Out of every legit email message you get in your Inbox, how much of it would you say is spam? 20%? 50%? While it can vary a lot based on your activities and type of filtering, the worldwide average is stunning. A whopping 90% of email has been reported as spam. An U.S. email security company, Postini, performed a study and came to the conclusion that spam has been on the rise the past few months, nearly tripling the amount sent worldwide:
His company has detected 7 billion spam e-mails worldwide in November compared to 2.5 billion in June. Spam in Britain has risen by 50 percent in the last two months alone, according to Internet security company SurfControl.
That is beyond bad, that is sickening. Blaming 80% of that volume on a small number of "illegal gangs", even if those numbers are remotely accurate it's a sad state of affairs that people must deal with such volume of useless junk. Is it really possible to stop it? After all, if nobody ever replied to a spam mail, there would be no incentive for these criminals to mail them out. Which means somewhere along the line, one of those millions of spam-laden Inboxes is replying to it. While many countries are enacting laws to prevent and attack spam, and companies are becoming more aggressive in fighting it, there are many who think that simply isn't the correct approach:
It will only end when people stop buying diet pills, herbal highs and sexual performance enhancers, said Dave Rand, of Internet security firm Trend Micro. "The products they are selling by spam are exactly the same products that they sold in the Middle Ages," he said. "This really is a human problem, not a computer problem."
Is he right? Quite possibly. An international problem, however, requires an international solution. The situation will probably never change until companies and legal agencies across the world begin working together.