September 10th, 2007
Spam now 83% of all email
By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
I think we need a new messaging technology - then these numbers could reach 100% and I wouldn’t care. Unfortunately, I do care, and there were, despite Gmail’s best efforts, 4 spam emails in my inbox today. I’d hate to see what I would get if their filters weren’t working.
It may sound like a broken record, but spam continues to do just that — break records. Unwanted commercial e-mail is growing by electronic leaps and bounds: An Internet-buckling 60 billion to 150 billion messages per day. Put another way: A whopping 83% of all e-mail comes from suspicious Internet addresses. Source: USA Today
We Say: When you see companies like Pfizer failing to secure their PCs, so that they are used for spamming, it’s no wonder we have such statistics. What’s worse than email spam, though, is text message spam - because, short of an unlimited SMS option on your cell phone account, you’re essentially paying for such spam.
Kevin K. says:
Gmail’s filters do work fairly well. When I log in to my Gmail account, almost every spam message is in the spam folder. That’s good.
What’s not good, and I still don’t understand how it happens, is that I don’t use that Gmail account for ANYTHING other than to just have it for using other Google services that require a Gmail account!
To that end, I have never used, given out, sent out, registered using, or any other activity utilizing that Gmail address.
Yet it easily gets a hundred spam messages a day!
That’s a hundred spam messages to an account that theoretically doesn’t exist!
The madness has got to stop!
September 10th, 2007 at 8:21 am
John Corliss says:
Text messaging should simply be dropped if such a problem exists. I know that if I ever got a cell phone, I would definitely not have text messaging as a feature in my account.
And if more ISPs started using SpamAssassin to filter spam before it gets delivered, spammers would be more likely to give up.
September 10th, 2007 at 9:11 am
Joseph says:
Inbound SMS messages do not cost anything or count against your monthly limit. Why do people continue to say this?
September 10th, 2007 at 11:17 am
Freud says:
Verizon charges .15 for inbound, non verizon originated messages.
http://support.vzw.com/terms/txt_messaging.html
September 10th, 2007 at 11:35 am
Alan Hearnshaw says:
“Inbound SMS messages do not cost anything or count against your monthly limit. Why do people continue to say this?”
Every text message I receive costs me 15c.
September 10th, 2007 at 10:14 pm
Amir Banuazizi says:
hey Alan Hearnshaw, what’s your cell # ?
September 11th, 2007 at 4:15 am