[GTALUG] Spam is basically dead

[David Collier-Brown]

On 16/08/17 03:45 PM, Lennart Sorensen via talk wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 16, 2017 at 11:16:27AM -0400, Evan Leibovitch via talk wrote:
>> Agreed. But ​I'd take it from a slightly different perspective that splits
>> the issue.
>>
>> IMO the volume of spam has not abated, but its effectiveness has.
>>
>> I use gMail for a significant amount of my incoming mail, and it implements
>> a pretty aggressive spam filter. There are almost no false positives
>> getting through these days, but I do have to go into the spam mailbox every
>> few weeks to check for false negatives (maybe a few percent of the total,
>> non-critical stuff from a few read-only mailing lists)
>> ​
>> But the volume? Still as robust as ever. The old style sales calls,
>> solicitations for money and phishing schemes. The filters successfully and
>> consistently differentiate between real Interac eTransfer receipts and fake
>> ones.
>>
>> Yeah, I know the evils of Gmail. But every choice is a balance. In this
>> realm it does surprisingly well, and I'm less bothered by spam than ever.
>> But I wouldn't go as far as saying the phenomenon itself is dead, it's
>> still seeking out the newcomers and unaware.
> Strangely I see almost no spam these days.  I just checked my spam folder
> for this account, and the filter found 25 messages in the last week.
> Not very much really.  It used to be much more.  I don't think I see
> more than 1 message a day that the spam filter missed either.  On gmail
> I think it is similar.  Very few spam show up these days.
>
I use spamcop.net, and I get a burst of stuff every three to six months, 
but my filtered-out list on the site is huge! Fortunately it's not false 
negatives (;-))

--dave

-- 
David Collier-Brown,         | Always do right. This will gratify
System Programmer and Author | some people and astonish the rest
davecb at spamcop.net           |                      -- Mark Twain