Spam

acme on 2003-03-27T12:08:00

I get too much spam. Spamassassin helps a great deal, and in a fit of stats and rrdtool madness I'm logging spam counts for my email accounts. Over the past five days I've received 2703 emails, of which 669 were spam. One in every four emails (24.75%) that I receive is spam. Bah!


Lucky!

ajt on 2003-03-27T12:51:34

You are lucky, though I get less email, I think it's at least 75% SPAM! Like you I have SPAM Assassin, and (Eudora) filters to try and manage the situation, but it's clearly out of control.

Re:Lucky!

darobin on 2003-03-27T14:21:22

I've been training Mozilla's 1.3 bayesian junk filter on the spam that gets through SA, and after about a week it's already starting to make sense, catching spam with no false positives this far. Another month like that and I'll tell it to move stuff to the Junk folder.

Re:Lucky!

barbie on 2003-03-27T19:55:22

I use Spam Buster on my Windows box and roughly 50%-75% is spam each day. There has been the odd occasion it's higher, but it hasn't been less than 50% in over two years.

I now have filters on my hotmail account such that anything in my inbox is spam, seeing as M$ only allow you to block 250 domains.

Re: Spam

davorg on 2003-03-27T14:26:23

I think I'm probably getting spam in about the same quantities as you although I don't keep stats like you do. I check my spam folder every few days and it always contains hundreds of new emails.

And I'm pretty sure there's been a huge increase over the last couple of months. In particular I've seen a massive amount of penile enlargement spam over the last week. How well targeted do you think this stuff is :)

Re: Spam

VSarkiss on 2003-03-27T15:13:58

How well targeted do you think this stuff is :)
I'm getting breast enlargement and penis enlargement spam. Clearly the spammers are not cross-checking. ;-)

Re: Spam

petdance on 2003-03-27T15:28:42

Either that, or their trying to get people on those special porn sites which I also get spam for. :-)

Re: Spam

ajt on 2003-03-27T21:27:00

In a strange way it's very funny in a sad sort of way, a typical spam-box will contain:

  • Penis enlargement
  • Breast enlargement
  • Mortgage (or other debt) reduction
  • Spam reduction
  • Stop annoying pop-up ads*
  • Secure your computer from spam, adverts and viruses
  • Treatment of baldness
  • Free access to porn sites
  • Protect your family from porn

A stange mix of peoples phobias...

* What is an annoying pop-up ad? I don't surf with Mr Gates so I never seen a pop-up ad. In fact with Mozilla I don't even see many banner adds... ;-)