Is Google winning the war on spam?

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 30 Nov 2007 at 08:27

Google claims the amount of spam entering the company's Gmail system is declining for the first time in years, raising hopes that a corner has been turned in the battle against junk mail.

Although the level of spam remains alarmingly high - more than 70% of the messages arriving on Gmail servers are junk - the proportion of spam messages has dipped significantly over the past year, according to figures published by Wired.

Gmail is renowned for its effective spam filters, and the hope is that spammers have simply tired of failing to beat the system, or that the amount of spam being caught has made junk mail less financially lucrative. Webmail rivals Hotmail and Yahoo Mail have also upgraded their spam filters in recent years.

However, not everyone agrees that spam is a fading problem. Last month, security firm SoftScan claimed that spam levels rose by 39% during September. It claimed that 93.5% of all email was spam during the month, with levels as high as 98% on some days.

Spammers are also finding new ways to attack, such as targeting VoIP systems with voicemail spam, and sending junk messages via Bluetooth.

Bill Gates, of course, famously claimed that spam would be solved by 2006. It seems we're still a long way from having it totally licked.