Spam Email... Enough Already

Updated 2009-11-25
This is not a big issue any more. Most email is filtered for spam at various levels and there is much less spam getting to my Inbox. However I know they are still sending it and clogging up the networks.

Published 2002-09-24
Enough already. This is killing the only valuable part of the Internet that is left for the public.

I was noticing even with all my efforts to block spam email I still get around 30 every day. In case you didn’t know spam email is unsolicited email. Like online junk mail but worse. If you combine the viruses with the spam I wonder why anyone uses email anymore. I admit I have more than one e-mail address so the numbers I am about to give you may be a little high…

I was wondering how much junk mail was being passed around so I did a little analysis on my own email accounts. Here is what I found…

With all filtering on I get an average of 30 spam email and 3 valid email per day. This works out to better than 90% of all email is spam. Pretty bad you think?… Just wait…

I then turned off all my filters for one day and checked…WOW!!!
I had 273 spam email and 3 valid email in 24 hours. This works out to 98.9% spam email and only 1.1% valid email!… and it is getting worse not better.

If you’re wondering where all the bandwidth is going this might be a good place to look.

If there were any place I wish hackers paid attention to it would these sites. I would love to see a concerted effort by hacking groups to totally trash spammers. Wouldn’t it be great to send all the spam mail from one spammer to another spammer, and so on….

Some good ISP’s are putting in spam filters and at least they help dramatically reduce the problem. Perhaps they could join together on this issue and share their spammer lists. Quite often the ISP is hosting a spammer and they are not aware. Any assistance they can provide is greatly appreciated.

Maybe like several other people I know we should just use the phone. At least it doesn’t spam us much. If the Internet was here first spending $0.10 or less a minute to talk on a phone would certainly be the rage. Just think, in one minute you could communicate several minutes of typing and have real-time response. No typing, no waiting for responses, no spam. Wow, why didn’t somebody think of this before?