Jargons of Info Tech industry

[Mike Meyer]

Casper H.S. Dik <Casper.Dik at Sun.COM> writes:
> Steven D'Aprano <steve at REMOVETHIScyber.com.au> writes:
>>Can I remind you that spam is approximately 70% of all email traffic these
>>days? Most of that is blocked by the ISPs, but even so you are obviously
>>one of the lucky few.
>
> 95% - 99% of all email, not 70% (just ask your ISP).
>
> A large percentage of the cost of email is the cost of getting
> rid of SPAM; and that cannot happen without colleteral damage in the
> form of lost valid email, not just because of improper filtering but
> also because the more layers are there to touch the email the bigger
> the chances that it does not arrive.

I'd like to take this opportunity to correct myself. I said that I
(and another poster) "didn't have a spam problem". That's wrong. We
don't *appear* to have a spam problem, but that's just an
illusion. Our ISPs are spending money - as indicated by Mr. Dik - on
filtering spam. They're also spending money to deal with complaints
about spam from their customers - in both senses of the sentence, and
to pay for the bandwidth the spam is eating up. The bulk providers
they buy their bandwidth from also have higher costs to provide
bandwidth for spam.

These costs are passed on to us. So while we may not have an obvious
spam problem, we have one in the sense that spam takes money from our
pockets.

        <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.