vsbabu.org

Spam statistics

Starting June 01, 2003, I’ve been collecting - as in actually saving it, instead of nuking it - spam e-mail. In one weak moment, I decided this is a good idea to see if I can draw some conclusions. Here’s the summary.

1. Spammers seem to be convinced that everyone else think with their genitalia.
2. They also seem to think people are more worried about sex than their finances.
3. "Nigerian scam" artists have finally decided to move on. Got just 4, compared to 20 last month.
4. Head hunters are not using mail as a recruiting tool anymore. OK, economy is bad.
5. Current fashion is to spoof from-address to show your own e-mail address.
6. Significant increase in cooking up some reasonable sounding sender name. A spammer who spams me at Yahoo keeps "from" address blank.

Some items are very noteworthy like the Paypal scam. Microsoft security patches are pretty well disguised too; but for the attachments named with .pif and .exe.

Well, those were my thoughts. Here’s the statistic for you to make your own conclusions.

Conclusion - I can’t take it any more. But, it was a bit of fun till it became painfully clear that majority of spammers lack imagination. At least for that reason - added to other reasons - we need a law to ban spam.

On that subject, we need to ban spam on TV too. My mother-in-law put the current state of TV ads very nicely: “TV is only about toothpaste, toothbrush, soap, shampoo and sanitary napkins”. Does any viewer really keep these ads in mind when they are in a grocery store? I doubt.

1. What? There are ads on TV? I'm so used to recording shows on a computer editing out the commercials that I don't remember what it is like to watch /with/ commercials. What a bore!

   I like your analysis... and it reflects my own spam pretty well.

   Posted by: eliot on June 16, 2003 04:09 PM

2. I own the site ssun.co.uk
   I found that within a few days, the email address script(a)ssun . co. uk started to recieve spam, even though I didn't use this address. It's never been used, so where had it come from?

   Then I found out. Hidden in the code of my site, so that you couldn't see it while browsing, was some code with that email address in. So, even though it had never been used, the address recieved spam just because it was published on my site, which is listed in loads of search engines. Spam bots DIE!

   Apart from that, I get no spam at all.

   Posted by: lix on September 16, 2003 02:34 PM