Security Watch | Matt Hines » Email, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam

November 28, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Email, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam

TAGS: Security

Okay, I thought I'd give you a little visual representation of where spam is coming from these days.

A more accurate representation of my post's subject line would be 91% to 94% of all email traversing the 'net is spam. At least according to email security vendor Postini.

Yes, that means that 6% to 9% of all SMTP traffic yields valid email and everything else has to do with enlargement, staying power, hair growth, pr0n or making you rich with Nigerian loot.

If archaeologists ever take a look at our electronic communications a thousand years from now, they're going to think we had some serious problems. There will be no doubt as to why we vanished from the planet - we obviously had an overly active libido (which we couldn't sustain), too little money and way too little hair on our heads.

Anyways, it seems that CNN has picked up this story with a vengeance this week. I really don't know why, considering the fact that this announcement came out several weeks ago.

A buddy of mine let me know that out of 700,000 emails his company received last month, roughly 40,000 were valid.

What a world we live in. And we haven't even touched on image spam...

And did I mention that over the past 12 months the daily volume of spam has risen by 120%?

Hey, take a look at this email I just got, I won the lottery in the UK! Now all I have to do is send my new friends across the Atlantic a small amount of US $$ to handle the paperwork and I'm off to travel the world!

If you're interested in spam and what some of the stats are like these days, take a look at Postini's StatTrack.

Posted by Victor R. Garza on November 28, 2006 03:31 PM

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