Spam will be "solved" as of tomorrow

I’ve already written about this before but a new article has been published and I wanted to comment on it.

Two years ago Bill Gates said spam would be "solved" by now (well, tomorrow to be precise). Microsoft thinks he was right:

To "solve" the problem for consumers in the short run doesn’t require eliminating spam entirely, said Ryan Hamlin, the general manager who oversees the company’s anti-spam programs. Rather, he said, the idea is to contain it to the point that its impact on in-boxes is minor. In that way, Hamlin said, Gates’ prediction has come true for people using the right tactics and advanced filtering technology … "If you are a consumer that’s taking advantage of the technologies that exist … then the spam problem for you is solved," Hamlin said. "Bill didn’t say that there would be no spam. But he said the problem would be solved, and I think that is what we actually have accomplished."

My response: What a crock of tripe. At the client level 13% of all mail I receive is spam. That percentage would be much higher if it weren’t for server-level blocking. More than 50% of all email sent on the Internet as a whole is spam. The MS claim that spam has been "solved" by "using the right tactics and advanced filtering technology" is bogus. The exact same thing was true two years ago (when I kept spam under control by "using the right tactics and advanced filtering technology") so this is no more a "prediction" than me "prophesying" that two years from now people will be using programs called "web browsers" to access information hosted on remote servers. Time to go back to the old drawing board, Bill, and while you’re there perhaps you should spend more time developing solutions and less time posing for the media as a "visionary" and "prophet".