Thursday, April 24, 2003
Unsolicited Commercial E-mail Research Six Month Report
Posted by Jason Dunn in "OFF-TOPIC" @ 12:45 PM
"In the summer of 2002, CDT embarked on a project to attempt to determine the source of spam. To do so, we set up hundreds of different e-mail addresses, used them for a single purpose, and then waited six months to see what kind of mail those addresses were receiving. It should come as no surprise to most e-mail users that many of the addresses CDT created for this study attracted spam, but it is very interesting to see the different ways that e-mail addresses attracted spam -- and the different volumes -- depending on where the e-mail addresses were used. The results offer Internet users insights about what online behavior results in the most spam. The results also debunk some of the myths about spam."
Spam continues to be a huge problem, so if you're curious about how spammers work, check out this article. This is a good time for me to mention the only anti-spam tool that has lasted for more than a week on my computers: Cloudmark's Spamnet. The principal behind Spamnet is insanely powerful: when I check my email, every message is processed and compared to a massive database on the Spamnet server. If it's spam, I have the software configured to send the spam into my deleted items folder in Outlook, and it's marked as read along the way, so I never even see it. If I see spam that isn't flagged as spam, I can click BLOCK - the message headers for that spam then get uploaded to the Spamnet server, and processed. When you check your email 10 minutes later and get the same piece of spam, it's flagged and tossed out, because I did the work of flagging that message as spam.
The reality is that it's a little more complex than that of course on the back end - a certain number of users have to flag something as spam, and you can unblock a legitimate email message and that will help to cancel out the users flagging it as spam. The proof is in the numbers: since installing Spamnet on this build of my system, which is perhaps a month old now, I've received 5919 email messages. 2350 of those were spam, and Spamnet let 54 of them through. That's 98% accuracy - smokin'! Spamnet went through a rough period a few months ago when it was letting through about 30% of the spam, but lately it's been killer.
If you run Outlook 2000 or XP, and you're sick of spam, PLEASE try this tool. I have no affiliation with the company, and for now the tool is free, so go check it out. It's rare to get people contacting me months later to thank me for recommending a piece of software to them, but it happens quite often with Spamnet. You gotta' love that! :mrgreen: And to the Pocket PC Thoughts reader who first told me about this tool, thank you!
UPDATE: Talk about bad timing! Apparently Spamnet is no longer free and they're just about to move to a paid model. Still, check out the tool.
Spam continues to be a huge problem, so if you're curious about how spammers work, check out this article. This is a good time for me to mention the only anti-spam tool that has lasted for more than a week on my computers: Cloudmark's Spamnet. The principal behind Spamnet is insanely powerful: when I check my email, every message is processed and compared to a massive database on the Spamnet server. If it's spam, I have the software configured to send the spam into my deleted items folder in Outlook, and it's marked as read along the way, so I never even see it. If I see spam that isn't flagged as spam, I can click BLOCK - the message headers for that spam then get uploaded to the Spamnet server, and processed. When you check your email 10 minutes later and get the same piece of spam, it's flagged and tossed out, because I did the work of flagging that message as spam.
The reality is that it's a little more complex than that of course on the back end - a certain number of users have to flag something as spam, and you can unblock a legitimate email message and that will help to cancel out the users flagging it as spam. The proof is in the numbers: since installing Spamnet on this build of my system, which is perhaps a month old now, I've received 5919 email messages. 2350 of those were spam, and Spamnet let 54 of them through. That's 98% accuracy - smokin'! Spamnet went through a rough period a few months ago when it was letting through about 30% of the spam, but lately it's been killer.
If you run Outlook 2000 or XP, and you're sick of spam, PLEASE try this tool. I have no affiliation with the company, and for now the tool is free, so go check it out. It's rare to get people contacting me months later to thank me for recommending a piece of software to them, but it happens quite often with Spamnet. You gotta' love that! :mrgreen: And to the Pocket PC Thoughts reader who first told me about this tool, thank you!
UPDATE: Talk about bad timing! Apparently Spamnet is no longer free and they're just about to move to a paid model. Still, check out the tool.
