Re: How has the spam problem changed in the past decade?

> >In other words... has the "spam problem" changed in the last 10 years?
>
> Now here's an interesting question.

+1

It's nice to see so much activity in the ASRG, but reading today's
posts, you'd get the impression that email is on its last legs and that
we need to do something now, if we don't want the spammers to win.

That's not what I see, both as someone who professionally works with
spam and as someone who uses email as a communication tool.

Spam levels have come down. A lot. Most of what is still being sent is
blocked by spam filters. I think it was Bruce Schneier who said that
spam is a rare success story in cybercrime. I agree.

I'm not saying the spam problem is solved. There are many areas where
work can and needs to be done: spammers using compromised accounts
and/or hosts; low-volume spam; the grey area between ham and spam; the
fact that a lot of current spam filters rely heavily on IPv4-based
(black)lists; etc.

But I really don't think there is evidence email is so broken, we need
to look for replacements.

Having said all that and returning to what John said, it would be nice
if we could quantify some of the claims made above. How much have spam
volumes come down? What percentage of spam is actually delivered? What
percentage of legitimate mail isn't? Would today's spam-filters still
work if all email were to be sent over IPv6?

Martijn.

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