The most irritating spam of 2002

Every person that is on the Internet has at least one thing in common. We all hate spam. We have talked a lot about this monster in the past, so here is the latest situation report!

Anyone who has an e-mail account cannot help but have been bombarded with these unsolicited commercial messages. Messages that offer you things you do not want, at prices you will not pay, from people you would never call in a blue fit.

The year just gone was an absolute bonanza year for these messages. Unfortunately all the dire warnings and predictions about Spam seem to have come true. Now more than thirty percent of all mail zipping in and around the Internet is considered to be spam.

One anti-spam company has a register of the top ten most irritating and annoying spam messages transmitted across the Internet in the last 12 months. Mail that your or your employer has the “privilege” of paying to download, read and delete. Of course that’s only the “friendly” spam, the other type has proven to be downright dangerous!

Message overload

It will come as no surprise to know at the top of the list were messages with a sexual theme.

Spam top 10 hit list
1)  Free adult site passwords
2)  Low price drugs (Viagra)
3)  Refinance your mortgage
4)  Nigerian confidential money transfer
5)  Tiny remote control car
6)  Best online casino
7)  #1 Pasta pot
8)  Get out of credit card debt
9)  Meet singles in your area
10) Copy DVDs in one click

The most annoying spam e-mails pretended to pass on to people “free” passwords for sex sites that usually levy a charge to simply browse beyond the front page.

Staying with the same theme, number two on the hit list was a pharmaceutical service offering people the sex drug Viagra.

Also right on top of the list of most infuriating spam messages, and taking over where faxes left off, were those asking people to help get money out of various African nations.

Of these, 419 scams, as they should more correctly be termed, are entirely bogus but all too often catch out gullible Internet users who let their greed overwhelm their common sense.

Costly business

Estimates are that spam now costs businesses alone, around the connected world, about US$9 billion a year to deal with. There seems to be no real figures available for the net cost to individuals but it is expected to be equally massive.

This estimate includes only the time it takes people to delete the messages, the cost of investing in larger e-mail servers and storage systems just to cope with in-boxes flooded with the messages and the cost of having staff unclog networks overloaded by spam.

There is little sign of an end to unsolicited mail.

Despite concerted and repeated efforts to the contrary, last year, at least one in twelve e-mails passing through anti-spam companies filtering systems were identified as spam.

These e-mail filtering companies have further warned of an expected dramatic increase in the amount of spam clogging in-boxes this year The expectation is that unless some magical silver bullet is arrived at, the amount of spam will exceed normal e-mails by around July.

Arthur Hissey
Computer Research & Technology
www.crt.net.au