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Content about United Nations

February 4, 2005
From Zombies to Smarthosts - the Spam War Escalates

Where does spam come from? We've all asked ourselves this question. A cadre of systems administrators, who are actively trying to preserve this incredibly important communications channel, have invested a great deal of time into understanding the problem. Learning how to read email "headers" in order to trace spam to its senders, blocking abusive mail servers and other sources, and so on - has given us some interesting insights over the years. Lately, however, the spammers have begun to escalate their attempts to ensure delivery of their unsolicited ads for illegal (and dubious) pharmaceuticals, porn, and virtually everything else. The United Nations estimates over 70% of all mail sent on the Internet is spam, and it's getting worse.