Shocked to realize that I really don't get much spam anymore

computerworld.com

1 point·cantrevealname··4 comments

I suddenly realized today how few spam messages I get on Gmail and Hotmail nowadays compared to 5-10 years ago. I googled for "spam email largely solved" and this article popped up.

Think back to all the ideas proposed 10 years ago to deal with spam: electronic postage, positive IDs, catching and prosecuting spammers, challenge/response systems. People said that the growth rate of spam was so large that it would kill off email within a couple years.

It's interesting that it was algorithmic methods (like filtering) that I think largely solved the spam problem -- and not re-training of users, changing workflow, or anything the government did.

As I understand it one of the infrastructural problems that used to enable spam was botnets blowing out ungodly amounts of mail over port 25. This doesn't happen nearly as often as it did, because most ISP's blocked port 25 by default. (You have to call them up to get it unblocked.) And of course most email services whitelist each other instead of blacklists.

Botnets can still take advantage of webmail through more sophisticated methods. Since spam is just a symptom of large scale botnets. (The majority of the web is currently a zombie in some botnet IIRC.) One way to reduce a lot of bad faith Internet behavior is to kill botnets.

> The majority of the web is currently a zombie in some botnet IIRC.

I didn't understand this sentence. Can you explain?

Internet I meant. And according to this (2011) the number is a lot lower.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15792257

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