Europe's Spam War Stalls
Europe's ISPs are just about holding their own against the global spam barrage, a Europe-wide report has found. Put another way, things are not getting better, but are not getting any worse either.
Judging from the 2009 ENISA (European Network and Information Security Agency) spam survey of ISPs across 27 EU states, ISPs spend substantial sums trapping spam before it gets to the end user, mainly because they have to to keep customers. Small providers spend at least 10,000 Euros ($14,100) fighting unwanted messages, while large companies will exceed seven figure euro sums to do the same.
What most customers probably don't realize is just how many layers of filtering and technology it takes to reduce spam -- which is now 95 percent of all e-mail sent, says ENISA -- to the cleansed inbox most users now experience without causing false positives.
