Patterico's Pontifications

I’ve gotten more OFA and Obama spam the past few days, but I’ve deleted it before reading.

daleyrocks (1feed5) — 4/12/2010 @ 8:22 pm

Affirmative, Patrick. More and more folks looking to scam. It’s the Chicago Way!

either orr (466a1d) — 4/12/2010 @ 8:38 pm

Static on Yahoo and gmail, usual bunch of trash on hotmail.

Clavius (b00448) — 4/12/2010 @ 8:54 pm

Haven’t noticed any increase in my gmail spam folder. Still rolex knock-offs, blue pill ads and various opiods.

SaintGeorgeGentile (aa85b2) — 4/12/2010 @ 8:59 pm

I dunno… ever since I Googled “viagra Extended Release 800mg” my mailbox has been full

[note: fished from spam filter. –Stashiu]

Steve G (7d4c78) — 4/12/2010 @ 9:01 pm

I’ll have to check my junk folder. The Mac Mail program does a pretty good job. The RNC mail goes there, too.

Mike K (2cf494) — 4/12/2010 @ 9:08 pm

I’m not talking about the spam folders. I’m talking about spam appearing in the inbox.

Maybe it’s just me and my pal. It was just odd to me because he mentioned it at exactly the time I noticed it myself.

Patterico (c218bd) — 4/12/2010 @ 9:28 pm

I haven’t noticed it personally but there has been more at the website. Stashiu can explain it better than I, but they’re using new tricks to get past the filters.

DRJ (daa62a) — 4/12/2010 @ 9:34 pm

We’re talking gmail, I assume. I get a lot of spam if you count the folder, and for the past few weeks, an isolated spam will get through. Mine had a lapse of a couple of days where the filter didn’t catch everything, maybe a week ago, and 4 spam messages got to the inbox, asking about some business deal. The spam was targeted to legal professionals, which may have made it harder to filter.

Perhaps Google doesn’t employ the same rules to each account, too.

dustin (b54cdc) — 4/12/2010 @ 9:35 pm

Maybe this is in honor of the advent of commercial spam, first used 16 years ago today on April 12, 1994:

1994: Members of more than 6,000 Usenet discussion groups find themselves the recipients of a message imploring them to use the legal services of Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel to ensure their place in line for a green card from the U.S government.

It didn’t matter that most recipients had no need for such services. They’d just been spammed by a company — for the first time in the net’s history. Not surprisingly, some lines of the message were in ALL CAPS AND BOLD.

Canter and Siegel went on to notoriety, claiming they’d made $100,000 from their Perl-script spamming. The two remained unrepentant, despite the backlash which led them to lose their hosting and even get Canter disbarred.

The husband-and-wife duo went onto to create a spam-advertising company and pen a how-to entitled How to Make a FORTUNE on the Information Superhighway: Everyone’s Guerrilla Guide to Marketing on the Internet and Other On-Line Services, still on sale at Amazon.com.

DRJ (daa62a) — 4/12/2010 @ 10:48 pm

Yes, definitely (an increase in spam). Maybe as much as fourfold.

Comment spam, too, even though my site is hardly visited, so that I enabled comment verification and moderation.

nk (db4a41) — 4/13/2010 @ 12:09 am

most of what might be spam i just see as Ace of Spades Lifestyle Enhancement Opportunities!

redc1c4 (fb8750) — 4/13/2010 @ 1:11 am

I am getting a ton of phishing emails from USAA. I have accounts with them. But, I also have more than one email account, and the one with the phishing emails is not the correct one.

the friendly grizzly (ad1b71) — 4/13/2010 @ 5:01 am

I run my own spam filter. Over the last few months its “catch” has risen from a two year long lull of about 50 to 70 per day up to about 120 to 180 per day and climbing.

I have resolved to never find a person who has ever been convicted of spamming innocent of any other charge if I find my way to a jury. I realize that’s fighting words here. It just shows what I think about it. I’m not QUITE up to the “put a dead or alive bounty” on their heads level of ire. They’re saved because some of them are so incredibly silly.

(And SpamAssassin – free open source – is your friend. It all gets sequestered into its own spam email box in a form which allows sorting by a “spamminess” number. That makes it easy to avoid missing ham emails that were improperly scored. Each spam has its automatic appeals process, you might say.)

{^_^}

JD (9ac83d) — 4/13/2010 @ 8:10 am

Some slips through, but then I usually enjoy reading one or two…sometimes. Don’t really see any increase lately

Andy (b63f79) — 4/13/2010 @ 8:14 am

I plan on canceling all my email accounts once this check clears from the Nigerian Ambassador.

Corwin (ea9428) — 4/13/2010 @ 8:28 am

Up. Over the last six months, maybe, twice or three times as much in the spam box. In the last week, a rash getting through, which seems to have died off.

htom (412a17) — 4/13/2010 @ 8:43 am

My ISP has a VERY effective spam filter, and I probably see no more than 3-4/wk, which are promptly entered into the junk-mail/blocked mail list.

AD - RtR/OS! (935948) — 4/13/2010 @ 9:40 am

All my spam messages are offers for one of these items:
— Enlarge my home
— Refinance my penis

Steve Levy (df2e76) — 4/13/2010 @ 10:51 am

Hell yes, most of it China-sourced.

mojo (8096f2) — 4/13/2010 @ 11:27 am

No increase, I get very little anyway. I’ve always been overly cautious about email, and about registering for access. I almost never do it, maybe once or twice every 6 or 7 years.

ropelight (c46a69) — 4/13/2010 @ 11:45 am

The Nigerian Ambassador was killed in a car crash. His son is sending me a check for helping him get the money into my checking account.

Hazy (4e0dda) — 4/13/2010 @ 12:39 pm

“Maybe it’s just me and my pal. It was just odd to me because he mentioned it at exactly the time I noticed it myself.”

There’s been some reports that significant amounts of spam can be traced to a few organizations, so them ramping up or slowing down their activities would be noticed.

imdw (cd4b7a) — 4/13/2010 @ 12:47 pm

I’m so unloved I don’t even get spam e-mail. 🙁

The friendless Dana (3e4784) — 4/13/2010 @ 1:37 pm

My ISP has a good spam filter, and yes, more spam is getting through.

Steve G (7d4c78) — 4/13/2010 @ 2:21 pm

If you use a mobile GMail application, change your password in GMail.

There has been some kind of increase in spam that seems to have some potential relationship to this activity.

You never know what kind of bug might be out there, so just change your password.

Dustin (b54cdc) — 4/21/2010 @ 2:25 am

Let me add, because it’s not always clear: if your email has been compromised, that means other people are getting the spam. You might not notice that you’ve been compromised for a while.

gmail makes it really easy to see if some other IP address has been accessing your account, at the bottom of the page, but you might want to proactively change your password in case they are going down the list, if you use a mobile gmail program.

Dustin (b54cdc) — 4/21/2010 @ 2:32 am

4/12/2010

Increase in E-Mail Spam?

27 Responses to “Increase in E-Mail Spam?”

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