Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam – to barrow a line from a great Monty Python skit. Though I am not as enthused about it as where Terry, Eric, and Graham. In fact, we are not even talking about the same Spam.I, of course, am referring to that bombardment of bandwidth consuming, storage draining, unsolicited e-mail which seems intent in clogging my mail box, or at least my mail server.
The Spam problem was given quite a bit of news coverage for a while, with politicians scrambling over each other to pass one ineffectual ant-spam law after another. While these sorts of stories have taken a back seat, and justly so, to the instability in the Middle East and the War on Terror, I do have to wonder if it has made any difference.I am currently getting between 40 & 60 thousand (yes, thousand) spam e-mails a month. Of those messages I actually see only about 10 – 20 a month, as they are filter out at the server before I even need to look at them.
Look back through my old log files; I see that around 2 years ago I was receiving less that ½ of the spam I receive today. Back 2 more years I was receiving about 20% of what I receive now.
Net effect: the problem is getting worse. While our filtering is getting better and better it is serving only to mask the core problem. How many millions of terabytes where sucked up last year storing spam mail? How much bandwidth was consumed by this bombardment? With all our efforts and the intervention of even our government – we have accomplished very little.
So what is the solution? Is there one? Or do we just sharpen up our filters, upgrade our pipes, and treat the symptoms?
No answers, just question.
So what is the solution? Is there one? Or do we just sharpen up our filters, upgrade our pipes, and treat the symptoms?No answers, just question.
