War and Peace….where are we with Spam?

I recently came across an article that immediately grabbed my attention with its title, “Surprise! We Won the War on Spam.” Now, as an employee of a company that specializes in messaging solutions, I know full well that the war on spam is far from over.   We aren’t free from the oh-so-annoying and sometimes harmful grip of spam.  Nor should we stop paying attention to it or consider it to be a non-issue as the author of the article seems to imply.   However, Gimein, the author makes some very good points.  And before I jump to any real conclusions about where we sit on the War and Peace of Spam, I think those points should be explored.

Gimein reflects on a time when we all thought we’d “drown in a sea of offers for male enhancement pills and messages from mysterious bureaucrats with tales of millions hidden in Swiss bank accounts.”  And how today most of us are barely aware of the spam that’s sent to us because it’s either blocked before it ever hits our inbox or its redirected into a spam/junk/bulk folder and easily eliminated with one quick keystroke (we’ll ignore the issue of false positives for the purpose of this blog).  So I whole-heartedly agree that yes, to the end user spam can appear to be somewhat of a dying issue.  BUT, what about mail servers?

Gimein discusses how the technology and efforts of email providers have clearly improved in identifying spam.  Great news for all of us.  But we have to keep in mind that the amount of spam isn’t necessarily decreasing.   Yes, the filtering techniques are getting better but the sheer volume of spam still requires significant resources from the mail server.  Take a look for yourself.  Our site shows current spam levels with a real-time outbreak monitor and global spam stats from Commtouch.  At any given time, depending on the amount of spam, the capacity of the server and the anti-spam service in place, a mail server can really get bogged down.   Not to mention that spammers are constantly looking for new ways to get around the filters.  There are great efforts being made every day to combat spam.  You may recall my recent “Spam Czar” blog and as recently as yesterday, another huge takedown of a botnet occurred courtesy of FireEye.  The botnet was responsible for an estimated third of the world’s spam.

Long story short….for a mail server, this battle is not over.