ISPs and SPAM: Turning the Tide?

Joseph Laszlo | December 28, 2004, 01:50 PM

And now, for some unexpectedly good news in the War on spam. AOL is reporting [CNET] that it's seen a significant reduction in both spam hitting its network, and in consumer complaints about spam this year.

Specifically:

As of November, the online unit of Time Warner received an average of 2.2 million complaints each day from its more than 24 million subscribers, down from 11 million complaints in the same period last year.

The daily average number of e-mails blocked by AOL's spam filters fell 50 percent to about 1.2 billion e-mails in late 2004 from a peak of 2.4 billion in 2003.

Commentary on Broadband Reports has been predictably mixed, with at least some AOL users reporting that the company is indeed doing a better job with spam.

I'd tend to agree with AOL. For the past few years, we've asked consumers to estimate what share spam makes of the e-mails they're getting, and overall 2004 saw the first improvement we've ever seen. Free data:

[Click for full size graphic]

It seems fairly likely, too, that if AOL's spam filtering is doing a better job, spammers themselves may start directing their attention away from AOL in the first place. If AOL response rates have dropped below the tiny-but-positive rate you need for a spam campaign to be worthwhile, address lists will probably get filtered to avoid AOL addresses...so an effective anti-spam campaign should have disproportionate benefits. Thus, congrats to AOL.

I doubt the war is over; technology on the spammers' side is maybe overdue for a new filter-defeating innovation. But it'll be interesting to see if the ISPs manage to widen this apparent lead against the spammers in 2005.