back to article Spam drops as legit biz dumps mass email ads: Only the dodgy remain

Spam email was down in volume last year, but junk mail messages still comprise two in three items of electronic communication sent over the interwebs. Kaspersky Lab reports the portion of spam in email flows was as high as 69.6 per cent in 2013 – which is 2.5 percentage points lower than 2012. The biggest sources of spam were …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    biz dumps mass email ads

    took them some time to catch up, eh?

    or, perhaps, it took that much time for the idiots who open those emails to become immune. FB infection rulez!

    1. Terry 6 Silver badge

      Re: biz dumps mass email ads

      " because it's becoming a less and less effective medium to promote their dubious wares"

      It beats me how it was * ever* effective. The very fact make me ashamed of the human race.

      1. teebie

        Re: biz dumps mass email ads

        "It beats me how it was *ever* effective"

        (Virtually) No costs; Some morons.

  2. Chika
    Happy

    "Only the dodgy remain"

    Hmm... Looks at current email queue - Amazon, Google... yup. Can't argue with that!

  3. ratfox

    Solved problem as far as I am concerned

    Spam filters have become quite good.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Questions, questions

    What exactly does "email flows" mean? Is that 69.6% by traffic or by numbers of emails, for example? It must be an inexperienced sysadmin who accepts all email then tries to sort the spam from the ham, rather than concentrating on stopping the spam as soon as possible. Still, I don't suppose accurate details reduces the fear factor for selling some silver bullet.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    biz dumps mass email ads

    hmm .. As with the economy, the effect has not reach joe-public yet!

    I get more shit than ever, including spam and ham.

  6. NotWorkAdmin

    Links in emails.....

    Just stop doing it. Particularly if you're a bank.

  7. itzman

    Most of the spam I am getting these days

    ...is offers to sell mailing lists!!

    I mean everyone is now so aware of these mails that no one is responding and my guess is they are trying to cash up and move on.

  8. Graham Marsden
    Facepalm

    Mass e-mail != Spam

    As part of my business, I have an e-mail list.

    This is 100% *OPT IN*,you either have to click the box at the checkout on my website or put your e-mail address in the "sign up" list or physically write it down on a piece of paper if you buy something from the stall I run at a market once a month.

    *NOBODY* gets anything from me if they haven't asked for it.

    So *WHY* do I see e-mail unsubscribes where someone has ticked the box "Spammy content"? FFS, the instructions to opt out are in the e-mail. You can click on a link and unsubscribe. You can visit our website and unsubscribe, hells teeth, you can phone up our office and unsubscribe, but only *after* you opted in in the first place!

    So don't accuse me of spamming you when you asked me to send you e-mails!

    1. John Tserkezis

      Re: Mass e-mail != Spam

      "So don't accuse me of spamming you when you asked me to send you e-mails!"

      As was mentioned earlier: "(Virtually) No costs; Some morons."

      It works both ways. I'm a heavy user of forums, and we constantly see a string of members unsubscribing every which way but the right way. And the right way is included in EVERY message sent in that forum. You don't need brains to do a lot of things. And using a computer appears to be one of those things.

    2. Keith Langmead

      Re: Mass e-mail != Spam

      I suspect there's two elements to the problem. 1) users have been told for ages not to click unsubscribe links in emails since it identifies them as being real people. 2) webmail sites like Gmail make it very easy to mark unwanted messages as spam without having to provide any justification, so users get in the habit of hitting the spam link since it's easier than doing it properly, without understanding the ramifications of what they're doing.

    3. Stuart Castle Silver badge

      Re: Mass e-mail != Spam

      The problem there is that, in my experience, people do not read what they are signing This also extends to web forms where a lot of them appear to tick everything then wonder why they suddenly get a deluge of spam.

      1. Graham Marsden
        Facepalm

        @Stuart Castle - Re: Mass e-mail != Spam

        "The problem there is that, in my experience, people do not read what they are signing"

        Actually you make a good point there.

        Whilst making an edit to my site, I once accidentally broke the link to the Terms and Conditions page from the checkout and it stayed that way for a couple of months.

        Yet *everybody* when they ordered, ticked the box saying "I have read the Terms and Conditions" even though it was physically imposible for them to have done so...!

        1. Alan Brown Silver badge

          Re: @Stuart Castle - Mass e-mail != Spam

          The most common lie in the world today is "I have read and agree to the terms and conditions"

    4. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: Mass e-mail != Spam

      Unless you actually verify the address belongs to the person who requested it, for all you know someone might be signing up as twelve@monkeys.com (That's a spamtrap) or using a throwaway address such as guerillamail.com (addresses there are only valid for a couple of hours)

      Someone asked that you send email to an address, but how do you make sure they OWN the address they've given, without some form of confirmation? (doubly important when someone gives you a piece of paper with an address on it.)

      The other point is that if someone's ticking "spammy content", then the content you're sending is probably not what they were expecting or being sent too often (although ESPs report that spam reports for lists run at about 2% anyway).

      Marketers repeatedly fail to remember that at least 80% of the cost of any given email is borne by the recipient - it's cheap to send because someone else is paying the lion's share of the costs, but cost-shifted advertising is an easy way to Make Enemies Fast.

  9. raving angry loony

    Bullhooey

    So long as they keep counting legitimate, registered-for emails as "spam" in their stats, I'm suspicious of these self-serving, inflated claims.

    So long as companies like Cloudmark, Yahoo, and others continue to ignore "this is not spam, the user registered for it in a double opt-in" corrections to their false positives so that they can then claim "hey, we only have a 0.001% false positives" (yeah, because you don't count them) then the companies claiming "we block X amount of spam" are just as slimy and underhanded as the companies that actually do send UCE. They're also costing legitimate business as much if not more than actual spam does.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Let email providers take some responsibility

    I'm fed up with companies like Yahoo allowing obvious criminal emails arrive in the Inbox, with things like 'update your Yahoo - click here'.

    They must know it's crap the moment it arrives, yet it still arrives in inboxes with live links.

  11. Sub 20 Pilot

    Spamming emails

    It would be good if every company had the same processes in place as Graham Marsden. In my experience, some sites are like this but others will make it as difficult and as confusing as possible to avoid a spam deluge. ''tick here if you want to be sent marketing emails' and 'tick here if you want us not to add you to our mailing list''. Inconsistent and confusing wording..

    I will look over as much of the site as I can before buying or ordering anything to make sure I never have emails sent to me unless it is directly connected with that particular order. Sometimes it works, other times I find I missed a tiny tickbox on some obscure page that means the company think they can bombard you with crap and sell your details on.

    I really can't see how a reputable company thinks that it will be a good idea emailing me every day or every week with a 'HURRY !!!! BUY NOW!!!! email listing a pile of laptop details when I have just bought a laptop off them. Do they employ morons in their marketing departments ?

    I have also come across companies that will tell me, upon asking them why they don't stop sending me emails, that they have a 'relationship ' with me as a customer that means they can do so. One of the worst for this was Dell. I once bought a laptop from them and got an email with 'special offers' on every couple of days and at least two paper flyers a week to my home address even though I had told them to stop on several occasions, by email, by telephone and even in writing by registered post. It took the threat of legal action and trading standards to finally get them to stop. Who the hell in their right mind thinks that this will make me buy anything else off them ever again ?

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