I had this wonderful theory all worked out, and even backed up with some anecdotal evidence, that the holiday e-commerce season had resulted in a sudden bump-up in spam. Certainly my mailbox seems to have more unsolicited e-mail than ever, and a lot of it recently has appeared to be holiday-related. Makes sense, I thought, the bottom-line urgency of the holidays translates to increased spam.
Turns out I was both right and wrong.
My online spam expert source, Jason Catlett at junkbusters.com (mission: to free the world from junk communications) told me that he, too, seemed to be noticing an uptick in spam as the holidays neared. "I agree from my subjective point of view," he said. "Of course our mileage may vary."
Catlett recommended I talk to the folks at brightmail.com, who operate a "spamometer" as well as sell (and give away to individuals) spam-blocking software.
Well, it turns out that the spamometer has some useful data but hadn''t been updated recently enough for my purposes. But data from the Brightmail Logistics and Operations Center show that it''s seeing between 8,000 and 13,000 spam attacks per week -- about the same as last October.
"The holidays specifically have not produced anything significant or new in terms of a spike in spam that is focused on gifts," said Chris Halcon, Public Relations Manager at Brightmail.
So why does it feel as if there is more holiday-oriented spam?
"Although new holiday-type spam is not increasing, spammers are making slight changes to old spam and putting a holiday ''spin'' to the messages," Halcon told me in an e-mail exchange.
"For example, this message that we have seen two to three months ago, ''Get rid of that bad credit now'' has turned into ''Get rid of that bad credit for the holidays'' and ''Need Help With Paying Your Bills?'' is now ''Need Help Paying Your Holiday Bills?''," Halcon said.
Of course. Makes perfect sense to me. So much for my theories on holiday spam. But as for regular spam, the garden-variety, day-in and day-out kind, it''s a tidal wave, Brightmail says.
In late November the company said that it had intercepted 8,000 to 13,000 spam attacks each day over the course of a week. Each spam attack represents the bulk mailing of a message with unique characteristics sent during a 24-hour period, the company said. For example, the same message, mailed 1,500 times over the course of 24 hours, equals one spam attack.
In October the company had found an average of 4,900 attacks per day, which it said represented a 400 percent increase over the previous year.
"Spammers are becoming more aggressive and sophisticated in their attempts to deliver a myriad of products, "get rich", weight loss, political, and other dubious propositions to the fast growing number of e-mail boxes," said Gary Hermansen, CEO of Brightmail.
Brightmail''s Logistics and Operations Center produces and deploys countermeasures to the e-mail networks of customers such as AT&T WorldNet, Critical Path, Earthlink, Motorola, MSN and others.
Brightmail is a privately held firm with funding from Accel Partners, Crosslink Capital, Symantec Corporation, and Technology Crossover Ventures.
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