Spam ‘worse than ever’

Robert Lemos reports that spam — unsolicited commercial e-mail — is worse than ever in a new ZDNet article.

As anyone who has an e-mail account knows, the abuse of spam — unwanted bulk e-mail — is on the rise. Data from three e-mail service providers supports the assertion that huge amounts of Internet e-mail is indeed spam, said Lemos.

Anti-spam company Brightmail said that 36 percent of all the e-mail sent in July was spam, up from 8 percent from 2001. Another study showed that more than 50 percent of the traffic processed by e-mail servers is spam, and yet another study estimated that a company with 10,000 employees loses more than US$13 million in productivity just sorting through the unwanted internal stuff, never mind the Internet junk.

A spokesman for a non-profit anti-spam group called what’s happening now “an arms race” between spammers and companies developing technology to block spam. So who’s making money? The e-mail service providers, according to Lemos. Brightmail — whose clients include ISPs like Earthlink and MSN — and competitor Postini are both seeing increased traffic. New competitors for their business have been successfully getting funding, too.