Concepts: Damn Spam!

A recent poll by market research company Harris Interactive Inc, for example, indicated that 80 percent of U.S. Internet users find unsolicited bulk e-mail "very annoying". This is compared to the 49 percent in 2000 who were very annoyed with spam. Spam is increasing. Spam currently adds up to 30 percent of all e-mail and it is thought that this figure will be closer to 50 percent by the middle of 2003, according to Message Labs.

Spam, including junk mail of all kinds, has grown from being a minor pain in the butt to being a serious cost and time liability and a significant security risk. To some extent, the entire internet email system is slowly grinding to a jerky halt under the load of crap sent by spammers!

Spam adds to costs for servers, data storage, bandwidth and the loss of productivity. Costs are generally passed on to you, the user!

Internet service providers have many of the same issues. They pass all those costs on to users. Some ISPs say that their future is put at risk because of the rising costs of dealing with the load of spam coming through their pipes.

Links for more information:

• 2003 MIT Spam Conference Proceedings
• A Plan For Spam Seminal article describing probabilistic spam-filtering
• Plan for Spam FAQ Frequently Asked Questions
• Spam Busters Sydney Morning Herald (Icon) cover story
• Will Filters Kill Spam? Will spammers ever give up?
• Spam is Different Spam should not be protected as free speech
• Filters vs. Blacklists Stopping spam without losing legitimate email
• Spam Detection Another great rant by Gary Robinson
• Gary Robinson's Spam Rants Links and occasional rants on spam
• Death To Spam A guide to dealing with unwanted e-mail
• Freeware Hall of Fame Basic anti-spam techniques
• SPAM Bookmarks Robert's Internet Bookmarks
• Bayesian Spam Filtering What you need to know
• Bayesian Whitelisting Finding good mail among the spam
• Spamhaus tracks the Internet's worst spammers...
• Statistics hold out hope for slamming spam
• Interhack Death-To-Spam We hate spam...
• Fight Spam on the Internet! Promote responsible Net Commerce
• Reflections on the 25th Anniversary of Spam Very informative and thoughtful article
• Why Spam Sucks A really great rant!
• Spammers Using Bad Software, Say Stats ComputerWorld article by Stephen Bell
• Killing Spam the Kiwi Way National Business Review article by Stephen Ballantyne
• The Spam Letters On the lighter side

"[Spammers] are the mutant spawn of a bizarre reproductive act involving a telemarketer, Larry Flynt, a tapeworm, and an executive of the Third Class mail industry."
    -- Dave Barry