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Anti-Spam Companies Claim Success; Email Recipients Disagree
from the this-is-how-you-define-success? dept
Because companies fighting the spam battle need to market themselves, many are touting how much success they've had in fighting spam. There's just one problem: most users are seeing more spam. There are ways to reconcile the differences, though. First, there still are a lot of people who don't use any spam filter. So, whether or not the spam filters are succeeding, these people are clearly seeing more spam. Second, even if the spam filters are succeeding in blocking out 95% or 99% or whatever percent they like to claim, there's still some getting through. With spammers increasing the amount of spam they send, the absolute number getting through increases as well. Still, it does make you wonder how we should define "success" in fighting spam.
Reader Comments
(Flattened / Threaded)
The answer is domain names
I get loads of spam to the Yahoo address I post to newsgroups with.
I get zero spam now I use the domain name method: have a specific @yourdomain.com address for every shop, forum, newsgroup or whatever you post to, e.g. amazon@yourdomain.com and bestbuy@yourdomain.com
Then if you get spam to that address, you know that that shop has sold your Email address (yes buy.com and Hotmail, you know I mean you!) and then you can just kill the address off.
I get less spam that I used to going to my hostmaster@ address from WHOIS records, now that most WHOIS databases are script-proof.
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Re: Anti-Spam Companies Claim Success; Email Recip
Even given the best filtering possible, spammers will find ways around it. So, recipients will see bursts of spam until the filters compensate. That's why I have a problem with polling people about spam- the burstiness can make people "feel" that spam is increasing.
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