A drop in the spam bucket
On the same day that Shamus had a close call with a spammer, the Feds arrested one of the most prolific (alleged) spammers in the world.
According to wire reports, Robert Soloway, a.k.a. “Spam King,” was arrested in Seattle on Wednesday, days after being indicted by a federal grand jury on numerous charges, including email fraud and identity theft.
What caught my eye in the AP report, though, was the contention by the government that “computer users across the Web could notice a decrease in the amount of junk email,” thanks to Soloway’s apprehension.
While catching and prosecuting Soloway is undoubtedly a good thing, I find this claim highly dubious, to say the least.
It appears that either the government is wildly exaggerating the significance of Soloway’s arrest, or it is completely and utterly ignorant of the extent of spamming. My guess is the former. The numbers are well-known and documented: According to a recent report by MessageLabs, one in every 1.31 emails worldwide is spam.
In other words, while taking Soloway off the cyberstreets is a step in the right direction, don’t expect to see a downtick in the amount of spam inundating your inbox. No matter how prolific, Soloway is just a drop in the bucket when it comes to spam. As Forrester analyst Jonathan Penn told me, “One down … 87,963 to go!”
Posted: May 31st, 2007 under Email.
Since the previous multi-million dollar judgements have had no effect, it will be interesting to see if a lengthy jail term is imposed. I do not think this arrest will have any major impact on spam - the system is just too wide open. If and when the web gets overhauled to require sending URL and user authentication, I foresee no significant downturn. It is just too easy to forge headers and sender information.
Comment by clifford cuellar — June 4, 2007 @ 2:14 pm
Since the “Spam King” has long since lost his crown to much bigger and more sophisticated operators in Eastern Europe, I don’t see this having a major impact on spam volume. As long as it is profitable, new spammers will continue to enter the market as fast as existing spam operations are dismantled. Hopefully DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) or some other anti-spam mechanism will improve the odds of greater success.
Comment by Craig Herberg — June 4, 2007 @ 6:17 pm