Re: 95% of User Generated Content is spam or malicious

[rackow () mcs anl gov]

Drsolly made the following keystrokes:
> Yes, I'm currently seeing about 98% spam. At what percentage does email 
> become useless? 
 

Food for thought, or fuel for the flames....

One should ask the US Post Office.  It's very rare that I get
any paper mail that isn't spam.  Granted in that case, someone
is paying for it, but I really don't have a way of opting
out of sale's flyers for non-edible pizza, cars I don't want
or need, and all the rest of the junk.  Don't forget publishers
clearing house and the lotter prizes you have already won.  Sound
familiar to the email spam?

Also there are the people that drive by and litter my driveway
with the free version of the local sales paper, Avon flyers,
window replacements and driveway sealant applications.

Next talk to Ma-bell.  Without the no-call list, how many junk
phone calls do you get vs want?  Don't forget all those excempt
surveys, politicians and "charities" that get past the first
level "filters".

Granted I get more per day in email, but the rates of ham/spam
is "about the same".  Just because it's email, it's really no
different than all the rest.

On television, you get ads every few minutes, not counting blatant
product placement.

It's all a matter of transport.


With my email (home, not $work), I'm easily blocking 90% of all the
spam that makes attempts to get in.  Another good size chunk gets
quarentined into spaces I rarely look at, then there's what's
left.  90% of that is probably valid, expected email.
Useful/meaningful/helpful/fun is a completely different matter, but
it passes the "ok" test.  To me this is better than I have with my
phone and paper-mailbox.  

If I count sheer numbers of attempted email, it's well over 95%
is spam.  The first couple layer of filtering take care of most
of that with little overall impact to the system.  If I really wanted
to do doom/gloom style presentation, the 95% number is what I report
to people.  If I wanted something more for mgmt people I would need
to indicate how the $$ or time put forth on current filters is
preventing this from being a HUGE problem.  Then focus on how much
is getting through and the wasted time/effort on people hitting
delete or clicking on an infection that snuck through.

At this point, while so much of the mail is spam, I don't think
it's really taking as much bandwidth as one might expect.  How
many servers reject the spew prior to the "data" portion of the
connection.  helo/mailfrom/rcptto/abort?  I know when I put greylisting
into my email server, my router indicated an overall packet drop
of about 85%.  While greylisting has become less useful, the traffic
levels haven't risen to the point they were before installing it.
Same goes for using the zen services to drop spew.

--Gene


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