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Soon, It Will Take Over the World

MONDAY MAY 24 2004 8:15 PM

Submitted by punk. Edited By punk.

According to MessageLabs, Inc � a company that monitors e-mail traffic by checking mails destined to their customers � two-thirds of all the e-mail messages sent last month were spam. About a year ago, spam reached the fifty per-cent mark, which was regarded by some as a "landmark moment.�

Brian Czarny, VP of marketing at MessageLabs, predicts that it will get much worse. By next year, spam might make up ninety per-cent of all e-mail traffic over the web.

Postini Inc., another company that scans their e-mail traffic (some 200 million e-mails per day) �announced similar results at a Congressional hearing on spam held yesterday.�

According to the firm, 83 percent of the e-mails it filtered last month for its mostly U.S.-based clients was spam. That was up from 78 percent in January, when the new anti-spam federal law, the CAN-SPAM Act, took effect.

In short, the CAN-SPAM act is a load of hogwash and spam is going to consume us all until we are nothing but dried husks.

I�ll be in the basement protecting my cache of dried beans, wearing an Army helmet.

8 Comments

Cigarette

Cleveland, OH

April 2004

MAY 24, 2004 08:44 PM

Dude, I've had internet access for twelve or thirteen years now and the only time I ever had serious-ass Spam problems was when I was on AOL. I get MAYBE one piece of Spam a day on Yahoo mail now. And they all tell me that they're "SEXUALLY EXPLICIT" for me. When big viruses hit, maybe I get two or three ingenuine e-mails. I don't really understand this Spam problem. If everyone were just like me, we'd be fine.

endlessben

Grand Rapids, MI

November 2003

MAY 24, 2004 08:46 PM

I have aol and I'm so not bothered by it. Maybe you big city Business types have a lot of e-mail and want to know whats what, but not I. I get spam, sure, lots of it. But I could care less.

Vanuslux

Atlanta, GA

February 2004

MAY 24, 2004 08:48 PM

I don't really get more than a handful of spam each day that isn't caught by the filters in yahoo and hotmail (I don't use my POP3 emails for anything but correspondence with people...not signing up for anything online with it...which means I get all but nil spam to those addresses.

Shalome

MODERATOR

Los Angeles, CA

MAY 24, 2004 08:54 PM

I'm waiting for the day when spam makes up 142% of email. Then, the terrorists will have won.

Seriously, though, there are some ISPs that are doing something about it. Like Comcast, who recently admitted they were one of the biggest spam sources on the internet and are considering options like blocking SMTP except through their own mailservers, which would help stop the "spam zombies" created by viruses.

[Edited on May 24, 2004 8:56PM]

dirtyground

Chicago, IL

August 2003

MAY 25, 2004 04:16 AM

im starting to get loads of spam now at Yahoo but i think thats because some fucker on ebay hated me after i didnt pay him. $10 shipping for a cd? fuck you.

anyone know how the fuck i can stop spam at Yahoo?

YAWG

Victoria, BC

November 2003

MAY 25, 2004 05:06 AM

Anyone remember the good old days when the internet was used by a handful of people using 14.4 kbs modems and there was no commercial potential. We've got faster modems but spend longer sorting through the garbage.
I've never had a problem with spam as I never get any( knocks on wood), but there really needs to be some sort of solid filter and legisation to put an end to it. I'd love for the commercial interests to take care of this themselves but it'll probably require international agreements to make anything work due to the nature of the internet.

bbecker

San Diego, CA

May 2004

MAY 25, 2004 11:35 AM

thinking about it i've had my e-mail account for like 3-4 years and I use to get tons of spam, but lately I haven't got an spam.... maybe that anti-spam law is working...?

-spelling-

[Edited on May 25, 2004 11:36AM]