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You now have 66% less spam

Written on 13th November 2008 10 COMMENTS
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur

On the right here is a SpamCop Graph showing worldwide spam over the last 7 days. As you can see the was a drastic decrease of spam on Wednesday. The reason for this decline in spam is that last Tuesday two Internet providers cut off McColo’s (Site is down) connectivity to the Internet.

The firm was suspected of offering hosting service to, as the Washington Post describes it: “international firms and syndicates that are involved in everything from the remote management of millions of compromised computers to the sale of counterfeit pharmaceuticals and designer goods, fake security products and child pornography via email”.

Several spam watching companies noticed a huge drop in spam worldwide. Email security firm IronPort estimated that spam levels fell by 66% after Tuesday.

It is not just good news that this one particular host has been taken offline and we see a sudden decrease in spam. More important maybe is that spam might be a smaller problem to fix than we originally thought.

Maybe the 80/20 rule is applicable to spam too. Maybe if we can catch 20% of the companies making spam possible we will actually stop 80% of all spam sent worldwide. That would mean that a solution for the spam problem is within reach.

We might not be able to stop millions of spammers worldwide, but we sure as hell should be able to stop a few big ones.

10 Comments »

About the author: Serial entrepreneur and founder of several companies. Current activities include TwitterCounter.com & this Blog. Boris is also very active on Twitter: @Boris

10 comments/trackbacks to “You now have 66% less spam”

Nov 14, 2008: WebBlog de la tele en 3D » Blog Archive » Golpe al spam: Desde hoy 66% menos spam
[...] Enlaces relacionados:The Next Web [...]

By Ernst-Jan Pfauth on Nov 13, 2008

I wish the amount of blog spam would decrease. Akismet is an ok filter but not nearly as good as the Gmail filter. So that means blog spam irritates me more.

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By Eelco on Nov 13, 2008

Ernst-Jan, have you tried alternatives like TypePad (http://antispam.typepad.com/) or Defensio? We’re having good results with the former (didn’t test Defensio).

BTW, Boris, you might need a better monitor. It’s McColo, not MoColo. Also, you might want to proof-read your posts, because there’s a heel of a typo at the bottom ;)

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By Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on November 13th, 2008:
That was mean. You hurt my feelings!

Ahh, I’m over it already. Fixed the typos. Thanks!

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By Dan Field on Nov 13, 2008

Hi Boris,

It is true that a small number of spammers are responsible for almost all of the spam sent out, but there is also many more on their way up the ranks ready to take their place.

Unfortunately the same holds true for the hosting companies that allow the spam to be sent out, the spammers that used McColo will already be switching their operations to other hosting providers… not to mention the use of BotNets to send out the spam.

We have recorded a significant drop in some spam sent to *some* users, but not all will benefit from this shut-down.

If you are in the UK for example then only 12.5% of your spam actually comes from the US:
http://www.clearmymail.com/Spa.....To_UK.aspx

Its also key to note, that this drop will be very short lived. We are already starting to see the levels of spam rise again as the spammers move their operations elsewhere.

Get yourself ready for the holiday season, its going to be a big one for spam!

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By Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on November 13th, 2008:
Thanks for the insights into the world of spam! As detailed in this post here (http://thenextweb.com/2008/11/.....ages-sent/) spammers are making less on their activities than we thought. So maybe by actively chasing and disconnecting them like this we make it uneconomically to continue doing business like this.

Or maybe not. Either way, it feels better than doing nothing…

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By Dan Field on November 13th, 2008:
Definitely… The shutting down of McColo is great news, I don’t want to knock that.

Every little helps!

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By Luca F. on Nov 13, 2008

very very interesting….

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By verKoopwinkel on Nov 14, 2008

Second the motion (agree with Luca F.) awesome blogpost once again ! Does anyone know how we can get past the spamfilters on Hotmail ? (get on the Hotmail whitelist).

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By Geert on Nov 14, 2008

@verKoopwinkel: Probably you mean “how to get your email delivered in Hotmail inboxes”, as your current comment suggest you’re looking for a trick to fool the Hotmail spamfilter.

For our clients, we deliver a lot of mails to Hotmail (in the inbox!). It is based on reputation.

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