To print: Click here or Select File and then Print from your browser's menu

This story was printed from silicon.com, located at http://www.silicon.com/

Story URL: http://comment.silicon.com/0,39024711,10004099,00.htm

It's been another week of spam, spam, spam...
...and more spam...

By silicon.com

Published: Friday 09 May 2003

It's been another week when the problem of spam has dominated the headlines. Unsolicited email has become a plague on our inboxes and the bad news is that it's not going to go away any time soon.

More than 40 per cent of all email is spam - and Enrique Salem, CEO of anti-spam firm Brightmail, told silicon.com this week that we're not going to have to wait too long before that figure hits 50 per cent. And it won't stop there.

At least governments are starting to realise the severity of the problem. Previously it had been thought of in the same way as junk mail - but the two are starkly different. Brightmail's Salem said we need an economic disincentive to deter spammers. People spamming your inbox can do it far more cheaply than those spamming your letter box - and as such they do it in far greater numbers.

There are schemes in the pipeline aimed at levying a charge on anybody who wants to send email spam, but in reality it is at a legislative level where progress is needed. The problem is that most spammers know what they are doing is illegal - a change in the law is therefore a moot point. If they are willing to break one law, then they won't lose too much sleep about breaking its successor.

This week the House of Lords discussed draft regulations for a change in laws governing spam. Or at least most of them did. Others, such as Lord Renton discussed tinned meat.

So we've still got some way to go if the Lord Renton's of this world are anything to go by. And in case you need reminding of the extent of the problem, consider our handily compiled statistics below.

Spam stat attack

The amount of spam being sent worldwide is still on the increase with more than 40 per cent of all email traffic now made up of unsolicited mail.

The amount of spam travelling worldwide has increased 61 per cent in the past year.

If you think you suffer badly from spam you'd do well to consider the plight of one silicon.com reader. In January we reported on the 'unluckiest spam recipient in Britain' who was plagued by more than 500,000 unsolicited emails in one month - a staggering 8,500 per day. That's a lot of 'natural Viagra'.

'Adult' content - such a pornography or advertising for premium rate sex chat lines - accounts for 19 per cent of all spam.

Financial services, such as offers of loans, mortgages or credit cards makes up 20 per cent of all spam. Other areas include product advertising (25 per cent) and scams (nine per cent).

Even the world's major religions have jumped on the spam bandwagon. Four per cent of all spam carries a religious or spiritual message.

Microsoft claims to intercept 2.4 billion items of spam, bound for users of its MSN and Hotmail services, every single day.

Since silicon.com published an email conversation with a Nigerian 419 scammer in March and publicised this common con, we have seen a 1300 per cent increase in the amount of 419 emails we receive each week. It seems we annoyed the 419 community...