Spam levels bounce back after botnet takedown Spam levels are returning to normal following the recent takedown of crime-friendly ISP 3FN, which temporarily interrupted the operation of a significant spam spewing botnet. Junk mail volumes dropped 30 per cent after the Federal Trade Commission forced the closure of 3FN in early June, according to Google. Google's latest …
I'm not sure if this is related to the botnet being taken down and then coming back up but something strange has happened to my SPAM.
It used to be in English (often broken english) but now it's all in Spanish! Even more annoying because I couldn't understand it even if I wanted to.
I wonder what "Photos exotica" really are?
What is "Aumentar el tamaño del pene", I wonder?
I'd noticed a recent increase of messages where I was always remided that if I could't see the image then I should click on a helpful link.
That and winning some money on a lottery (I hadn't entered) where the contact address ended in '.ru'.
I guess someone's got to do it, there are still plenty of suckers out there.
Yes, my spam level has gone back up, but I find it hard to give much credence to any figures based on MessageLabs. Those buggers classify my SMTP server as a spam source notwithstanding the fact that it isn't, never has been, and is in no one else's blacklist* but is in at least one whitelist. Just being an ADSL line (albeit with fixed IP address) is sufficient for them.
-A.
*Except AOL, but they're just clueless.
What is the actual purpose of the different types of spam we receive?
It's clear that the flow can be classified, very easily, into a small number of types of which a very few account for most of it. But which are preludes to phishing, which want to install malware, which are 419 scams, which are trying to sell fake Viagra, which (if any) are trying to sell generic Viagra, and so on?
My ISP's spam detection system seems to be pretty effective: a few false negatives, next to no false positives. But eyeballing the spam almost always makes it clear that it's not legitimate, and one has to wonder how anybody on the planet could be so stupid as to fall for it.
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