RESOUR> [NetGold] EMAIL: SPAM AND ABUSE: Record Broken: 82% of U.S. Email is Spam

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Date: Mon, 10 May 2004 21:40:29 -0400 (EDT)
From: David P. Dillard <jwne@xxxxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: NetGold@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To: NetGold <NetGold@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [NetGold] EMAIL: SPAM AND ABUSE: Record Broken: 82% of U.S. Email is 
Spam

EMAIL: SPAM AND ABUSE: Record Broken: 82% of U.S. Email is Spam

Datamation
IT Management : Security
Record Broken: 82% of U.S. Email is Spam
May 5, 2004
By Sharon Gaudin
<http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/secu/article.php/3349921>


Outdoing most analysts' worst predictions, spam accounted for 82 percent
of all U.S. email last month.

After a two-month drop in spam, the number of unsolicited bulk email
skyrocketed in April, bringing the saturation number up to record levels
here in the U.S. and across the world, according to MessageLabs, Inc., a
security company based in New York.

''This is as bad as we've seen it,'' says Paul Wood, chief information
security analyst for MessageLabs. ''I think it's likely that it will
continue to rise but perhaps not at the same rate that it did in the past 
month.''

And April did show a dramatic increase.

According to Wood, spam was on a steady increase last year, going from a
50 percent saturation in the middle of 2003 to 63 percent in January of
this year. But then there was a largely unexpected sharp decline. February
saw the rate drop to 59 percent, and March was even lower at 52.8 percent.
That means in March, spam accounted for 52.8 percent of all the email
traveling around the world.

But that drop was short-lived.

In April the rate shot back up, surpassing the January high, to hit 67.6
percent globally. And here in the United States, it hit 82 percent.

----------------------------------------------------

NZoom
Spam drives away online shoppers
Feb 03, 2004
<http://onenews.nzoom.com/onenews_detail/0,1227,252876-1-454,00.html>

The exponential growth of unsolicited junk email - spam - is shaking
consumer confidence in the internet and may hamper growth of the
e-economy, officials told a global anti-spam meeting.

A survey published by consumers group the Trans-Atlantic Consumer Dialogue
(TACD) showed 52% of respondents were shopping less on the internet or not
at all because of concerns about receiving unsolicited junk email.

"It is very clear that the majority of citizens are very troubled by
unsolicited commercial emails," said the survey, which was released at a
spam meeting led by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development (OECD).

"It is also very clear that bona fide businesses are losing money because
the disreputable image of spam is making consumers uneasy about engaging
in e-commerce."

Data from anti-spam software company Brightmail showed spam accounts for
half of all emails sent. Filtering and clearing up email inboxes is a
rising cost for business and consumers.

An overwhelming majority of the more than 20,000 respondents to the TACD
survey said they either hated or were annoyed by unsolicited junk emails
and wanted them to be banned.

   RELATED LINKS

- Spam effort needs to be global
- Kiwi ISP ready for spam action
- Gates vows to obliterate spam
- Bush signs anti-spam law
- Spam volumes surge
- Reclaiming your inbox
- Spam - Learn to live with it

----------------------------------------------------

An IntelliReach Whitepaper
Spam Free in 2004: Tactics and Techniques
James Gildea
Director, Global Markets
January 2004
<http://www.pcs.co.uk/downloads/whitepaper.pdf>

Abstract

In their study, The 2003 Spam and Virus
Report, Osterman Research reports that 96%
of IT managers surveyed have deployed
anti-spam and anti-virus defenses, yet these
same managers continue to be plagued by
unwanted email and malicious code. Why?
Mainly it is due to email administrators not
maintaining their defenses to keep pace with
evolving spamming tactics.

This paper discusses the six critical
components that define an effective defense
against todays new spamming techniques
and tactics. It provides a practical means for
readers to assess their own defenses and
determine whether their defenses are
providing adequate protection against a
potentially disastrous situation.
Spam as the Killer App

In late December 2003, Basex, a New Yorkbased
consulting and research firm, named
spam as its product of the year. Granted,
this was a tongue-in-cheek honor that takes
a poke at Time Magazine for in the past
honoring dictators like Adolf Hitler as their
man of the year. Basex said that it gave
the award as an acknowledgement of spams
impact on business in 2003 in terms of
clogged email systems, bandwidth
consumed and money spent trying to defend
against it. Basex estimates that spam cost
companies $20 Billion in 2003 and they
look for that to double in 2004.

As an example, consider Frank Gillman. He
is the director of technology at Allen
Matkins, a Los Angeles law firm that
employs 220 lawyers and about 300 support
staffers. Frank calculates that before he
rolled out his defenses spam cost his firm
$300,000 in productivity, $17,000 in lost
bandwidth and a further $114,000 in wasted
storage costs. Allen Matkins is now saving
close to a half million dollars simply by
keeping spam out of the network.

It is evident that email has emerged as the
key corporate application, displacing the
telephone as the main source of
communication. Osterman Research reports
that 60% of the critical information the
typical worker employs on a daily basis
resides in the messaging system. The rise
in electronic communication has resulted in
the average enterprise messaging user
sending and receiving almost 19,000 emails
annually and has forced message store
volume to grow 37% annually.

Almost every IT manager worth his salt has
installed some form of spam and virus
defense. But problems still remain. It is
estimated by Osterman that up to 60% of
spam and virus defenses have not been
maintained or updated and as a result are
ineffective against todays spamming
techniques.

Furthermore, the content of spam is
changing. Over the course of 2003
pornographic spam has grown from 3% to
20% of all email. Recent rulings have held
that companies who ignore spam porn are, in
fact and deed, creating hostile work
environments and are consequently opening
themselves up to litigation liability.
ChevronTexaco recently settled a lawsuit
charging that it knowingly allowed
employees to use its email system to
circulate pornography. Similar cases
abound.

The economic impact of spam on companies
has always been hard to nail down given that
no two organizations are exactly alike.
However, Ostermans research has found
that individuals who are protected by even
first or second generation spam defenses are
spending 80 minutes per thousand emails
dealing with spam (e.g. reading it, deleting
it, reporting it, etc.). This equates to 2.4
workdays every year. Unprotected workers,
on the other hand, spend 200 minutes per
thousand emails, or 6.1 workdays per year
dealing with spam, which shows that even
ineffectual first or second generation spam
defenses are better than none.

----------------------------------------------------

The full articles and documents may be read at the URLs above that
accompany each.


Sincerely,
David Dillard
Temple University
(215) 204 - 4584
jwne@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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