SPAM DECLINE: According to AOL members, spam has been drastically reduced in the past 12 months by over 75 percent: in November 2003, AOL averaged almost 11 million spam reports every day directly from members; as of November 2004, that figure has declined to about 2.2 million spam reports daily from members. The member spam reports are almost entirely sent using the popular "Report Spam" button, helping AOL constantly update and fine-tune its anti-spam filters minute-by-minute.
SPAM FOLDER: AOL has also seen substantial declines in the amount of mail being diverted to AOL members' "Spam Folder". In November 2003, the amount of spam being diverted to this folder averaged about 100 million per day; that number, as of November 2004, has declined to 40 million spam e-mails per day in the AOL "Spam Folder" - a 60 percent reduction.
SPAM BLOCKED BY AOL: In addition, the average daily amount of internet spam e-mails that are blocked at the gateway by AOL anti-spam filters has declined sharply -- a 50 percent drop -- from a peak of about 2.4 billion in 2003, to an average daily volume of just 1.2 billion blocked spam e-mails in late 2004.
ATTEMPTED E-MAILS FROM INTERNET: Finally, AOL noted that less attempts are being made to send e-mail from the Internet to AOL members, with the daily average number of attempts dropping from 2.1 billion recipient messages in November 2003 to 1.6 billion recipient messages in November 2004. AOL believes this 22 percent drop in attempted e-mails to be almost entirely spam -- as many spammers "throw in the towel" on their efforts to get their junk e-mail past the advanced filters on AOL's Virginia-based e-mail network.
AOL believes that the decline in spam (via member reports), the drastic reduction in spam showing up in AOL members' "Spam Folder", the sharp decline in the amount of daily spam e-mails blocked by AOL, and the corresponding decline in e-mail attempts to AOL members is likely primarily due to improved technical anti-spam countermeasures by AOL's Anti-spam Operations and Postmaster teams, as well as stepped-up enforcement actions undertaken by government authorities and by AOL under tougher Federal and state anti-spam laws - such as the new Federal CAN-SPAM law, which went into effect in January 2004.
"There is simply much less spam to be served up as members gather for the holidays around the family computer and their e-mail inbox", said Carl Hutzler, Director of Anti-spam Operations at AOL. "Spammers are known to our members as the 'Grinch' who stole their e-mail inboxes. That's not going to happen this holiday season. Our members are telling us they are getting less spam than ever on AOL, and we're seeing a substantial drop in the number of spam messages reaching AOL members' spam folders. That means one thing: many spammers are raising the white flag of surrender for the first time since 1999."
Hutzler continued, "The bottom line based on this great news is we're opening up a new, better chapter in the story about spam. The gap between the amount of good e-mail AOL delivers, and the bad e-mail members might get, has never been wider than it is today on AOL."
Though there have been, and continue to be, variations in the overall rate of spam, 2004 was the first year with a substantial and consistent - and likely sustainable - drop in spam on AOL since 1999. The Company noticed a temporary drop to the rate of spam in 2003, but this was short-lived; new records for spam blocking and e-mail attempts were set shortly thereafter. AOL began tracking the spam phenomenon in 1996.
In 2004, AOL has continued its comprehensive anti-spam campaign on behalf of its members:
- AOL has introduced more comprehensive and robust spam fighting tools as part of its newly released AOL 9.0 Security Edition software - as part of an ongoing commitment to providing members with greater online safety and security
- AOL has led efforts to fight e-mail spoofing and scams by testing and deploying e-mail certification and authentication technologies, like SPF (Sender Policy Form) and others
- AOL has filed numerous legal enforcement actions this year on its own, and as part of the Anti-spam Alliance of AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo! and Earthlink
- AOL has strongly advocated tough state anti-spam laws with criminal provisions, helping to get passage of new state spam laws in Maryland and Ohio
- AOL purchased Mailblocks, Inc. - whose industry-leading, award-winning 'challenge/response' technology and sleek, easy-to-use user interface for web e-mail is being developed for deployment across the AOL network
- AOL gave away a spammers' Porsche Boxster sportscar -- confiscated as part of a legal settlement -- to a lucky member in a service-wide sweepstakes
- AOL collaborated closely with law enforcement in Virginia on the criminal prosecution of an out-of-state spammer, resulting in the first-ever jury recommendation of a nine-year jail sentence under Virginia's anti-spam statute
- AOL -- through stepped-up anti-spam filtering on its mail servers -- had already reported a decline of almost 30 percent in spam on the service by May 2004.
