Real-time Spam Map

iggychaos writes "Mailinator, the free, temporary email service gets a lot of spam (over a million emails a day). And with another cool application of Google maps, the site now shows a Spam Map indicating what sites are spamming mailinator in (nearly) real time. It's oddly addictive to poke around and see where the spam is actually coming from."

Comments

Re:Not all that accurate

[filenabber]

We threw in a couple joke locations just for fun. The algorithm is sound.

Re:Apple?

[TheRaven64]

There is no algorithm. People sign up and get a one-shot email address. The first email sent to this address is forwarded to another address, and all subsequent ones are considered spam.

I suspect the reason for the large number of Apple emails is idiots who download iTunes and supply a one-shot email address instead of simply unchecking the `send me iTunes newsletters' box on the download page.

Invalid Survey

[Anonymous Coward]

This is really an invalid survey because of tunnels and portals that most spammers use. This link gives a far better representation of the overall spam locations in the world. They actually trace backed the mail to its origin to map where it was coming from.
On a side note there are far better services out there similar to mailinator like shortmail.net and pookmail.com that should be checked out.

Re:So how long unitl the Spammers...

[Drinian]

So how long unitl the Spammers simply block the mailinator.com domain? Or websites refuse to take email addresses from that domain?

From the FAQ:

What are alternate domains?

Every now and then you bump into a website that does not permit email addresses at mailinator.com (scoundrels!). Don't fret. There is more than one domain pointing to the mailinator system. If you send email to one of the listed alternate domains - it will come to mailinator.com just as if you sent it directly. For example, stinky@mailinator.com is EXACTLY the same as stinky@fakeinformation.com (which are exactly the same as any other domain in the list).