it would be logical...But you can only solve a problem if you can see it clearly:
The damage done by spam does not depend on your point of view,
but the visibility of the damage does depend on it...BobJam: "Can you suggest any other ways to stop these clowns?"
I think increased public awareness would help. Computers and (even more) the internet is news to almost all. The scams out there rely on peoples ignorance. By people I also mean politicians; remember McCain that never had sent/received an email - has he ever been bothered by spam..?
And of course, WOT also helps...!
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- on Tue 05 May 2009
- 08:24:47 PM UTC
spam's other costs
Besides eating up time and bandwidth and other resources, there is a new level of degredation in the spam I've been receiving.
The spam filters are not particularly accurate. Sometimes your real mail ends up in the spam box. If you just delete the spam or junk mail box without looking, you are likely to lose some actual messages.
Spam has gotten to be very "in your face" with the subject line and supposed sender names. I've gotten some really nasty stuff. You don't even have to open them to be exposed to something you didn't want to look at.
I'm talking about all that porno-spam they send in order to sell things like viagra and draw you to "less than family friendly" sites. Even if you delete them all, you and your kids still have to read the sender and subject lines, which now contain things you do not want your children to read or have to think about!
Both as a protector of my kids and my own head, I don't want that junk,
and I think the cost to our society - of being barraged with filth, is showing up daily in our schools, on the streets, and in our homes. -
- on Sun 03 May 2009
- 04:50:25 AM UTC
backwards
Go to the post ofice and ask why they allow snail mail spam - you know that 60% of mail you receive that is all advertisements, stuff you never asked for, stuff you'll never patronize, and they'll tell you that these companies pay to have this stuff delivered, maybe at a reduced bulk rate, but they pay and that is income to the postal service, so they tell us it keeps the individual user cost down. When there is less income, rates increase.
Now lets look at an ISP who has mega servers, mega routers, connection to or close to a major backbone - that's not free and it's not cheap. So lets say that ISP has 100 subscribers, it has to divide the costs with those subscribers, and include an increase for it profit margin - not to mention the structure, the utility bills, the employees, the advertising, and the security dog roving the grounds. So that ISP increases it's subscriber-base by adding 1000 spammers - they have to pay too. This just reduced your ISP bill and keeps it reduced. Get rid of those thousand member and you bill is 10 times higher than it is now. I say let them sell to spammers, just that the spam shouldn't be able to go anywhere. LOL
-------
Against Intuition - gives us safety through Web of Trust.
WOT Community - gives us security through unity.
Thank you all
G7W {G.O.M}
http://g7w.net/ -
- on Sun 03 May 2009
- 06:08:00 AM UTC
Interesting argument . . . phantazm?
g7w: "I say let them sell to spammers, just that the spam shouldn't be able to go anywhere"
So that seems to be a plausible argument to keep spammers in business . . . very well articulated, but I expect this will stimulate some controversy . . . which will be a good discussion in this thread.
As we used to say on the firing range in the Marine Corps . . . "Shooters look down range . . . you may commence firing when your dog target appears"
Phantazm??
(And, NO, we didn't shoot at dogs, a "dog target" is just the name given to the shape of the target . . . and a flag waving with "maggies drawers" was an indication that you missed the target completely . . . a really bad thing for a Marine to do).
BTW, Dave,how would you propose that spam not "go anywhere"? Just curious . . . I assume that was a sarcasm though.
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- on Sun 03 May 2009
- 09:47:11 AM UTC
Great thread
Hi,all I found this thread very interesting for someone like me who is not that clued up
about Spam.I would never have given a thought to call my ISP.if i was unfortunate
to get badly spammedcheers................p..................
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- on Sun 03 May 2009
- 01:39:32 PM UTC
ISP..
g7w: "Go to the post ofice and ask why they allow snail mail spam"
I have visited the post office, to get a label for my frontdoor saying: No commercials and other 'free' stuff. In any case, snail mail is an expensive, unneccesary and obsolete way to transfer information.
g7w: "lets say that ISP has 100 subscribers, it has to divide the costs with those subscribers, and include an increase for it profit margin - not to mention the structure, the utility bills, the employees, the advertising, and the security dog roving the grounds. So that ISP increases it's subscriber-base by adding 1000 spammers - they have to pay too. This just reduced your ISP bill and keeps it reduced.
Hm, are you playing the devils advocate here..?
Okay, first of all: time is money! That was a central point in my text, and still is. Even if I saved some money, you'd still have to subtract my wasted time (and if the spam mail infected my pc, I might waste a lot of time).
Your example assumes that an ISP could add 10 spammers for each existing customer, and thus reduce costs. If they did that, we'd all drown in spam. Further you're assuming that ISPs should be funded with illegal money..? Well, what do spammers pay with, their own money? Or ours..?
I'm not sure how many spammers / scammers are out there, but I like to think that they are outnumbered 1:1000000. Unfortunately a very small group of greedy people can abuse all the possibilities and exploit everybody else on the net. If we let them...
What if my ISP could save 90% of their time and effort and only send/receive legal real mail? Wouldnt that be cheaper for their customers..?
Btw, I mentioned complaing to the ISP as a logical first step. I didn't say it was the best; but then people need to know more. How many knows what "registrar" means..?
I still think (lack of) awareness is the most overlooked aspect regarding spam;
a few knows a lot, but most knows nothing. And politicians are still sleeping... -
- on Sun 03 May 2009
- 09:25:51 PM UTC
snail mail is an expensive,
snail mail is an expensive, unneccesary and obsolete way to transfer information.
depends upon the information. I would agree when that information is simple text / graphic / media. Try to send a pound cake to a soldier overseas not via snail mail.are you playing the devils advocate
of course not.Your example assumes
my example assumes nothing - it's just an example.
Change it to 10 spammers for every 1000 legit customers with 10000000 total subscribers (1 thousand spammers) at a monthly ISP charge of $50 - that 50k per month or $600000/Yr- now that's revenue. I'd think you can buy a router, server and a couple TB hard drives with that. This includes salaries for 1 office receptionist and 2 maintenance tech's to oversea the operations of this equipment, the utility costs for operating it, plus at least a 35% profit margin.we'd all drown in spam
we are drowning in spam; hence the introduction of the spam filter.funded with illegal money
that is jurisdictional. what may be illegal "here" is not necessarily illegal "there."
Not all products mentioned in or purchased through spam is illegal.
spam is receiving unsolicited commercial email; companies that you did not request advertisements from, many are 3rd party "partners" - hotmail account for example, set up a free hotmail email account and your get 2-3 pages of checklists of "what spam would you like to receive?"what do spammers pay with, their own money?
Yes.
They have to pay with their own money, to get online to spam. Revenue from spam is not received before the spam is sent, and it takes a lot of spam to generate a little revenue, so until some form of earnings are received, they pay with their own money.Or ours..?
Not mine.What if my ISP could save 90% of their time and effort and only send/receive legal real mail? Wouldnt that be cheaper for their customers..?
They spend time sending and receiving email? You mean Bubba who works at ISPnet.com has to receive my grandmas email, look for the "Send To" and transfer it to me? Here all this time I thought granny sent me an email that moved it's way through the Net, pushed by various SMTP relays until it gets directly to me. Now if you're talking about dropping that 1000 spammer subscriber-base I mentioned in a hypothetical example above, how exactly do you think the ISP is going to recuperate that lost revenue? Easy, the rates go up for everyone else. Once a business is comfortable with a gross profit, their next priority is to increase it, not lower it for "the good of all." Business is to make money, not be friendly about it.complaing to the ISP as a logical first step
Complain all you want, they either use spam filters or they do not, if not then they're not about to acquire the expense; unless maybe they offer the "pro email account" for higher rates, otherwise this expense would have to be absorbed by them "in kind" and being "kind" is not what business is about.politicians are still sleeping
Are they?
Or are they being lobbied to "look the other way?"-------
Against Intuition - gives us safety through Web of Trust.
WOT Community - gives us security through unity.
Thank you all
G7W {G.O.M}
http://g7w.net/ -
- on Mon 04 May 2009
- 03:04:38 PM UTC
Spam.
I picked this up from Avast Forums and found it interesting.Panda Labs has published a report that a survey showed for the first quarter of year 2009.91% of all mail received was spam.1.6% or more than 1.1 million spam e-mails were infected with malware.Also the top source of spam e-mails is the U.S.A.(G.O.M.with Honours).
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- on Mon 04 May 2009
- 08:13:54 PM UTC
When will we reach 99% spam..?
Thanks for the fresh data cod head. My own data were a bit old.
But as I suspected, the problem has only grown worse.91% of all mail is now spam!
When will it become 99%..? -
- on Wed 07 Oct 2009
- 11:09:50 PM UTC
WOT WIKI
If you have some future contributions: www.mywot.com/wiki/Cost_of_spam
The true cost of spam?
What is the true cost of spam?
It cost a City a Million a Day...
The daily dose may seem petty, 1-2 minutes clicking delete in a whole day. Irritating but insignificant, like a few flies buzzing by, who cares. However, the real cost is grossly underrated for several reasons:
Spam filters devour their share of the mailstream, so we only see the tip of the iceberg. But each time you get a real email, 4 spam mails were sent but filtered out. That number is unfortunately growing. And the growth is accellerating...
The massive amounts sent also means that spam is something everyone gets, every day, year in year out. That's the other reason why the cost is invisible, we're not used to that many small parts being summed to such massive heights.
On a personal scale the cost seems too petty to sum, on a global scale the enormous sums no longer makes sense. But how do one grasp this invisible flood?
I think both the personal and global view are unnecessarily extreme, so I'll suggest an example in the middle: The City. Not a major metropolis, nor a minor village, but a varied widespread average size city. Population could be 1.000.000 working people (plus relatives).
If each wastes a minute a day deleting spam, then 1 million minutes are lost.
If the loss of 1 minute is $1, then the city looses $1 million. Every day, every year.
What could you buy for that much? Every day? Anyone any wishes..?
PS: I should add that this calculation is a minimum estimation, as it doesn't include the cost of damages done by virus, spyware, phishing...
The dark side of spam
Some may argue that people only need to install a 100% efficient spamfilter, and then the problem is solved. However, the target is moving, evolving and mutating. No filter can get the last spam. Spamfilters also have a drawback; the more they eat, the more spam becomes invisible. Receive one email and 4 was filtered, but you never see them. If 99 was filtered out, you wouldn't see it either. Or think about it. But in the dark spam consumes a growing amount of the nets processing power. Making spam invisible only hides the symptoms, but leaves botnets, zombie-pc's and highjacked sites in the dark, evolving unseen.
Spam filters may stop spam from being received, but cannot stop it from being sent. A growing amount of bandwidth is drained in the background. Spammers enjoy free traffic since they are not paying. And the ISPs just pass the bill along. Cost of bandwidth is another case of insignificant parts being a larger sum:
How the net is drained daily
100.000.000.000 spam mail pr day (2007)
1 kb pr mail
The cost of bandwidth $0.01 pr Kb in mail
The sum is then $1 million wasted each day!
(That's $1 billion in less than 3 years...)
And the number is growing exponentially.
Maybe ISPs don't care who's buying their bandwidth, but I don't think they'll ignore complaints about them accumulating on the net. Who'd ignore a million bad reviews..?
Location: Copenhagen, Denmark, Scandinavia, Europe. Languages: Danish, English (and a bit Norwegian and Swedish).