From: "Ted White" <twhite8 at cox.net>
To: "WSFA members" <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Spam Spike?
Date: Sun, 9 May 2004 03:15:52 -0400
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Keith F. Lynch" <kfl at KeithLynch.net>
To: "WSFA members" <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
Sent: Sunday, May 09, 2004 12:44 AM
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Spam Spike?

> "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.
>
[...]
>
> 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.

Fortunately, most of us get far less spam.   Mine averages under 20 a day,
for example, which I manually delete.

--Ted White