Date: Sun, 9 May 2004 00:44:40 -0400 (EDT) From: "Keith F. Lynch" <kfl at KeithLynch.net> To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org> Subject: [WSFA] Re: Spam Spike? Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org> "Barry L. Newton" <bnewton at ashcomp.com> wrote: > In the last couple of days, my spam input has spiked dramatically. > Anybody else notice the same effect? Not me. For the past several years, I've experienced an increase of between 5% and 10% per month. Over the past decade, this has gradually increased my spam volume from less than one a day to the present utterly insane volume of close to one per *second*. But I've seen nothing special or unusual in the past few days. Here are the totals for yesterday (Saturday). Total: 66,004 messages, of which 18 got through, 5 of which were spams, and 8 of which were not. I assume the remaining 65,986 messages which did not get through were all spams, viruses, worms, or bounces of forged messages. Here's the breakdown. There's actually little point in this filtering (other than sheer curiosity, and the fact that it would be more work to take it down than to leave it up) since I accept everything from anyone in my whitelist, or sent to my current disposable address, or that includes certain whitelisted words and phrases on the subject line or organization line, and reject absolutely everything else. The "notwhitelist" category shows messages that would have been accepted if not for my whitelisting. Everything else would have been rejected under my old system. Many of these messages would have been rejected for multiple reasons, and which one it's listed under is whichever happened to be first in my procmailrc file. 35462 html -- message contains HTML code 9336 korea -- from South Korea 5257 china -- from mainland China 4228 base64 -- contains a base64 attachment 3078 notwhitelist -- no reason for rejection, except not in whitelist 2284 bounce -- bogus bounce message due to someone forging my address 998 shared -- Panix's shared filters 917 nigeria -- from Nigeria, or mentions Nigeria 795 taiwan -- from Taiwan 686 argentina -- from Argentina 304 viagra -- mentions that drug 226 xanax -- mentions that drug 216 vicodin -- mentions that drug 175 toberemoved -- message contains phrase "to be removed" 154 xmsmailpriorityhigh -- claims to be high priority 153 otcbb -- message mentions the Over The Counter Bulletin Board 121 zimbabwe -- from Zimbabwe or mentions Zimbabwe 110 deskofthepromotionsmanager -- contains that phrase 94 urgentandveryconfidential -- contains that phrase 81 iso2022jp -- in a Japanese character set 65 youcanearn -- contains that phrase 62 onetimemail -- contains that phrase 55 hydrocodone -- mentions that drug 54 sierraleone -- mentions, or is from, that country 51 s1618 -- mentions the imaginary S.1618 pro-spam law 44 strictlyconfidential -- contains that phrase 40 indiatimes.com -- mentions that website 35 removeyourself -- contains that phrase 34 80.179 -- from that IP block 31 yoursuccessguidelines -- contains that phrase 30 zaire -- mentions, or is from, that country 30 savimbi -- mentions that person 29 toobig -- is too large (this is the only rule that trumps my whitelist) 27 robertmugabe -- mentions that person 26 v1agra -- mentions that drug, deliberately misspelled 26 urgentandconfidential -- contains that phrase 24 optin -- contains that phrase 21 congo -- mentions, or is from, that country 17 surprisetoyou -- contains that phrase 16 thankstothecomputerageandtheinternet -- contains that phrase 15 vanbutsel -- mentions that person 14 vlagra -- mentions that drug, deliberately misspelled 14 urgentbusiness -- contains that phrase 14 parishilton -- mentions that person 14 contenttransferencodingbase64 -- encoded in base64 14 bankofafrica -- mentions that bank 13 removeyouremail -- contains that phrase 12 solicityourstrictestconfidence -- contains that phrase 10 internetmarketing -- contains that phrase 10 optoutinstructions -- contains that phrase There are about a hundred more rules, most of which only blocked one or two messages yesterday. And another hundred after that which didn't happen to block any. I'm surprised it hasn't been increasing faster lately, since over the past few months I've been leaving a trail of discarded disposable email addresses behind me. Spammers can be expected to "collect the whole set" and repeatedly pound away on each and every of them every hour until the end of time. I'd be surprised if email still exists in anything like its current form in another two years. Maybe we'll have to go back to the "golden age" of communicating only by letters and fanzines. -- Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/ Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.