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Ask HN: Why is spam email still a thing?

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Re: Ask HN: Why is spam email still a thing?

#61

Post by city41 »

TehShrike wrote: post #48

I switched away from Gmail a couple of years ago – I have gotten the impression that spam is only still a thing for Gmail users. Gmail's spam filters would break horribly for me every few years, either flooding my inbox with spam, or filing obviously-not-spam emails in the spam folder. With Fastmail, my experience is that all spam goes to the spam folder, and only a few questionable newsletters get put in the spam fo…

My personal email address has been gmail since it launched. I find occasionally a spam email gets into my inbox. It's very rare, maybe 4 or 5 per year. I don't remember the last time a legitimate email got marked as spam, I'm not sure it has ever happened to me.

Re: Ask HN: Why is spam email still a thing?

#62

Post by MerelyMortal »

LinuxBender wrote: post #35

Spam exists because sending as others here have mentioned is free. The knee-jerk reaction might be to make it not free and technically that would be rather simple. Beyond adding pre-approved DKIM signed domains to an approve-list, one could modify existing grey-list daemons to require either a one-time code or click a URL to enter authentication to approve the sender and add rate limiting for know abusers, but that i…

I would pay 1 cent per email/recipient if it meant receiving no spam, and that my emails would never get filed into a spam folder. (I'm just a small time regular user, but with a personal domain name.)

Unfortunately, there are probably businesses where even with that cost, it would still be profitable to spam - just look at physical mail or any other type of physical advertisement, or heck... even online advertisements still have to pay money for impressions.

Re: Ask HN: Why is spam email still a thing?

#63

Post by dylan604 »

bluesquared wrote: post #32
goatherders wrote: post #7

It still works. You don't need a lot of little old men buying knockoff Viagra or little old ladies looking for love to make a decent wage in a lot of countries. Also, you take for granted that everyone is benefiting from Google and Microsoft's SPAM filters attached to GMail and O365/Outlook. There are still a LOT of email addresses running on SMTP or even POP3. And a LOT of those email addresses are legacy addressses…

As someone who snagged a FirstInitialExtremlyCommonLastname@outlook.com address (think asmith@,bpatel, etc), I can say that their spam filter is absolutely worthless. Never bothered to use that account because it was so horrendous.

Of course such an obvious account would be attacked. It is very easily scripted. first.last@, last.first@, etc are all going to get pounded. Corp email policies are just ripe for scripting attacks like this.

Re: Ask HN: Why is spam email still a thing?

#64

Post by josho »

the_solenoid wrote: post #14

Because email is essentially one of the oldest internet applications and also essentially has never changed. That means, as has been stated in this thread a bunch of times, that sending spam is essentially "free", especially since they like to use exploited email accounts to do the sending if possible. I am all for a re-envisioning of email from the ground up, tbh.

It's taken us something like 30 years to start seeing wide IPv6 adoption. Even then most a running dual stacks to still support IPv4. How long do you think it would take to have a secure email protocol running by most users?

It could probably happen quickly if a few big players came together and made the push. Unfortunately the only innovation in email these days is occurring in ways that help user lock-in. E.g. IMAP is stagnant, Gmail added 'dynamic emails' that only work in their ecosystem.

Re: Ask HN: Why is spam email still a thing?

#65

Post by dspillett »

starwind wrote: post #37
teeray wrote: post #26

Outright spam is one thing. What’s more prevalent these days and vastly more annoying is corporate spam. Every purchase now is apparently free license to send you pure garbage emails multiple times per day.

Whenever I order something online, I always uncheck the box that says "I want to receive your newsletter" or never check it the first place. Inevitably, in the next few days, I start to receive their product offerings

This is why I have a catch-all and give each company a different address. I can just forward that address to junk¹ instead of bothering to unsubscribe. It isn't just when they ignore their own consent options for sending their own stuff, often mailing lists are hacked out of companies and become junk targets that way. Or they are actively sold: the amount of crap I get to the addresses I have registered with kickstarter²³, paypal, etc., seems to confirm that is very common.

[1] Or set it to bounce, but I prefer /dev/null as bouncing increases the chance I'm becoming part of a back-scatter issue.

[2] At some point soon I'll get around to cycling those addresses to something else again, I haven't for a while, then the current ones will be redirected to spam training.

[3] Including some newsletters specifically targetting people who have interacted with crowd-funding so some project's team has given my address out against my wishes⁴. I wish we could give them specific addresses when supporting, so I could tell who (I don't cycle the main address I use for such things often enough to tell).

[4] Though those have saved me money: if I think of supporting a project I search the junk file first and if it has been mentioned by “backer-update”, “grant @ t.k.p.”, “kickstartech”, etc, I'll walk away - but only one has lost my help thus far that way and doubt anyone else is doing it so this petty little victory probably means nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Re: Ask HN: Why is spam email still a thing?

#66

Post by marcosdumay »

TehShrike wrote: post #48

I switched away from Gmail a couple of years ago – I have gotten the impression that spam is only still a thing for Gmail users. Gmail's spam filters would break horribly for me every few years, either flooding my inbox with spam, or filing obviously-not-spam emails in the spam folder. With Fastmail, my experience is that all spam goes to the spam folder, and only a few questionable newsletters get put in the spam fo…

Gmail does suck on both get spam out of your inbox and get real email into your inbox but it's not the worst one around.

And well, that could answer the OP's question, people didn't give up because there are a few providers that will receive their email and show it to users. Take any Exchange service as an example, if your email is technically formed enough to be received (many real senders will be rejected here), it will be received, and it's up to the user to forbid that one instance of spam, like if it's the 90's.

Re: Ask HN: Why is spam email still a thing?

#67

Post by lbriner »

jlengrand wrote: post #36

Because it works. Still relevant, from Microsoft Research: "Why do Nigerian Scammers Say They are from Nigeria?" This approach suggests an answer to the question in the title. Far-fetched tales of West African riches strike most as comical. Our analysis suggests that is an advantage to the attacker, not a disadvantage. Since his attack has a low density of victims the Nigerian scammer has an over-riding need to reduc…

Also, a lot of people I suspect still have old email software (Outlook Express anyone?) which might not even have spam filters set up.

It is sad because I think it isn't just gullible people generally, but those who did not grow up with computers and won't understand that "This is your bank informing you of a security breach" is bogus are unfairly hit.

Other thing is that the cost of sending massive numbers of emails is basically nothing so why not? If only 100 people out of an email list of 100M click through, that might pay you for this month.

Re: Ask HN: Why is spam email still a thing?

#68

Post by darknavi »

TehShrike wrote: post #48

I switched away from Gmail a couple of years ago – I have gotten the impression that spam is only still a thing for Gmail users. Gmail's spam filters would break horribly for me every few years, either flooding my inbox with spam, or filing obviously-not-spam emails in the spam folder. With Fastmail, my experience is that all spam goes to the spam folder, and only a few questionable newsletters get put in the spam fo…

I've been using gmail (Google Apps for Business or what ever they call it now days) for like 10 years and the spam functionality has always worked pretty well for me.

Re: Ask HN: Why is spam email still a thing?

#69

Post by vidanay »

MerelyMortal wrote: post #51
low_tech_love wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guess what happens when you click "unsubscribe"?

I don't receive any emails for about 6-12 months, and then I start receiving emails again. At least that's what has happened with NextDoor, twice - once each for different emails months/years apart. NextDoor also used to violate the CanSpam Act by requring you to log in to unsubscribe, but they fixed that a couple of years ago.

My nearest neighbor is more than a quarter mile away. In a two-mile radius, I have less than a dozen "neighbors", and yet somehow, I have a NextDoor account that I receive spam emails about.
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