OT : sharp increase in email spam

Out of nowhere, my spam just doubled :-(

From around 100-120 a day to suddenly 262 yesterday and 248 today. It's
not much of an issue in that they're all filtered out by my email
client, but the sudden increase in wasted bandwidth is alarming.

Anyone else seeing this?
--
ric at pixelligence dot com

ric zito wrote:

Out of nowhere, my spam just doubled :-(

From around 100-120 a day to suddenly 262 yesterday and 248 today.
It's not much of an issue in that they're all filtered out by my email
client, but the sudden increase in wasted bandwidth is alarming.

Anyone else seeing this?

Yep. Doesn't particularly bother me because my filter works well. Where
is most of yours directed, more than 95% of mine is to one or more of
the .com/.co.uk/.biz addresses I have?

--
Paul-B Formula 1 - cheat-free version here now.

On Mon, 16 Apr 2007 08:22:24 +0200, address (AT) in (DOT) sig (ric zito) wrote:

Out of nowhere, my spam just doubled :-(

From around 100-120 a day to suddenly 262 yesterday and 248 today. It's
not much of an issue in that they're all filtered out by my email
client, but the sudden increase in wasted bandwidth is alarming.

Anyone else seeing this?

I think it actually reduced here a bit. You must have made a "friend"

somewhere. :-)

Doesn't your ISP provide spam filtering ? With mine i can set up
blocks at the server and spam will never even reach my mailbox, so(i
think) it won't count into my quota. I'm yet to bother though, i get
around 20-30 a day and mailwasher does a wonderful job on them..

--

Regards, Frank

a_Frank <fajp (AT) notthis (DOT) optushome.com.au> wrote:

On Mon, 16 Apr 2007 08:22:24 +0200, address (AT) in (DOT) sig (ric zito) wrote:

Out of nowhere, my spam just doubled :-(

From around 100-120 a day to suddenly 262 yesterday and 248 today. It's
not much of an issue in that they're all filtered out by my email
client, but the sudden increase in wasted bandwidth is alarming.

Anyone else seeing this?

I think it actually reduced here a bit. You must have made a "friend"
somewhere. :-)

Hmm. I just realised that I only counted my main address. If I add in my
Yahoo webmail address, the figure goes up by 50 a day.

With friends like that... :-)

Doesn't your ISP provide spam filtering ? With mine i can set up
blocks at the server and spam will never even reach my mailbox, so(i
think) it won't count into my quota. I'm yet to bother though, i get
around 20-30 a day and mailwasher does a wonderful job on them..

Yes, I can have spam filtering from my ISP, and also from my own hosted
server, through which the mail transits. I have it switched off in both
cases. I prefer to filter client-side, because I regularly get mail via
various sites I design from new correspondents, who would be flagged as
spam at server level, meaning I'd never see their messages. This way at
least I can trawl thru the Spam box manually and fish them out. I've got
several jobs that way, so it's a technique I'm keeping... :-)
--
ric

ric at pixelligence dot com

Paul-B <paul (AT) rasf1 (DOT) net> wrote:

ric zito wrote:

Out of nowhere, my spam just doubled :-(

From around 100-120 a day to suddenly 262 yesterday and 248 today.
It's not much of an issue in that they're all filtered out by my email
client, but the sudden increase in wasted bandwidth is alarming.

Anyone else seeing this?

Yep. Doesn't particularly bother me because my filter works well. Where
is most of yours directed, more than 95% of mine is to one or more of
the .com/.co.uk/.biz addresses I have?

I only have two addresses : the one below and a Yahoo one. I get about
50 spam a day at Yahoo too. The non-webmail spam is directed to the
address in my sig. I'm wondering : do you think the spambots that trawl
these places can reconstitute an address from my sig?

Time for a new sig, perhaps?
--
ric

ric at pixelligence dot com

ric zito wrote:

Paul-B <paul (AT) rasf1 (DOT) net> wrote:

ric zito wrote:

Out of nowhere, my spam just doubled :-(

From around 100-120 a day to suddenly 262 yesterday and 248 today.
It's not much of an issue in that they're all filtered out by my
email client, but the sudden increase in wasted bandwidth is
alarming.

Anyone else seeing this?

Yep. Doesn't particularly bother me because my filter works well.
Where is most of yours directed, more than 95% of mine is to one or
more of the .com/.co.uk/.biz addresses I have?

I only have two addresses : the one below and a Yahoo one. I get about
50 spam a day at Yahoo too. The non-webmail spam is directed to the
address in my sig. I'm wondering : do you think the spambots that
trawl these places can reconstitute an address from my sig?

Time for a new sig, perhaps?

50 a day? I logged-in to my (Outlook!) client this morning after being
away since saturday morning to find more than 700 spam mail in my CA
Anti-Spam box. Mind you, I find CA pretty damn good, and rarely have to
correct whitelist and blacklisted mail.

AFAIK I doubt whether the spambots can strip out spaces/characters in
sigs and replace them with the correct terminology, since many users
insert those characters in the full addy and don't just replace the
dots with spaces etc.

--
Paul-B Formula 1 - cheat-free version here now.

On Mon, 16 Apr 2007 at 06:22 GMT, ric zito wrote:

client, but the sudden increase in wasted bandwidth is alarming.

Europeans worrying about wasted bandwidth!? LOL )

Anyone else seeing this?

Not me, but I guess depends on what kind email traffic you are
dealing with, if your mail server has server side filtering (but
may piss you off at some times, it can go on steroids); If you
have buddies like Frank, who drinks cats piss and lets his news
reader quote your email id in full, and your id does not have
a spam-trap, and you communicate with folks in places which are
open to the internet, thats game over...

--
"Eddie Jordan there talking to... the Peugeot boss saying 'Can
I have your engine next year please'"

Anand Nene wrote:

If you
have buddies like Frank, who drinks cats piss and lets his news
reader quote your email id in full, and your id does not have
a spam-trap, and you communicate with folks in places which are
open to the internet, thats game over...

Ric's headers:

From: ADDRESS (AT) IN (DOT) SIG (ric zito)
Subject: Re: OT : sharp increase in email spam
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2007 09:32:19 +0200
Message-ID: <1hwnohi.vspm1of3jc18N%ADDRESS (AT) IN (DOT) SIG>
References: <1hwnlqw.11lf3xu1lkqvw0N%address (AT) in (DOT) sig>
<c27623pepjh6v4ildjeju3cui6j6cglkl3 (AT) 4ax (DOT) com>
Lines: 36
Path:
uni-berlin.de!fu-berlin.de!news.tiscali.de!tiscali!newsfeed1.ip.tis cali.
net!proxad.net!cleanfeed3-b.proxad.net!nnrp16-2.free.fr!not-for-mail
Newsgroups: rec.autos.sport.f1
Organization: pixelligence
User-Agent: MacSOUP/2.7 (Mac OS X version 10.4.9)
NNTP-Posting-Date: 16 Apr 2007 09:32:20 MEST
NNTP-Posting-Host: 88.161.197.226
X-Trace: 1176708740 news-2.free.fr 28791 88.161.197.226:49153
X-Complaints-To: abuse (AT) proxad (DOT) net

Frank's reply in full, including headers:

From: a_Frank <fajp (AT) notthis (DOT) optushome.com.au>
Subject: Re: OT : sharp increase in email spam
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2007 16:52:22 +1000
Message-ID: <c27623pepjh6v4ildjeju3cui6j6cglkl3 (AT) 4ax (DOT) com>
References: <1hwnlqw.11lf3xu1lkqvw0N%address (AT) in (DOT) sig>
Lines: 21
Path:
uni-berlin.de!fu-berlin.de!snewsf0.syd.ops.aspac.uu.net!news1.optus .net.
au!optus!newsfeeder.syd.optusnet.com.au!news.optus net.com.au!not-for-mai
l
Newsgroups: rec.autos.sport.f1
X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.93/32.576 English (American)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
NNTP-Posting-Host: 58.107.188.102
X-Trace: 1176706342 16555 58.107.188.102

On Mon, 16 Apr 2007 08:22:24 +0200, address (AT) in (DOT) sig (ric zito) wrote:

Out of nowhere, my spam just doubled :-(

From around 100-120 a day to suddenly 262 yesterday and 248 today. It's
not much of an issue in that they're all filtered out by my email
client, but the sudden increase in wasted bandwidth is alarming.

Anyone else seeing this?

I think it actually reduced here a bit. You must have made a "friend"

somewhere. :-)

Doesn't your ISP provide spam filtering ? With mine i can set up
blocks at the server and spam will never even reach my mailbox, so(i
think) it won't count into my quota. I'm yet to bother though, i get
around 20-30 a day and mailwasher does a wonderful job on them..

--

Regards, Frank


Where, exactly, is ric's email addy quoted in full and without a
spamtrap?



--
Paul-B Formula 1 - cheat-free version here now.

Anand Nene wrote:

On Mon, 16 Apr 2007 at 06:22 GMT, ric zito wrote:
client, but the sudden increase in wasted bandwidth is alarming.

Europeans worrying about wasted bandwidth!? LOL )

Due to ISP fair use policies, mainly.

Anyone else seeing this?

Not that I've noticed. I don't get much spam to this email address -
about 50/day if not less, despite it being unmunged. I almost don't get
any to gmail or my uni account - gmail because I only give it to
selected people, and uni I guess because it's well filtered at source.

--
Phil

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tmc1979/

Anand Nene wrote:

Not me, but I guess depends on what kind email traffic you are
dealing with, if your mail server has server side filtering (but
may piss you off at some times, it can go on steroids); If you
have buddies like Frank, who drinks cats piss and lets his news
reader quote your email id in full, and your id does not have
a spam-trap, and you communicate with folks in places which are
open to the internet, thats game over...

Every time you post to usenet you put your email address onto the
internet in a place and form that's easily available to any spambot that
wants it. I don't even mung mine and I still don't get that much spam.

--
Phil

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tmc1979/