Subject: Estimates of spam volume in the press... From: ddern@world.std.com (Daniel P Dern) Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 18:54:06 -0400

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xerxes  said:

> Anecdotal press reports about spam volume estimates are worth only as much
> as the quantitative work backing them up....which is to say, often VERY
> little.

True.  OTOH, there was a great article on this recently in CMP's
TelePath (now subsumed by Tele.Com, which CMP recently bought from
McGraw-hill), May 4, 1998, p1, "Spam Costs Internet Millions Every
Month -- What It Costs ISPs to Deal with Spam and Spammers)
(http://pubs.cmpnet.com/telepath/21new2.htm)  The bottom line --
for ISPs with end users (a.k.a. 'consumers'), about 1-2$/month
per user for ISP costs, i.e., not counting user time/productivity/
blood pressure issues.

The data comes from direct interviews with ISPs including Software
Tool & Die, PANIX, NetCom, AOL, Mindspring, Earthlink, Concentric,
UUnet, Erols, and GTE/BBN, and some small (~1,000 user) ISPs. While
obviously more data would be good, the data here clustered around
a common range of costs.

ICIIO (In Case It Isn't Obvious)(I think I just coined this one), 
I'm speaking as the guy who spoke to all these ISPs and other folks,
and wrote the article.  There wasn't room for all the data, quotes,
advice and URLs I accumulated, but what's there is an accurate 
portrayel of what I found out.

You're welcome to debate or contest the spam figures as supplied to
me by ISPs; however, given that at least many of them were supplied
by people looking at summary logs, I'd suspect they're hard to challenge.
I'm not taking Xerxes' statement as applying to my article; I'm citing
what I did as a counter-example.  A bigger problem IMNSHO (In My Not
So Humble Opinion) re spam discussions in many articles is failure
to make clear what piece of the spam deluge #s apply to.

FYI, I also talked with the BrightLight folks last week and got da briefing.

DPD



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