Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam!

The good news is that the percentage of email that is spam dropped last year. The bad news? It's now 97.3%. What is it?

"Pharmacy and other product ads make up the lion's share of spam, accounting for 72.2 percent of all spam sent. Only 10 percent of the total spam share now involves sexually-oriented pharmaceuticals; that's a huge decline from previous studies, as apparently Viagra and Cialis are no longer that hard to come by.

Image-only spam, dating come-ons, financial spam, and fraudulent diplomas round out the remainder of the most common spam subjects."


It sure seems to me that in an era where our resources are limited, particularly those of money and time, this sort of tomfoolery should be eliminated. How about a national no-spam and certainly no-unsolicited-bulk-mailing lists like exist for telemarketers?

3 comments:

Luke H. said...

Because those lists would contain valid email addresses, and so would be prime spam targets. The telemarketing no-call lists are only marginally effective, and there even less chance of prosecution with email.

There are better questions. Much if not most of the spam is sent through millions of computers that have been hijacked with viruses and trojans. These networks can also be used to mount denial of service attacks against governments, financial institutions, utilities, or just about anyone else on the internet. Why is this not seen as a national security issue, or at least a major criminal issue? Why is there no coordinated law enforcement effort around this? For that matter, why is online fraud seen as an individual matter, with no coordinated law enforcement?

ScienceAvenger said...

I agree. Why is the penalty for physically destroying a computer so much higher relatively speaking than spreading a virus that destroys millions? Why aren't all such cyber crimes considered mass vandalism? It seems our government has a hard time moving fast enough to keep up with changing technology.

Troublesome Frog said...

I wonder if any company that has incurred massive losses due to a virus has gone after the writer (assuming he was caught) for damages. "I hope you enjoyed your 6 months in prison. You now also owe us $6M in clean up costs. Enjoy the rest of your life."