Are Spammers Giving Up?

sfjoe writes "Are spammers giving up the game? Google seems to think so. In an article at Wired, Google, '... says that spam attempts, as a percentage of e-mail that's transmitted through its Gmail system, have waned over the last year'. They think their own filters are so good that spammers aren't even trying anymore. 'Other experts disagree with Google, pointing out that overall spam attempts continue to rise. By most estimates, tens of billions of spam messages are sent daily. Yet for most users, the amount of spam arriving in their inboxes has remained relatively flat, thanks to improved filtering.'"

For Serious?

[mashade]

All one has to do is glance at a mail log to see that no, in fact, spammers are not giving up. This one does not require reading tfa.

But that isn't "giving up".

[khasim]

The spammers are still sending the spam. They aren't giving up.

But the filters are getting good enough to filter most of it so the users do not have to see it.

But the spammers are still sending it.

gmail / spam

[Anonymous Coward]

If Google claims that spam attempts to gmail have gone down, that does not mean that the overall volume of spam has gone down. It indicates that spammers have stopped targeting gmail accounts, which are involved in only a very small percentage of all e-mail.

Spammers give up? Not likely

[damn_registrars]

They won't give up as long as there's a monetary incentive for them to send out spam. As long as they can sell something through spam, they will continue to send it out. We can talk about how wonderful filter ABC is, and compare it endlessly for false positives against filter XYZ. But in the end, its just a matter of time until the spammers defeat both of them, and we're on to filter ABC version 2.

So no, in the end, nothing that most people are doing will do squat to bring about the end of spam. You can filter until you're blue in the face, and spam will still be sent. You can shut down all your mailboxes and open a new gmail address every week, and you'll still get spammed.

Spam is sent because spammers can make money by sending it. Period.

not likely

[untorqued]

It's hard to imagine that spam filters have gotten to the point where spamming doesn't make economic sense. After all, the business model is something like

1. Send an email to 10,000 random people
2. Get money from one of those people
3. Profit

Even adding a couple zeroes to the recipient number (which improved spam filters should be doing) doesn't make much of a dent in the total expenses, if I understand correctly. Lawsuits under the CAN SPAM law, however, could make it too costly to get past step 1. Unfortunately, it seems like the judicial system still needs a little help here [slashdot.org].

Quality over Quantity?

[olddotter]

Perhaps spammers are focusing on how to get a smaller number of messages through the filters rather that upping the number of messages sent.

They ought to give up

[Lucas123]

I suppose someone must be responding to them, but for the life of me, I can't imagine who. They're just an annoying part of working online that I've come to accept unfortunately. I'm still waiting for a law similar to the National Do Not Call List [https://www.donotcall.gov/] that will provide some relief to my inbox. Of course, you've got to deal with the international aspect of spam, but considering that ISP's can control what comes in, that shouldn't be an insurmountable problem.

Re:For Serious?

[MenTaLguY]

What I've heard from other sources is that there isn't a decrease, either. It may be that spammers are avoiding gmail specifically.

Re:My Experience

[nuzak]

Hormel has been very cool about the whole "spam" label. I know, if they were to fight it now, they'd lose, but they didn't fight it even when there were commercial "Anti-Spam" products just hitting the market.

All they ask is one thing: that you not spell it in ALL-CAPS when referencing the email variety of spam. That's still their trademark. And I don't think it's too much to ask.

Re:For Serious?

[Dan Ost]

In that case, expect to see more people using gmail in the future.

Why give up?

[OnlyHalfEvil]

Let's even imagine that spam filters were 99.99% accurate, what would be the benefit of not spamming anymore? It costs them nothing, so if they send out millions of spams per day and only get a few bites, they're still making a profit.

There's no incentive to stop spamming unless it becomes arduous to do so. Nether technology nor litigation are close enough to make that happen.

What about user education

[andrewdoyle]

Surely at some point (probably later, rather than sooner) the number of users who aren't duped by spam will be such that spammers will have no market. The only reason that spammers continue to send spam is that there are gullible fools clicking the links and maintaining the demand for spam. Once the user base is educated enough (ie. no more users who haven't grown up with computers who say things like "But they've address the email to me. It must be important..."), there'll be no market. Or am I living in La La Land?

Re:Hmm, the spammers still like me.

[phoenix321]

Google may do all kinds of malicious things, but disclosing your email adress to anyone is not on that list, ever. It would be trivial as you point out to prove that Google sells this kind of information, so it's almost guaranteed it's going to be publicized. And then the public would burn Google at the stake, as slow and painful as possible.

No, I don't think spammers are doing that. First, it's probably been guessed by dictionary attacks. Botnets should have the CPU time they need to exhaust the search space up to a dozen characters. (Remember: email is case insensitive and restricted to standard english alphanumeric characters plus a handful others. This is no NSA-safe keyspace.) And second, they probably obtained a list from somewhere. Some inbox on some PC that was rootkitted or an entry in a not-negative list that some other spammer sold them. (Remember: all adresses that do not bounce are valid mailboxes.)

Re:Hmm, the spammers still like me.

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, I have had gmail for at least 2.5 years and use it as my primary e-mail. I sign up for things online. Give it out to people. Probably other things I should not do with an email and I get about 4 or 5 spams a day. That is definitely 4 or 5 too many but not nearly as bad as I have seen in the past. So to me gmail is OK.

Re:If they give up

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Yesta'day too.

I'll say something trenchant and good about OS X, and something obvious and critical about Vista tomorrow.

The +5's will come back. ;-)

Re:My Experience

[gvc]

"Spam detection has got to be something like 99.999% accurate"

Nonsense. 99.999% is one error in 100,000 emails. Have you even received 100,000 emails? Have you checked every one to see if the filter made at most one mistake? Have you repeated the measurement several dozen times, as would be necessary to make such a claim? Of course not.

I would be surprised if the filter you are using (including Gmail) is 99% accurate.

Here are some accuracy figures under ideal conditions [nist.gov]. From side-by-side comparisons I can assure you that spam filters in the field do considerably worse. You just don't notice.

Re:I've noticed...

[Skim123]

They are not trying to sneak around the Bayesian Filter you have installed on your machine, because, like you said, someone who has gone that far is clearly not going to get lured by spam. They are targeting the ISP's spam filters, so that the spam gets past their filters and into your grandma's Inbox.

Re:Well..... Not really.

[Tom]

If Bill would be hit on the head each time one of his prophecies was completelly off - he'd be long dead with a bashed-in skull.

Seriously, betting on the opposite of whatever he says has been a fairly profitable route for at least 10 years.

Re:Don't Filter, Greylist

[Anonymous Coward]

Greylisting's not for everyone though.

Especially people who don't want to hear other people whine on and on about why that super-important email from that super-important person hasn't arrived even though he says it was sent like an hour ago, and how the server must be crap and how it must be someone's fault and something will have to be done and how they can't do business like this, when all you really want to do is to devise a way to remotely strangle those who greylist reject after the full email has been transferred! And again... And again... And again... Damn them!

(I love my job really. ;)

Short-term vs. Long-term

[RealGrouchy]

This graph reminds me of the North-American crime rate graph. Even though crime is much lower today than it was at its peak in the mid-'90s, it is down to a rate that in the '60s was considered extremely high.

Looking at Google's graph, it barely registers a blip. I believe it is what stock marketers call a "correction". It's down to about 67% from a peak of about 73%--where it was barely 15 months ago. And the tail end of the graph is turning back up.

The recent drop in the graph is far less dramatic than the drop in early '05--and it only went up after that.

Spam ain't going anywhere anytime soon.

- RG>

Re:For Serious?

[bvimo]

I've heard that some people can get blood from a stone, so maybe rocks can fulfil there contractual obligations and pay up.

Re: The money is disconnected

[Migraineman]

Spam has an unfortunate relationship - the spam recipient isn't the spammer's customer. The spammer's customer is the advertiser, either directly or indirectly. Blocking spam doesn't disrupt the connection between the spammer and his customer, and as long as the spammer can convince his customer that there's value in advertising via spam, the spam shall continue. To eliminate spam, it must become substantially less attractive than traditional advertising channels. I don't expect that to happen any time soon, as the cost of sending a gazillion emails pales in comparison to the cost of running a print campaign.

Maybe the correct method to work toward eliminating spam isn't to block it, but rather let it all through. I think folks would be truly disturbed if the ISPs could coordinate a day where everybody disabled spam filtering for 24 hours. You wanna motivate a congresscritter? Irritate everyone in his district, all at once (including him and his peers.)