OT: Anybody else seeing a wave of spam mail?

[winchman]

For the last two days, the spam locker of my email server has seen a five-fold increase in the number of items being caught by the spam filter. I haven't changed anything, and the ISP hasn't notified me of any change in their system. My ISP uses MagicMail, which I like.

Has anyone else noticed this?

Roger

[dp]

Around November there was a bust of a major spammer provider in the US. The largest, in fact. It took thousands of his spamming customers off line. Then the economy tanked. The spamming customers appear to have relocated and the tanking economy has been followed by a sharp increase in the number of scammers out there trying to capitalize on it. I run several mail servers professionally and have seen a significant increase in spam and 419 scams (Nigerian business deals, etc) coming in. A huge number of spammers with mail that includes URL's in China have been easy to block once the pattern was established. They're using drone PCs in the US to deliver the mail. The volume today is double what it was in October. The volume getting through is up only slightly as the filters have been adjusted to stop them.

[dan s]

I run several mail servers professionally and have seen a significant increase in spam and 419 scams (Nigerian business deals, etc) coming in.

I do say Sir, would you be willing to help me make a bank transaction? LOL I want to know who actually falls for this stuff.

[winchman]

Yeah, I remember reading about the bust, and I noticed a big drop in spam than. The amount I got increased just a little over the months since that happened.

The big increase in the last couple days seems to have come out of the blue, though.

Roger

[spope14]

Spam? I just thought there were more nigerian princes, elderly rich kingly people who could not give away their funds, or home based business opportunities starting.

Then again, I thought it was just people who had sight issues that were trying to tell me something...
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[pcarpenter]

A lot of spam today originates from "zombie" computers. A "bot" travels around looking for unpatched vulnerabilities to exploit. It finds its way in and sets up housekeeping including installing an SMTP (email) server on the vulnerable computer and reports back to a "bot herder" who then sets it up to spew out spam. When its found and quarantined or shut down, they move to another zombie in the herd...sometimes hour by hour.

One of the things these bots do is grab address lists. Once they have your address, you can expect to be both the target for some of this spam as well as the "originator" since they can put *anything* in the from: line. If you find you are suddenly getting more than in recent days, it could be because your address was recently "harvested" this way.

Spammers are evil. I know my employer has paid me for a lot of hours put in setting up, maintaining and tweaking our spam filter. As such, its not just an annoyance, it costs money. Multiply this by thousands of companies...

Paul

[Evan]

I have run my own mail system for over a decade. If I could figure out a way to send the equivalent of a letter b0mb to the spammers I would.

I can't tell if there has been an increase. My server is running spam assassin and is set to delete everything it deems to be spam. I don't have time to sift through stuff that it may have mistakenly classified as spam as I still have about 15 users of my mail system. My users like it just fine that way, they don't want to be bothered. I have set a rule so that if a particular password is included in the subject line the mail will skip the spam filter and be delivered regardless. If they have a problem receiving mail from a particular party then they just tell them to put that simple word in the subject. It's a very effective system and the spammers cannot deal with it at all.

[Alistair Hosie]

I keep getting lettersm from banks and aol telling me I have to contact them immediately to update my details as if I am that mad.Alistair

[steverice]

I got my 2.5 million from Nigeria, didn't you?

[Paul Alciatore]

Seems to me there has been a hugh increase in spam mail where there is little or no text, just a single image that contains their complete message, including the text. My home ISP's spam filter, not a national brand, can not deal with this and they get through. I have had to delete dozens of them every day and this is getting old. They are often from well known, national brands so it is NOT the Nigerians or other shady operators. It must be comming from national ad agencies right here in the good old US. I am sure they are proud of themselves. The only way to stop it is to refuse to buy from the companies that use this technique. Why anyone would think that this is a good way to get customers is completely beyond me.

At work we have the Postini filter and it (or something) seems to almost completely eliminate them. I am thinking of changing ISPs or getting my own filter software if I can.