Spamless morning

No spam for hours

[TheDoctor]

I've just had a period of some five or six hours during which I've received no spam. This is a really weird experience, like when someone switches off machinery and you notice that the background hum has stopped.

I had not realised up until now how much I'd psychologically accommodated to continually receiving spam. I was also worrying if there was something wrong with my ISP, and that I wasn't receiving other, perhaps more important, mail.

But, thankfully(?), normality has returned and I've just received, and immediately deleted in a reassuringly familiar fashion, two offers to chemically enhance certain parts of my body :)

[greenleaves]

I was receiving over 1200 spams a day. This morning I only got 179, so you can say, for me it is "stopping", however, I shouldn't count my chickens before they hatch, I still have a full day ahead of me.

[EBear]

I'll forward you mine if you like.

[gi3wgk]

<ggg> doctor you are so lucky. With all these tablets I don't have to walk to the toilet anymore

[TheDoctor]

lol >>I'll forward you mine if you like.

[encyclo]

As a considerable quantity of spam comes from a very few individuals, it just takes one or two of those individuals to go on a break, either by choice or circumstances, and the level of spam will go down significantly.

In this case, as Florida is a particularly-favoured hangout for several notorious spammers, we might infer that Tropical Storm Frances does carry some good with it's devastation?

[TheDoctor]

encyclo, I think you're probably right about the Florida thing. Spam levels today are back to normal, and, behold, someone posts elsewhere on WebmasterWorld that power supplies in the parts of Florida hit by Frances are now back to normal.

This suggests that around two-thirds of the spam I receive comes from just one server (or maybe a couple of servers that happen to be near-neighbours). This is not what I expected.

[mivox]

Either that, or spammers just can't stand the cold, and so have all migrated to Florida over time. ;)

[EarWig]

Excuse the pun but perhaps they've all gone to the john to get canned:)

[encyclo]

Most of the spam now comes from networks of spyware-ridden, zombie Windows PCs on broadband connections (yes, spammers are truly criminals now, as this is highly illegal). But it still takes someone to take the orders and flip the switch.