Fergie's Tech Blog

Whittling Spam Down to a Manageable Level?

William Jackson writes on GCN.com:

A recent report by security software maker Symantec reveals that spam accounted for an average of 80 percent of traffic hitting e-mail gateways in April, spiking as high as 87 percent at times. That is a daunting figure, but Garth Bruen of KnujOn looks at the problem in a different way.

According to a study being presented this week by KnujOn to the High Technology Crime Investigation Association, 90 percent of the illicit Web sites using spam to generate traffic are clustered on just 20 registrars — that is only 2.5 percent of the 800 registrars accredited by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.

That can make the spam problem seem almost manageable.

“What is shocking is how concentrated this problem is,” said Bruen, founder of the anti-spam service. “Most providers are playing by the rules. The ones that are not adhering to policy are wreaking the most havoc across the Web.”

posted by Fergie @ 5/13/2008 02:05:00 PM