Could also be a side effect of government efforts to close any security holes that have been or might be used by Wikileaks. Wouldn't have to be limited to US govt, could be others too. All speculation until more evidence comes to light.
Global spam e-mail levels suddenly fall
21–30 of 37 posts
Re: Global spam e-mail levels suddenly fall
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
What people don't like to admit about spam, is that it created value for somebody. This is why some people clicked on the ads and why others profited. SEO Spam creates value. Unfortunately, it also degrades value for a great many others. There is opportunity here. Google or some other search engine needs to figure out how to capture the value in SEO spam. (Perhaps by finding a way to identify "original pages" like th…
You could use the same logic to justify many crimes. And spam is more than annoying, it wastes time and energy. A lot of energy: 33 Terawatt-hour in 2008 alone, acording to McAffee. See: http://img.en25.com/Web/McAfee/CarbonFootprint_12pg_web_REV_...
I'm not advocating SEO Spam. I'm pointing out that we should be able to exploit these exploiters in turn.
Re: Global spam e-mail levels suddenly fall
#23Maybe a lot of people bought new PCs for the holiday season, crippling the botnets that used to rely on older (less secure) versions of Windows?
It's not as sudden as that. For reference, I admin a mail server for a small charitable organisation, and our mail graph for the last year looks like this: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4957647/mailstats/mail.png http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4957647/mailstats/rejected.png Where the grey is spam filtered by spamassassin and the red is obviously spam rejected outright due to an invalid recipient or an impossible sender or whateve…
Thanks for showing some actual data.
Re: Global spam e-mail levels suddenly fall
#24Weird, I've started getting more spam in my inbox than ever before. My gmail used to be entirely clean, and now I get a few messages daily that sneak past the filter.
Perhaps the spam just got better at getting past the filter, and not necessarily more numerous?
Re: Global spam e-mail levels suddenly fall
#25Because the resources are now dedicated to SEO?
There doesn't appear to be any evidence of that being the case. Rustock ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rustock_botnet ) appears to be responsible for the bulk of the drop in volume, but several others smaller botnets have fallen silent too. There haven't been any reports of it being used for anything other than spam and isolated ddos attacks ( http://www.joestewart.org/rustock-ddos.html ) in it's 4 year history. It i…
maybe it was repurposed for Operation Payback?
Re: Global spam e-mail levels suddenly fall
#26Is it a sure sign of the effect hacker news has had on me that my first thought was "ooo... a hole in the market, I wonder if I could write something to fill that niche"
Meh - spam email has too many legal headaches. I'm sure you can make money doing it, but I tend to think it's a bit more trouble than it's worth.
Re: Global spam e-mail levels suddenly fall
#27Any chance that someone has started to terminate the botnet owners, rather than the botnets themselves?
Actually, it happened at least once in Russia: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/07/26/russian_spammer_kill...
Re: Global spam e-mail levels suddenly fall
#28Looking at some mailserver spam filtering log.... spam levels have dramatically dropped, but they also dramatically rose before that. At this point what I'm looking at is only slightly lower than things were in early december.
Re: Global spam e-mail levels suddenly fall
#29Because the resources are now dedicated to SEO?
What people don't like to admit about spam, is that it created value for somebody. This is why some people clicked on the ads and why others profited. SEO Spam creates value. Unfortunately, it also degrades value for a great many others. There is opportunity here. Google or some other search engine needs to figure out how to capture the value in SEO spam. (Perhaps by finding a way to identify "original pages" like th…
> What people don't like to admit about spam, is that it created value for somebody. This is why some people clicked on the ads and why others profited.
By this same logic, you can justify the heroin trade, the slave trade, and the child pornography trade.
Re: Global spam e-mail levels suddenly fall
#30Weird, I've started getting more spam in my inbox than ever before. My gmail used to be entirely clean, and now I get a few messages daily that sneak past the filter.
I've noticed this too, with spam that doesn't look too different from the usual.