jefe
Premium
join:2001-05-19
Northport, NY
 ·Verizon FIOS
| Big increase in spam lately?
Is anyone else noticing a significant increase in the volume of spam lately?
I typically have ~100 spamgrams caught by Spamassasin daily. In the past 24 hours the number has been 224. It seems like the volume is increasing every day.
I'm seeing the same increase on my wife's email account. And for the same crapola....cheap replica watches, college diplomas, and, of course, Viagra.
There have been a few events recently, where big spamming operations were shut down, and the number of spamgrams I got each day dwindled to 30 or 40. Seems like it's time for another bust or two.
It makes my head spin when I think of the amount of bandwidth that's wasted....  |
|
jvmorris
I Am The Man Who Was Not There.
Premium,MVM
join:2001-04-03
Reston, VA
| I note you are a Verizon FIOS user. Have you enabled the spam/junk mail filtering on your (Verizon?) e-mail account? Almost all of the examples you give are stopped there on the Verizon mail server, in my case, so I never see them in my inbox (using Outlook) at all. They are simply never forwarded to me.
Another possibility (and there's likely little that you can now do about this one) is that you may have been, for some time, signing up for mailing lists at various sites you've visited which, in fact, are nothing more than sites devoted to capturing e-mail addresses which are then sold to just such junk mail distributors. If so, start being a bit more particular before giving out your e-mail addresses (or the check boxes you often find below requests for your e-mail address).
There is a solution of sorts to this, but it takes some time to implement. Establish a new e-mail account (easily done with Verizon FIOS); do not forward e-mail from your old Verizon e-mail account to it, but notify all your regular correspondents of your NEW e-mail address. and begin to use it to communicate with your normal circle of friends. (Which also makes it easy for THEM to get your new e-mail address.) After a bit of time, the only mail you should be seeing in your OLD e-mail account will be the junk mail and you can then simply shut it down.
Unfortunately, there's a THIRD possibility and the above won't address it. It may be that some of the people with whom you routinely communicate have very little in the way of protection for their OWN e-mail address lists and are consequently having your e-mail address harvested from THEM. (I just saw a beautiful example of this recently when someone I know had his e-mail address harvested by the Jhoos virus, which he found mortifying.)
I'm a bit careful in whom I communicate with via e-mail. I just emptied my Outlook Junk Mail folder. It had a grand total of four messages in it from the past three days.
--
Regards,
Joseph V. Morris |
|
smunro622
join:2006-02-15
Madison Heights, MI | reply to jefe
I have noticed a increase and a increase in it getting thru, we have a barracuda spam filter 300. new firmware seemed to really help last nite, and they are addressing energizer updates as we speak for this. |
|
jefe
Premium
join:2001-05-19
Northport, NY
·Verizon FIOS
| reply to jvmorris
jvmorris....Yes, I'm a FiOS subscriber, but I don't use my Verizon provided email service for anything.
My email address is at my own domain, and hosted on my own server in another part of the country. We're running Spamassasin under Apache and it catches all of the spam I mentioned.
I never sign up for mailing lists. Never. I do give my email address to various companies which I do business with. If those legitimate businesses are selling their customers' email address...well, bad on them.
The spam doesn't really cause me any trouble because it never gets past Spamassasin. But I can see how much is caught and I couldn't help noticing the big increase recently. I was wondering if others were seeing the same thing, and if anyone had an idea why it's happening.
As for changing email address, yeah, I could easily do that. But one reason my wife and like having our addresses on our own domain is so that we don't ever have to change them. Y'know, you sort of get used to an address like you do a phone number you've had forever.
Thanks for the thoughts though. |
|
beck
Premium,MVM
join:2002-01-29
On The Road | reply to jefe
Yes. Lots more in the past month or so and increasing. I don't usually see them, just the logs. |
|
jvmorris
I Am The Man Who Was Not There.
Premium,MVM
join:2001-04-03
Reston, VA
| reply to jefe
jefe,
In your expanded context, one thing I've noticed recently is that there's also been a marked increase in e-mail 'advertising' from retailers who in fact do have my e-mail address with my explicit authorization. I suspect this is somewhat related to the economic downturn which we've all experienced in the past year. It's cheaper to do it via e-mail than buying an advertisement in a newspaper (where circulation is decreasing in most cases) or via junk snail mail (and I also note I'm receiving a lot less of that recently). So, that's also a source.
By the same token, I would not be at all surprised if a lot of people who are now unemployed are also being seduced by inducements to sell things via internet e-mail advertising (and thereby paying for these mailing lists). I suspect that many of these people will subsequently find out that they're really being scammed, but -- hey -- if they're desperate to get a revenue stream going, people will continue to fall for it.
--
Regards,
Joseph V. Morris |
|
EUS
Kill cancer
Premium
join:2002-09-10
Montreal, QC
clubs: 
 ·ELECTRONICBOX
| reply to jefe
Attempts |
Graph from personal mail server attached. |
|
Smith6612
Premium
join:2008-02-01
united state
 ·Dish Network
·Verizon Online DSL
·FrontierNet Intern..
| reply to jefe
I have noticed an increase in spam coming into my e-mail accounts. It's just the typical stuff that Windows Mail catches and junks though. Only one e-mail within the past two months got past the spam list, which I promptly spammed and deleted.
--
"All your base are belong to me!" |
|
antdude
A Ninja Ant
Premium,VIP
join:2001-03-25 | reply to jefe
No increase for me recently, but did like over a month ago. |
|
Doctor Four
My other vehicle is a TARDIS
Premium
join:2000-09-05
Dallas, TX
·AT&T U-Verse
| reply to jefe
I have seen the exact opposite on my Earthlink email address, which is what I use for most sites and is my most private address which I don't give out to those I do not trust.
A few months ago, Spamblocker was catching and stopping about 80-120 spams every two weeks. Lately, that number has dropped to around 40-50 every two weeks.
Maybe much of it is being dropped upstream.
It does seem odd that what with the recent news about security researchers from Fireeye crippling the Mega-D/Ozdok botnet by taking out multiple command and control points that spam would be on the rise. But Mega-D lately has only accounted for about 4% of all spam, and the spammers have likely moved on to other botnets.
--
"The trouble with computers, of course, is that they are very sophisticated idiots." - Doctor Who (from Robot)
|
|
DarkLogix
join:2008-10-23
Baytown, TX | reply to jefe
odd at our spam servers at work the spam has dropped off a bit
down to about 100 per hour from the normal 200-300 per hour |
|
alchav
join:2002-05-17
Palm Desert, CA
·Pacific Bell - SBC
|  reply to jefe
said by jefe  :jvmorris....Yes, I'm a FiOS subscriber, but I don't use my Verizon provided email service for anything. My email address is at my own domain, and hosted on my own server in another part of the country. We're running Spamassasin under Apache and it catches all of the spam I mentioned. The spam doesn't really cause me any trouble because it never gets past Spamassasin. But I can see how much is caught and I couldn't help noticing the big increase recently. I was wondering if others were seeing the same thing, and if anyone had an idea why it's happening. Thanks for the thoughts though. Well Jefe, it sounds like you are doing everything at the eMail Server level. This is the best way I have found to control Spam and Junk eMail. Most ISP's have good filters now and even filter Virus Infected eMails. Computer based eMail systems like Outlook I feel are obsolete, especially if they rely on Spam software on your computer. It filters it and controls the Spam and Junk, but it's still on your computer's HDD. |
|
jefe
Premium
join:2001-05-19
Northport, NY
·Verizon FIOS
| Yep. Agreed.
As I said earlier, the increase I'm seeing in spam is only an observation. It's not causing me any grief. I thought it would be interesting to see what others are observing.
It's interesting that while some are also seeing the dramatic rise in junk, others are actually seeing a decrease.
How will those, the ones seeing the decrease, know where to get their Viagra from?  |
|
PX Eliezer
Premium
join:2008-08-09
New Jersey
 ·Callcentric
·Optimum Voice
·callwithus
·voip.ms
1 edit | reply to jefe
I agree. Spam definitely UP lately.
I get a lot of spam at an address that I am very careful with and which is an email service that is not that well known (fastmail.fm)
Mostly spam for "cheap online pharmacy" and such.
What bugs me is, they send me the same spam multiple times a day! What's the benefit to them doing that? It just makes any user with half a brain even MORE aware that it's from crooks.
------------------------------------
On a different note, and a different email account, the office store STAPLES sends me about 2-3 messages a day. I don't want to block them because sometimes the coupons are good, but 2-3 per day is nuts. |
|
ptrowski
Got Helix?
Premium
join:2005-03-14
Putnam, CT
clubs: | reply to Smith6612
Same here. I clean out the spam box twice a week and noticed that the amount of caught spam has increased quite a bit. |
|
jefe
Premium
join:2001-05-19
Northport, NY
·Verizon FIOS
| reply to PX Eliezer
I've wondered the same thing....why send the same message to the same recipient over and over and over? But then, I never understood the business model anyway.
It's hard for me to imagine anyone ever responding to a message who's subject line is (and I quote) "Pills for a Larger!Penis." Or "Get a dregree with no problems." Or....
As for Staples, my wife gets numerous messages a day from the likes of Macy's, Lord & Taylor, Bloomingdale's. To some that would be spam. To my honey...it's "Oh...look, Blooomies is having a sale!" |
|
VikingBob
join:2004-06-05
Ste Anne, MB
·MTS
| reply to jefe
I havn't seen any at home (ISP does a nice job of filtering), but at work, more seems to be sneaking past the anti-spam software at the gateway. We're getting more and more calls about spam. It's time to switch to something more effective, but I doubt that will happen anytime soon.
They just decided to update our domain, and I'm seeing spam sent to a brand-new email address. I sure didn't sign up for anything with it... |
|
jaykaykay
4 Ever Young
Premium,MVM
join:2000-04-13
Scottsdale, AZ
·Speakeasy
| reply to jefe
I have seen an increase in my ISP's folder last week, but it seems to have dropped off a bit today. I am also seeing an increase that has gotten through the ISP's filter, mainly about Viagra and Pfizer Inc. They go directly into my spam folder and are deleted at the end of the day...after I've added their addresses to my blocked senders list when applicable. |
|
TheRul
You couldn't think of something?
Premium
join:2007-09-18
Victorville, CA
·Verizon FIOS
| said by jaykaykay :I have seen an increase in my ISP's folder last week, but it seems to have dropped off a bit today. I am also seeing an increase that has gotten through the ISP's filter, mainly about Viagra and Pfizer Inc. They go directly into my spam folder and are deleted at the end of the day...after I've added their addresses to my blocked senders list when applicable. I have seen a large increase, and today, I have not seen any. It is possible that one of the STMP servers that they were going through wised up.
--
When was the last time you stabbed someone? »[signup] Diplomacy - Stab Me, Stab you |
|
ironwalker
World Renowned
Premium,MVM
join:2001-08-31
Keansburg, NJ
clubs: | reply to jefe
I have never gotten spam since I have had OOL as an isp, they must be doing something right.
None with dslr's mail that was unwanted or I didnt ask for. |
|
