Symantec Concludes That 72% of All E-Mail Sent in November Was Spam

[zekrahminator]

In the continuing war against spam, Symantec files reports on how the anti-spam industry is doing every month. Symantec concluded that, in November, 72% of all messages sent to people was spam. Symantec cited "Thanksgiving holiday captions in subject lines, advertisements of replica products, mass e-mail address collection using an animated snowball .gif image, "free" gift-cards from well-known companies, and seasonal lotto scams" for the high amount of spam last month. As anti-spam software/filters get bigger, better, and more advanced, Symantec hopes to watch this figure go down. You can read the full "State of Spam" report here.

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[jurrasstoil]

*checks his email account*
yep. true.

 

[panchoman]

wow, thank god only .72% of my inbox was spam. GMAIL FTW oh wait.. thats a bad thing, that means i actually have to read and respond to those 379 emails in my inbox

 

[effmaster]

“free” gift-cards from well-known companies

I don't see anything wrong with this. Why would it be spam if its from well known companies?

I wouoldnt mind a free gift card from a well known company from like say Best Buy for Instance.

 

[zekrahminator]

It's sorta like the "free" iPods....you have to complete a bunch of surveys and buy a bunch of crap.

 

[Polaris573]

Only about 25% of my mail is SPAM. I guess I'm lucky.

 

[effmaster]

It's sorta like the "free" iPods....you have to complete a bunch of surveys and buy a bunch of crap.

I wouldnt mind the surveys but the buying a bunch of other crap, hell no That crap would smell up the house

 

[tkpenalty]

The only way to get spam is to register your email at websites... okay what I'm about to say is rather dangerous for me, but that includes TPU. One of my emails = no email sent >=D.

 

[Weer]

I finally recieved my first spam email on Gmail this Saturday. Account's been open for half a year.

 

[DaMulta]

Spamers got ahold of my email adress. I click the do not email me again, and I get 50 more each day.......

 

[imperialreign]

The only way to get spam is to register your email at websites... okay what I'm about to say is rather dangerous for me, but that includes TPU. One of my emails = no email sent >=D.

true - any site, for that matter. Even "secure" sites have turned up adding spam to an account. Thankfully, hotmail/msn's spam filters are pretty good. I usually only end up with 3 junk emails a day, and they're usually advertisements from sites I've shopped at before.

One thing I like about gmail, though, is that you can tag your email address if you register somewhere in such a way that you can actually see what sites have whored out your email address. You wouldn't believe how many deceitful online stores there are!

 

[DaJMasta]

I get maybe 5-10%.... just to think that a while I get so little other people are probably getting 90% or more.



DAMN!

 

[erocker]

I've had my hotmail account since 1998. I get about 5 spams a day.

 

[jocksteeluk]

The next thing will be lets charge for sending Emails so we can stop spam being sent, dont fall for the trick, spam is a problem but at least Emailing is free (excluding hardware costs of course)

 

[jothy]

I click the do not email me again, and I get 50 more each day.......

that's one of their methods, by doing that your letting them know your address is legit... only do that with emailers you trust are not spam.

 

[lemonadesoda]

I disagree ENTIRELY with Symantecs analysis.

Perhaps 72% of all email RECEIVED was spam. That's probably true.

But sent? No way. Much higher than that. Email spam filters both on client and at server level catch so much junk. I'm sure that without any filtering, spam would represent 90%+ of all email sent.

Unless, Symantec is refering to amount of DATA sent, rather than the COUNT of emails. Since most spam is relatively small, compared to real email with attachments.

 

[jocksteeluk]

the thing is these companies have ways of finding spam and yet they let it through, how do they explain letting junk through that isn't even addressed to your correct email address or even blank emails? trust me it is a way to get public opinion in to thinking the way charging for emails will stop spam but it wont work because the mater plan is to charge for emailing, just like like you get junk mail through a conventional mail box junk mail on-line will continue unless you are prepared to have your mail vetted.

 

[TUngsten]

I have a university email which is susceptible to email due to it's easy access on the net. I get about 200 spams a day blocked by my firewall, though a good 10-20 get through.

I have a gmail account as well that gets 0 spam, but that's mainly because it's not listed anywhere that can be phished by trolling software.