SPAM slows down the Inet?

Hi,
I was just emptying my inbox of the daily spam mail, and I started to think how much bandwidth the trafic off all these mails sent to miljons of people must take!

Not to mention all the spy ware no body wants, and the virus programs...

All who works with mail servers knows that their servers might be so busy sorting out all spam and virus mails, it can seriously delay the real email trafic.

There should be a "law" for anyone who runs mail servers, to check that the senders IP matches the senders domain name. That might help a litle.

But what do you think. How much does all this un nesseary trafic slow down the Inet in generall?

**Moved from Web Dev to Misc Security**

Hugely. There are some sites that help block open SMTP relay services like MAPS RSS Mail Relay Blocker. I remember hearing ages ago (I can't find a supporting article, sorry) that it was something like 40-60% of all mail traffic. That's a lot especially now with viruses and html embedded into mail (the twit who thought of that should be shot!). The Net should be able to support better streaming audio/video but I wonder if the spam, viruses and other "bandwidth" wasters are eating up all the potential bandwidth that could be used.

People wonder why they aren't allowed to play games, chat, etc at work. This is why.

Hi!

It is a very interesting question..........when I try to explain it to people I tend to use the analogy of a highway:

If I have a two lane highway(road) and send one PCU (passenger car unit/automobile) down it per hour, I will have no problems?

Then comes the rush hour and I try to send 10,000 PCUs down it..............gridlock!, traffic jam?

The problem with spammers is they get paid for sending large volumes in a very short space of time. THAT is what cripples the internet.

I would add to this that spammers tend to hack into other people's resources and use them (at no cost :mad: ) to do their dirty work. I have even had spam routed via a Chinese government computer (I reported that one to the FBI...as it was an American outfit that was spamming)

In a way, they are the second worst problem after worms/viruses?

I will now be controversial:

Promiscuous browsing on an unprotected PC...........Three dozen lashes
Spamming your product.............................................Death
Running an insecure server........................................Death

etc. :D


Thankyou for raising an interesting topic

Cheers