"E-mail is broken" says Salon.com

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/10/02/e_mail/index_np.html' target='_blank'>http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2...l/index_np.html</a><br /><br /></div>The continuing decline of email as a viable communications tool due to spam is something I'm very interested in. I keep jumping to new anti-spam solutions, looking for the "perfect" way to protect myself from spam. This Salon.com article is a must-read for those of you who share my interest in this topic.<br /><br />"Somewhere between that spam promoting spyware disguised as a chipper e-greeting and the latest e-mail-borne virus masquerading as an urgent software upgrade, something got lost. Not just a single overlooked urgent message from your boss, lodged in a sea of ghastly teenage bestiality spam, but something more fundamental, something more essential. <br /><br />It's impossible to say exactly when the ritual of opening the e-mail in box went from being the lure that brought you online in the first place to a slough of deleting drudgery, full not only of irritating commercial messages that you never signed up to receive, but also of potential threats that could bring down your computer. But there's no use being nostalgic for that earlier, simpler time, whenever you got online, whether that was in 1984 or 1998. You can't go home again, or at least, you can't go back to a home without spam. <br /><br />The questions now are: Can e-mail be saved? How bad is the problem, really? And what can be done to fix it? Salon interviewed four Internet pioneers, computer scientists who have been online longer than most of the rest of world and who, in some cases, helped set up the systems we use today..."

[doc]

Ok, spam sucks. How about Salon pop-ups/unders? Thank God for Pop-Up Stopper. Or, about charging to see more then 7 paragraphs that don't really tell you much. :evil:

[Steven Cedrone]

I'm on my third anti-spam solution in as many months...

Can't seem to find best solution (for me). It's getting so that I'll get sixty messages, and only three aren't spam. Add to that: most solutions seem to trap emails from members here as spam. Defeats the purpose of a filter, if you have to ge back and read everything to make sure you didn't miss anything important... :roll:

SPAM s*cks and it's an ugly problem that requires a completely new method for it's removal. Perhaps it's time for a SMTP overhaul???

Steve

[Foo Fighter]

e-mail, as it exists now, is archaic and obsolete. We need to replace it with something more advanced. Personally, I would like to see an Instant Message style solution replace e-mail, which would require recipients to authorize the sender before communications can be transferred.

[Kati Compton]

e-mail, as it exists now, is archaic and obsolete. We need to replace it with something more advanced. Personally, I would like to see an Instant Message style solution replace e-mail, which would require recipients to authorize the sender before communications can be transferred.
Perhaps, but

instant messaging : phone call
email : letter

I like having the non-immediacy of email. If you could keep that, and just require every sender be authenticated once, maybe that would work.

But I do frequently get emails from people I don't know, but emails that I'm *supposed* to get. So, I'll have grad students from other schools email me asking about my research. That could get annoying if I have to authenticate people I don't even know. How do I know if they're legit unless I get their email and read it?

[MultiMatt]

Spammers are the SCUM OF THE EARTH.
An evolution from the crap we've seen on TV Infomercials for years. Now they have a new medium, and are intruding UNINVITED. :snipersmile: :2gunfire: :bangin:
They've ruined a perfectly good thing - as if people couldn't ruin it enough on their own - passing stupid jokes and forwarding "urgent" urban legend crap. I swear - if I received a TYPED email from my father (vs. the FW: FW: FW: Blah Blah Blah email), I think I'd faint! :roll:

It's a shame - just like Salon says, we can't go back to the way it was, when it was enjoyable. It's simply ruined.
And we wonder why the next generation of kids prefers IM or SMS to email?! But then, those are getting spammed too.... :(

Matt

[kwerner]

I've been reading my mail more and more right off Yahoo's website. I pay for YahooPlus so I get a bigger mailbox and pop access to download emails to my desktop. I recently turned off Outlook's auto mail download though, once a week or so I download it manually. Yahoo's spam filter is pretty good too, normally only a couple spams a day get to my inbox (out of 70-100 in spam/junk folder). This is an address I've had for at least 6 years.

They have a new option that moves suspect spam to the junk folder and doesn't send it to the pop server (spam doesn't make it to my desktop).

[Foo Fighter]

Spammers are the SCUM OF THE EARTH.


Tell me about it. And their activities aren't simply isolated to e-mail infestation. They scour the net looking for any venue through which to peddle their goods and services. Recently I've had to remove several comments on my blog posted by spammers marketing porn and casino web sites. Bastards! :roll:

[DaleReeck]

I used to think that there was no way to stop spam because, while countries like the US could enact legislation (like they are with telemarketers), it would be impossible to stop foreign spammers. And unfortunately, there are a lot of countries that wouldn't give a crap about stopping it, especially if they got a cut of proceeds.

But I read that 80% of spam originates from companies in the US. If that is the case, legislation could work. Except that these sleezeball spammers would probably just move their operations overseas, which means we are back to the problem of not being able to stop foreign spammers.

Email may be permanently ruined :(

[juni]

Lately I've been getting 3 or 4 messages/day apparently originating from North Korea with characters I can't read. Maybe it is some sort of chinese spam? Anyway, by tracing the header information I can see that they all come from different mail-servers - apparently hacked or wide open and unsecured.

I've been emailing the admins for these hacked mail-servers informing them of the break-ins. Now, funny thing is: Not a single one of them has answered in any way. Maybe sysadmins don't care about this? (on a side note: one of the companies is a red hat linux hosting company...)

So, if people running mail-servers don't give a damn about securing their networks then I don't see any solution to spam...

[denivan]

How bad is the problem, really?

Well, I just started using spamassasin (actually, the hosting company I use for my domain name offers this service, so I can't tweak the spam tool) and to my horror the topic reply notifications that are send out by pocketpcthoughts are regarded as spam :( (see below)

I guess it's time to mail my website hoster and ask them how I can resolve this problem (without turning spamassasin off completely)

Kind regards,
Ivan

Spam assasin headers :

Content analysis details: (5.00 points, 5 required)
TO_EMPTY (2.6 points) To: is empty
EXCUSE_1 (0.7 points) BODY: Gives a lame excuse about why you were sent this spam
MISSING_HEADERS (0.5 points) Missing To: header
RCVD_IN_OSIRUSOFT_COM (0.6 points) RBL: Received via a relay in relays.osirusoft.com
[RBL check: found 21.248.218.207.relays.osirusoft.com.]
MISSING_OUTLOOK_NAME (0.6 points) Message looks like Outlook, but isn't

[jeffmd]

I have my entire domain and my road runner account free of spam without any means of spam filter software. well thats not entirly true, the account I gave my brother on my domain is flooded with spam.. infact... after this post I think im going to wipe it out, he dosnt use it. ^^

anyways.. back to the topic, I maintain 2 web addresses (one was a real free email box, but over the years I had it, it went from free, to pay if you want extra features, to pay if you want to use a 3rd part mail read with it....stupid buisnesses) setup for all places where spam is likely.. web boards.. subscribing to websites (ppcthoughts is Im pretty sure on one of them ^^).. online stores..ect. Also I never have my name or email address (if i can avoid it) in any of my applications when they install. I usualy sign my programs with user: owner, and create a bogus email if it requires one.

[Phronetix]

Please don't mistake me for a troll. I have an iPAQ 2215. I also have a Mac (Powerbook). I switched back to Apple after using Windows since 94.

The spam is gone. Mail (Apple's version of OE) has a built-in Junkmail filter. You place it in training mode for about a week, then switch to maintenance mode. I haven't had spam in months. Seriously.

Safari, my favorite web browser for Mac OS has a 100% effective pop-up killer. Haven't seen a pop-up window since mid-July.

I realize that many of us have these issues on our work machines, which will likely be Windows OS for the foreseeable future. I also wanted to let people know of a solution that just works; it actually works.

Syncronizing with the Mac is nearly perfect, but requires third party software to do so. I use a product called Missing Sync, although there is another vendor out there as well.

Cheers,
Phro

[rskoss]

I found a solution that works for me. I was getting > 200 spams per day and now I get less than 2 per week.

I use PopMonitor to go to my ISP (Earthlink) every 5 minutes and delete any email containing .exe files (I run Unix, so nobody that I know should be sending me exe files). The email that's left gets run through SpamSieve. Very little gets through SpamSieve.

It works for me. YMMV.

[Tim Welch]

MS Outlook 2003 has been the magic answer for me. :D

The junk e-mail filter seems to be absolutely amazing over anything else I've previously used and infinitely better than what was in OutlookXP. It just works!!

[Philip Colmer]

MS Outlook 2003 has been the magic answer for me. :D

The junk e-mail filter seems to be absolutely amazing over anything else I've previously used and infinitely better than what was in OutlookXP. It just works!!
I'd agree with this - I've started using it at home and, out of the box, it is catching probably about 99.9% of the spam I receive. Out of a daily tally of about 20-30 emails, approximately 80%+ of them will be spam, so Outlook has saved me a lot of time.

However, there doesn't seem to be any way of training it, other than telling it that a sender's address is safe when it has miscategorised it as spam. This suggests to me that Outlook may not be able to retain this high score as time goes by.

Longer term, I think that technology will have to solve the problem, rather than laws. I really don't see a global legal solution working. We need to start requiring authentication on SMTP servers so that you KNOW who is sending the email - that should form part of the audit chain so that anyone sending spam can have their account shut down.

--Philip

[KAMware]

As much as I dislike SPAM I do not get too excited about it. I use Earthlink as my main eMail port and their blocker works pretty good. Plus I wrote my own email client that allows me to re-fileter it.

I look fowrward to a couple of them a day to keep me on my toes. Sort of like a pulse on the email so to speak.

We are never going to get rid if it all so we should not get too wound up about it. Just fight back with technology and don't let them SPAM you down!

It is just change and longing for the "Good Ole Days" never gets anyone anywhere.

:D

[HTK]

I stopped using Outlook express as soon as I got Office 2004, the outlook 2004 is great, and the anti spam system built in is very simple ( you just turn it on or off ) and it catches 90% of the spam that I was receiving!
I used to receive 15~30 spams a day, now on some days I get zero!, of course I added some rules on the outlook, but it is 1/3 of the rules I used to use with OE!

just great, I`m more than satisfied with the new outlook... you can minimize it on the traybar, save and load configurations easily, great new visuals disposition of information, and many other features that I forgot or haven`t discovered yet :mrgreen:

[MadAxeMan]

Well, I didn't read the articles, put off by the Spam.

Eudora 6.0 comes with a Bayesian Spam filter. It works like a charm and has cut down my Spam by 95%. (I run several websites so I don't have the luxury of all my email addresses being anonymous.)

There is a better solution out there I feel with the added bonus of encrytpion. Sending a plain text email is like sending a post card from holiday. Anyone can read it along the way.

Hopefully a new standard can be found where everyone has their own public/private signature key - this could act as an authentication key as well as an encrytption key. It would mean all our emails went out in sealed evelopes and anyone misusing the system could easily get their signature verified/blocked.

Several systems along these lines are being used today, but it is for the major players in the email client market to promote these technologies to the great unwashed.

[paris]

Well, I just started using spamassasin (actually, the hosting company I use for my domain name offers this service, so I can't tweak the spam tool) and to my horror the topic reply notifications that are send out by pocketpcthoughts are regarded as spam :( (see below)


I have my own mail server and i have enabled spamassasin on my account and it works flawlessly. I receive about 15 spam emails per day and spamassasin detects all of them which is perfect. Of course i have an outlook rule that automaically sends these emails to my spam folder so there is no harm done there :)

The only problem i found so far, as you said, is that it classifies topic reply notifications from ppcthoughts as spam, does not do the same thing with newsletters thought.

[bdegroodt]

I'd add to this thread my experience with PopFile. I'm not at my machine right now so I can't give exact numbers, but over 9 months now and it's been 98.x% accurate in classifying thousands of emails. It uses the same concept as the Mac email client mentioned above.

I let the filter filter the email and I've added "magnets" for those that I must get email from without error ever (i.e. pocketpcthoughts.com :D ) and I'm rarely bothered with false positives or spam.

Of course, now that I use a Blackberry this creates a whole 'nother issue. PopFile stops at the client and that means I still get the spam on my BB because it gets the email direct from the server. I'm trying to figure out a resonable server level spam filter without breaking the bank...

[jmarkevich]

E-mail itself obviously isn't the problem... Spam is, of course...

However, what other mail client has so many buffer overruns and scriptable vulnerabilities that you dare not run untrused data through it...

Oh wait, MILLIONS AND MILLIONS of people do.

I stopped feeling sorry for worm/virus catchers back in '00. :devilboy:

[Janak Parekh]

Well, I just started using spamassasin (actually, the hosting company I use for my domain name offers this service, so I can't tweak the spam tool) and to my horror the topic reply notifications that are send out by pocketpcthoughts are regarded as spam :( (see below)
We know. We're working on changing the structure of the email to make it seem less spamlike.

--janak

[krisbrown]

Funny , but my ISP offered a free spamblocker and for a few months it worked, when I read my mail, for a few weeks I felt like I'd been cut out of the loop, almost missed all that spam.
One day I didn't get a single mail!!!!!!

[Mark from Canada]

About three weeks ago I found my perfect spam-filter :) . I am using the Outlook version of http://spambayes.sourceforge.net/.
To train it you point it to a few folders containing good e-mails - and spam-folders if you have collected a few and then you train as you go.
It sorts it into Junk, Suspected Junk and Good.
Since day one I did not have a single false positive in the "Junk" folder. After three weeks now I don't look at the folder with spam any more. This is the problem I had with most filters. I really don't want to have to go through the spam-box just to make sure I don't have any false positives. Running a business you can't afford to miss a purchase or information request (and subscribed newsletters) - so no false positives are very important to me.
Once a day I go through the suspects and most are spam - some are not. By moving it to the right folders it keeps learning - and it gets more secure about correctly deciding if it's Spam or not.
This is the best solution I have found. Anything I tried that I didn't control "lost" mail I really wanted. :evil:

[dlauri]

I noticed someone else earlier in this thread attributed SPAM not being a problem for them to Earthlink's blocker. I use Earthlink too so perhaps that's why I don't find the amount of SPAM I get to be too much.

However, other people in my family don't use Earthlink yet still find e-mail usable enough to exchange messages every day. Maybe I should just count us as lucky exceptions.

Yet I also see people on the listservs at the college I attend using e-mail every day to post messages.

Sure methods of dealing with SPAM could be improved, but I think that people who say e-mail is broken are exaggerating.

[ctmagnus]

subscribing to websites (ppcthoughts is Im pretty sure on one of them ^^)..

Yep, PPCThoughts (www.pocketpcthoughts.com) is a website, allright. ;)

[Gerard]

My ISP, Quik Internet, offers an anti-spamming device called Spam Cop. It replies to every message with a denial, and a link to a simple webpage where the sender must register as a sender, using the same email address they intend to use in communications with me. When I've run into this with other Quik customers my reaction has been annoyance. It's frustrating to have my mail bounced, especially if I've just waited many minutes for large attached files to upload. So I don't use this service.

It works for some people I guess, but for me, with all the threads I subscribe to, I'd miss an awful lot of updates. I can't imagine how topic reply notification engines would respond correctly to such bounced emails. I've not looked into it, but perhaps there's a customisation option for adding certain email addresses manually... still, with forums constantly changing software and sometimes changing auto-mailer send addresses, this would be an unsatisfying option.

So I use nPOP, which offers user-definable download previews of all email. I opt for a 300 line of text preview, which covers almost all of my legitimate email. The average download time per email this way is about 0.6 seconds over dialup, no matter what the nature of the email or attachments (which stay on the server, not coming in unless I tell them to individually). This saves a ton of time which would otherwise be wasted in waiting for virus emails and other large spam to arrive. I typically get about 70 emails in the morning, with perhaps 3 or 4 being legitimate. I go and do something else for a minute, come back, hold down the Shift key on my Stowaway and select using the down arrow. If I'm feeling like some sport, I try to do this as fast as the previews load, and about half the time I can identify and select mail for deletion just as fast as it arrives. This makes it very fast to select large blocks of spam, and after doing this for all my mail I type Ctrl+Del, marking them all for deletion from the server. Ctrl+G+Enter updates the list, deleting the bulk of it, taking about another second per letter. I go away and do something else while that's happening, or maybe visit a forum site.

I have tried Outlook for email, and find it cumbersome and terribly slow. If using a PC, nPOP is still a better spam-deletion tool, using the same keyboard shortcuts and other tools as the PPC version, and having the additional comfort of password protected use. Multiple copies of nPOP can be used on the same PC, as the program is file-based, not database and registry driven. Keep a copy in a folder named for every POP3 account if you like. Or manage up to 4 accounts in one copy, which seems to be the limit for at least some users.

nPOP is not a solution to spam, but I find it removes most of the annoyance while still allowing me total control over what gets deleted and what comes in. There's no virus to capitalise on nPOP weaknesses, and none seems likely. Speed and control, without allowing someone else's idea of what to block and what to allow hiding things from me, those are important. My sense is that spam will escalate for a few years yet, and certainly it will become more annoying. After that, I suspect that measures will be taken to secure email better, and spammers will be shut down. Everything changes, this will change too.

[Kati Compton]

anyways.. back to the topic, I maintain 2 web addresses (one was a real free email box, but over the years I had it, it went from free, to pay if you want extra features, to pay if you want to use a 3rd part mail read with it....stupid buisnesses) setup for all places where spam is likely.. web boards.. subscribing to websites (ppcthoughts is Im pretty sure on one of them ^^)..
PPCT does not give out email addresses, if that's what you're saying... Email addresses are only to distribute the PPCT newsletter (which users can unsubscribe from if they choose), and for PPCT staff to communicate with members when necessary. Again, not sure if that's what you were saying, but felt I should clarify.

[bdegroodt]

Now on my main machine. I checked my PopFile summary screen and it's checked and filtered 11,323 emails with a 98.79% success rate in about 8-9 months (not sure of the month I installed it.). Not bad. I'd add that the errors have typically been letting a little spam through the cracks versus classifying emails as false positives.