Actually, if you live in the US you can opt out of most junk mail. Check with you post office.
Cheers, Randy Typos courtesy of Blackberry ----- Original Message ----- From: funsec-boun...@linuxbox.org <funsec-boun...@linuxbox.org> To: Drsolly <drsol...@drsolly.com> Cc: funsec@linuxbox.org <funsec@linuxbox.org>; rac...@anl.gov <rac...@anl.gov>; Rich Kulawiec <r...@gsp.org> Sent: Wed Feb 10 14:32:01 2010 Subject: Re: [funsec] 95% of User Generated Content is spam or malicious Drsolly made the following keystrokes: >Yes, I'm currently seeing about 98% spam. At what percentage does email >become useless? Food for thought, or fuel for the flames.... One should ask the US Post Office. It's very rare that I get any paper mail that isn't spam. Granted in that case, someone is paying for it, but I really don't have a way of opting out of sale's flyers for non-edible pizza, cars I don't want or need, and all the rest of the junk. Don't forget publishers clearing house and the lotter prizes you have already won. Sound familiar to the email spam? Also there are the people that drive by and litter my driveway with the free version of the local sales paper, Avon flyers, window replacements and driveway sealant applications. Next talk to Ma-bell. Without the no-call list, how many junk phone calls do you get vs want? Don't forget all those excempt surveys, politicians and "charities" that get past the first level "filters". Granted I get more per day in email, but the rates of ham/spam is "about the same". Just because it's email, it's really no different than all the rest. On television, you get ads every few minutes, not counting blatant product placement. It's all a matter of transport. With my email (home, not $work), I'm easily blocking 90% of all the spam that makes attempts to get in. Another good size chunk gets quarentined into spaces I rarely look at, then there's what's left. 90% of that is probably valid, expected email. Useful/meaningful/helpful/fun is a completely different matter, but it passes the "ok" test. To me this is better than I have with my phone and paper-mailbox. If I count sheer numbers of attempted email, it's well over 95% is spam. The first couple layer of filtering take care of most of that with little overall impact to the system. If I really wanted to do doom/gloom style presentation, the 95% number is what I report to people. If I wanted something more for mgmt people I would need to indicate how the $$ or time put forth on current filters is preventing this from being a HUGE problem. Then focus on how much is getting through and the wasted time/effort on people hitting delete or clicking on an infection that snuck through. At this point, while so much of the mail is spam, I don't think it's really taking as much bandwidth as one might expect. How many servers reject the spew prior to the "data" portion of the connection. helo/mailfrom/rcptto/abort? I know when I put greylisting into my email server, my router indicated an overall packet drop of about 85%. While greylisting has become less useful, the traffic levels haven't risen to the point they were before installing it. Same goes for using the zen services to drop spew. --Gene _______________________________________________ Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts. https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.
_______________________________________________ Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts. https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.