Is Spam Finally Heading South?

[jsinger]

We're seeing a 10% drop in spam this month which follows a year-long period of leveling off. Biggest decrease: penny stock spam (thank you SEC).

Two categories coming on strong: "lonely woman wants to chat" and ecard spam (lots of it).

But overall, a significant drop.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

I don't have spam stats but I would think that my findings pretty much mirror yours.

[LifeinAsia]

I agree with the stock SPAM drop (ditto the thanks to the SEC), or at least a significant drop in NEW stock SPAM (old stuff still gets filtered out and I have no idea how much continues).

Also agree with the other two types (although I'd classify the e-card one as virus/SPAM).

Nigerian/lottery scam messages are down some. Drug SPAM is about the same for me. Hoiwever, getting a lot more SPAM to my Hotmail account from a company in India touting a certain technical institute and a certain satellite dish network. (Tried to complain to those companies about their afffiliate, but neither sites had electronic contact info.)

[engine]

I turned off the filters to look and it seems that usual nonsense is being sent. I can't say it's down because I don't monitor it.

I did notice that there are a lot of lonely girls with male e-mail names. LOL Who'd click on that! LOL

The filters are working well and next to no spam gets through these days.

[jsinger]

(although I'd classify the e-card one as virus/SPAM).

Is that right? Those started showing up a month or two ago. Never clicked on one. I just assumed they linked to ads rather than viruses.

I'm going by total numbers of incoming emails as counted by Eudora. Actually Eudora counts all email, so spam is probably off more like 20% here.

"Nigerian" type stuff has been dropping for some time. Pfishing is still strong.

[LifeinAsia]

When I first started getting them, I decided to try one of the links from a test machine- Norton started complaining as soon as the page loaded. Later I read something on CNN or some other place that a lot of people were being hit by viruses/Trojans/adware after clicking on e-card links.

I've got all the major bank domains in my filter list (I use a different account for online banking accounts), so I haven't seen much phishing lately. But every once in a while I get a phishing attempt using some obscure bank that I then add to the filter.

[weeks]

I don't know about volume, but we are seeing more sophisticated spam/fraud emails.

Besides making through our standard filters and getting around additional buffers, these email are very local. They use the name of an area trusted business, such as a county or state credit union, and offers cash to the account for filling out a survey. After you do the three question survey, they say you must sign in. They have completely copied the credit union's web page.

Their servers appear to be in Eastern Europe, but who really knows?

[voices]

More spam coming here, tons of it with attachments. Open my email and there are rows and rows of it, but I just scroll past it without looking. Zip files and pdfs of some sort.

[willybfriendly]

This just in from our SysAdmin...

"We are now receiving about 3000 emails an hour that have PDF Attachments. ( usually an Adobe picture ). 99.9% of these are Spam. Usually Pharmacy advertisements or “hot stock” tips."

I live up north, so clearly spam is not headed south ;)

[jsinger]

From Forbes.com in late June

"According to the e-mail security company Marshal, stock-promoting spam decreased to just 5.1% of total spam e-mails this month, its lowest rate in 10 months. At its peak in February, stock spam accounted for about 50% of all junk e-mail."

[voices]

I have never opened the pdf spam, now I know what they are, thanks! Just read that they have a new virus called Peachy that travels in pdf's. Dont open em!

[engine]

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