Spam on the Rise - No Surprise

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Delivered-To: dfarber+ () ux13 sp cs cmu edu
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 00:27:05 -0500
From: jspira () basex com
Subject: Spam on the Rise - No Surprise
To: dave () farber net


Dave, hi

I just did an informal survey to see how much spam E-mail our mail servers 
rejected today.   Given the CAN-SPAM Act, one would have expected the 
quantity of spam E-mail to go down, if just a tad.

As you know, a month ago, we released our report on Spam E-mail and IT 
Spending and Productivity (http://www.basex.com/2003poty).  We predicted 
that the situation will get worse before it gets better.  Bob Kahn noted in 
the report that the relevancy factor of his mail went from close to 100% 
(a  while ago), to 50% (recently) to 10% (at present).  I wonder what 
happens when we reach 1% relevancy.

My own quick study: one month later, our mail servers are rejecting twice 
as much spam per user as last month.  The average number of pieces of spam 
E-mail per user was 198 today - compared with ca. 11 relevant (or non-spam) 
E-mails.  That is close to 5% relevancy.  Fortunately, the systems deployed 
on our mail servers catch almost all of it - with mercifully few false 
positives.

Cheers.

/s/ Jonathan

Jonathan B. Spira
CEO and Chief Analyst
Basex, Inc.
y <mailto:jspira () basex com>jspira () basex com
( +1 (212) 725-2600 x113
8 http://www.basex.com


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