Spam flood (Updated)
28 12 2003I got almost drowned in spam the last few weeks; it became that much that I get problems sorting out the False Positives from my “Suspected Spam” folder. Wondering how much it increased over the last few months, I compiled a short statistic for 2003 from my spam archive. The resulting trend is horrifying:
| Month | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | (All) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Σ | 117 | 117 | 303 | 282 | 410 | 545 | 825 | 691 | 834 | 1389 | 1748 | 2387 | 9648 |
| Δn | n/a | �0 | +186 | -21 | +128 | +135 | +280 | -134 | +143 | +555 | +359 | +639 | +2270 |
| Δ% | n/a | �0 | +159 | -7 | +45 | +33 | +51 | -16 | +21 | +67 | +26 | +37 | +24 |
The amount of spam hitting my mailbox increased dramatically this year, especially the last few months. (The beginning of the year was pretty quiet, in 2002 I was around 300�50 Spam per month.)
I’m neither paranoid nor arrogant enough to take this for a personal attack against myself because of my contributions to SpamAssassin. So, what happened the this year? Got more and more spam spewn out by the spamhauses? Maybe to counter the increasing number of spam solutions developed the last year(s)? Christmas time is also spam time? Or did my addresses just end on more lists? I’ve got to look closer at that mail, maybe I find some worthwile spamtraps…
A short glance exhibited that at least one thing is for sure: The spammer went too far; the quality of the spam got worse past comprehension. I have loads of spam with subjects obfuscated so much, that they’re completely illegible. Quite some mails carry unexpanded hash buster. And last week I received some spam which starts like this:
belvidere vxdwpzbdwea bp j dtdmsrizr ias dr pn yoevgnc znoqbfhs imfga q exo m lilly
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