Broadband Spam
It's time now, unfortunately, to report on the rising phenomenon of broadband spam. In my case, this involves the vast network that is Comcast. It's not that I'm picking on them, it's just that their problems are so annoyingly typical of what can happen as computer networks become faster and more efficient.
For several months, AOL was actually blocking all email from Comcast. AOL's software checked the domain name in the email address of the sender, then checked the IP address. Next, the software did a reverse DNS check to see if the IP address matched the domain name. If it didn't, the software assumed the mail was spam.
Comcast believes that much of the spam is being sent by zombie programs that have been surreptitiously installed on users' PCs. Because the Comcast broadband network has so many users, it is easier for spam to propagated.
One solution to the zombie problem is to block off port 25 ,the SMTP mail port, to all users sending mail via the Comcast network.
Some Spam Stats
Most of the spam I get has nothing to do with money. It's usually just a lot of nonsense words strung together. I guess the purpose is to annoy people and waste their time. What sort of moron would take delight in doing that? A bored teenager is the usual answer, but there are no actual statistics to prove that.
However, here are some of Pew Survey's stats on what email users are doing to halt spam:
73% of email users avoid giving out their email addresses; 69% avoid posting their email addresses on the Web.
62% say their employers use filters to block spam from their work email accounts; half of them get no spam at all in those accounts.
37% of those who have a personal email account apply their own filters to their email system; 21% of those with filters say less than a tenth of the email they receive is spam.
86% of email users report that usually they “immediately click to delete” their incoming spam.
59% of email users describe spam as “annoying, but not a big problem”; 27% of email users say spam is a “big problem” for them; 14% say it is no problem at all.
rtroxel posted this at 07:21 — 18th July 2005.
He has: 286 posts
Joined: Mar 2003
Today is July 18, 2005. Spam has flared up again on Comcast. I'm now getting four or five spam mails per day.
Is anyone else having this problem?
rtroxel posted this at 16:22 — 24th January 2006.
He has: 286 posts
Joined: Mar 2003
Time for another update on Comcast spam. My last post was about six monts ago, and believe or not, the problem is still with us.
This time around, it's "nonsense email." If you're getting a lot of spam these days from people with odd names, with inane words in the Subject line, it's probably coming through Comcast, even if you aren't a Comcast user.
If you're in the UK, you should know that Comcast, along with AOL and a few other companies, has enormous backbone lines, through which pass billions of spams per day. This is largely accomplished through the use of "bots" which are surreptitiously planted on users' machines. (This is often done when the unsuspecting user clicks on an email message sent by the spammer.)
Comcast's spam filter, Brightmail, just isn't catching these things. Possibly the spammers are using the nonsense words so they can slip past the filters, but can't these messages be stopped by blocking the source; i.e., the IP address?
If you're a Comcast subscriber, you can check out
some recent discussions at their Email Forum.
If you aren't a Comcast subscriber, you can read a good discussion on the Broadband Reports site.
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