Spam hits 36 percent of e-mail traffic

ZDNet News ^ | 8/29/02 | Robert Lemos

[KneelBeforeZod]

99.999999% of email is spam if you have a hotmail address.

[AFreeBird]

May I humbly suggest the death penalty?

I'll second that. I'll also add that it should be done by standing the spammers up against a wall (sans blindfold) and shooting them! Even with filters I'm getting way too many spams. Its way out of hand; Congress should do for e-mail spam what they did for fax spam.

[Tall_Texan]

May I humbly suggest the death penalty?

Only if we kill all the telemarketers first.

Seriously, I'd rather let the market deal with this problem instead of the government. The internet is an international operation and there will always be nations willing to take bribes from scam artists so long as they get their cut of the action (see "Drug Trade"). Legislate out the Americans spammers and most will just move offshore.

I'd say my spam-to-welcome e-mail percentage is close to 85-15%, but I sure as hell don't want the governemnt trying to "fix" this problem. They not only will make it worse but they'll also exempt themselves and become their own little spammers.

The best way to eliminate spam is three-fold:
1) NEVER ever respond to unsolicited e-mails.
2) Be reluctant to give out your e-mail address as you would your social security number.
3) Refuse to do any business with companies that send excessive e-mails regarding business you don't initiate.

The victory can be won.

[Dimensio]

May I humbly suggest the death penalty?

I have advocated and continue to advocate public torture and death to people who deliberately send unsolicited bulk e-mail. People think that I'm joking, but I'm not. I really believe that spammers should be publically tortured to death, regardless of the nature of their advertising. Penis-enlargers to the owner of Carl Mankin Ministries should all be flayed alive, covered in salt and impaled in a field.

[genxer]

This is the precise reason we put spam filters on our servers for our customers email. It cuts out about 70 percent of it :) Plus we erradicated 90 percent of the virus' that pass though also. Customers are happy and our bandwidth bill dropped by about 35 percent.