Interesting Editor's note from the Information Week newsletter:
In recent weeks, you've probably noticed the return of an old pest: spam. For almost two years, it seemed as if spam might finally be on the decline. Remember when Bill Gates said that by 2006, "spam will be solved"? Well, that was all going well until a few months ago when spam struck back.
According to e-mail filtering vendor Postini, spam volumes have grown 73% in the last two months. There are several recent developments that have triggered the new growth of spam:
* Spammers are now embedding their messages in images to slip past spam filters that search for keywords and phrases. The number of e-mails with images has grown from nearly zero to almost 25%. * Spammers are experimenting with the text in their messages, especially in the subject lines. All it takes is a few minor tweaks and a spammer can successfully go from the spam filter to the in-box.
-- Bill