Bill Gates' prediction of January 2004 that spam would be "a thing of the past" within two years has virtually no chance of coming true, according to security company Sophos this week.
Sophos warned on Tuesday that spam will continue to be a major problem in 2006.
"Sophos believes that the rumours of spam's death have been greatly exaggerated. The threat remains alive and kicking despite the increased action against spammers and constantly improving anti-spam software," Sophos said in its annual Security Threat Management report.
"There's no end in sight for spam," Sophos said.
Spam emails were a serious problem in 2005, with 'pump-and-dump' stock spam increasing the most.
"Pump-and-dump stock scams are one of the real growth areas. Bad guys buy a lot of penny stocks in a company, then spam out good news about it — perhaps that the company have developed some kind of wonder drug. Day traders think this sounds plausible, and begin to buy shares. When the share price begins to go up, the spammers sell their stock as quickly as possible," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.
By November 2005, 13.5 percent of all spam received by Sophos was stock-related, a jump of 12.7 percentage points from 0.8 percent at the start of the year.
"It's a very effective way of making money," Cluley added.
Spam pushing medical products was the most popular in 2005, and made up about 40 percent of all spam during 2005. Pornographic spam retained its position as the second-most common type of junk email.
Gates told the World Economic Forum in January 2004 that Microsoft was pursuing a range of methods of fighting spam. This included better email filters, and simple puzzles that would have to be solved before an email could be sent.
However, experts were casting doubt on Gates' assertion back in 2004. A survey of IT security professionals conducted at the Infosecurity show in London in April 2004 revealed that more than 80 percent of people did not think that Bill Gates' pledge to eliminate spam within two years was realistic.
Talkback
Did anyone, apart from Bill and his acolytes, really believe that spam would be "dead" within two years? My personal email comprises about 17% spam and I see no sign of it decreasing (apart from when the odd botnet gets taken down). Spam is no loger a minor annoyance, its a fact of life - if you've got an email address then expect it to be spammed.
The big problem with Bill Gates' solution is that is was Microsoft centric. One company can't dictate to everyone else how to handle email, especially when the largest installed base of mail server software is freeware/open source.
He may be wrong that spam will stop within 2 years, but I think well within 2 years we will see software and systems will stop all unwanted e-mails (Check out <a href="http://www.clearmymail.com" target="_new">www.clearmymail.com</a> for example, they already stop 100%).
Once these systems then become common-place, the spammer will be forced to move into other areas (Perhaps Instant Message Spam??).
Not matter what you do or prevent doing, Spam will always be there. Software is a variable and Hardware is a fix.
Any prevention made on Spam through software, Sender can change to prevent the prevention.
A good firewall has to be hardware not software. Full lockdown is the only option.
Bill Gates unfortunately is a victim in his own fate. At least he is trying, has anyone else volunteer.
Bill Gates says Microsoft is developing new tools to fight spam!? How about working on the old ones!!! I can't even get the spam filters in my Outlook to block the words "Viagra" and "Cialis" - that alone would eliminate almost 50% of my spam at work!
Back when the Americans introduced their "You CAN Spam" 'law', it was predicted that this worthless piece of legislation would need to be proved absolutely useless, to make them introduce a real law to control the sleazy parasites of the internet: American spammers. Well it's been well and truly proved worthless in these last two US spam-flooded years, but nothing has happened and obviously isn't going to happen. I suppose that was entirely predictable. After all, US spammers are only following the American rule: get as rich as you can as fast as you can, no matter who you hurt or what damage it causes.