Brightmail goes where nobody really asked yet

Brightmail has announced that it has developed a tool to stop instant messaging spam.

The "article" (really more of a press release) states:

Spim affects only a small number of people today, but the problem is growing. It accounts for between 5 percent and 8 percent of all business IM communications, according to The Yankee Group. According to data from Radicati Group, 400 million spim messages were sent in 2003. That number is likely to jump to 1.5 billion at the end of 2004, representing a growth rate triple that of traditional e-mail spam.

That seems a bit ridiculous. Again, I think this is a case where companies that stand to benefit from the increase in spam stand to benefit from analysis that shows outrageous figures.

Spim (instant messaging spam) is hardly the risk that spam is. Essentially everyone that is using the web is using e-mail. That means that every single one of those people are then susceptible to spam...
Now look at spim - massively fewer people use instant messaging tools, so just the numbers aren't in their favor there.

Then you have the issue that the client has to be running, which it isn't running all of the time on the bulk of people's machines. If you are sent spam, you will get it. If you are sent an instant message, it depends on the system - but on many of them you won't get the message while you are "away" (your IM client is not turned on).

Also, people don't have their IM addresses on the web the same way e-mail addresses are. You also don't sign up for lists using your IM name - you use your e-mail address.
So it is just outright harder for spammers to get your IM name to then use it to send to... and then you have to be there to get it.

This process is complicated enough that there is not that big an incentive for spammers to make use of it over the well proven e-mail route.

That isn't to say that trojans/viruses/worms/spyware/malware won't sniff user's buddy lists and get names that way, but in the end, this isn't even close to the problem that 1) spam is, and 2) that it is getting blown out of proportion by the people that are looking into it.

The Yankee Group wants to find large numbers and large increases because it is good for the companies that feed off of that and it builds that industry (managers fear the extra traffic and then buy this software, establishing the industry as a necessary one).

The article doesn't say if it is a server side solution or a client side solution. If it is something that can stop the traffic, then that would be beneficial to the net (getting rid of the messages that are sent regardless of whether anyone gets to see them will then free up the network traffic).
Whereas just blocking them on the client is great for the single person that doesn't have to view it, but it still takes up the network bandwidth to get there in the first place.

I would put a lot of money on the latter and not the former since it doesn't make for a good business solution to eradicate the problem - but it does make good business sense to put a band aid over the issue - one that needs to continually be updated and upgraded for money.

Posted by Eric at June 8, 2004 03:54 PM | TrackBack