[RndTbl] SPAM

Bill Reid billreid at shaw.ca
Thu Dec 28 14:33:08 CST 2006


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


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