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Real-time Spam Map

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the now-thats-a-cool-idea dept.

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."

7 of 230 comments (clear)

  1. Hey! It's Steve Jobs!! by moehoward · · Score: 3, Insightful


    Looks like they count iTunes New Music Tuesday newsletter as spam.

    Does this mean we sign up Steve for a bunch of catalogs and junk mail to be sent to his home address?

    And why do almost all of the points on the map say 100 Emails received? Seems odd.

    I think this is not exactly what it's cracked up to be.

    --
    "If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
  2. Not the source of spam by Underholdning · · Score: 5, Insightful

    More likely, this is a map of open relays and zombies.

    --
    Underholdning.info
    1. Re:Not the source of spam by MemeRot · · Score: 2, Insightful

      When I looked I only saw two zombies, one on mindspring, one on adelphia. I feel real sorry for the guy having this sent from his mindspring account:

      Subject: MSOOT ILEELGAL Ch!ld P0rn0 SITEES IN NET
      IP address: 69.81.140.120
      DNS Name: user-12l333o.cable.mindspring.com
      Location: Mansfield, OH, US
      Emails: 100

  3. Re:Turkey by filenabber · · Score: 2, Insightful

    As the writer of the mapcode, I can confirm...yes, tehre are a few random funny ones thrown in there for giggles. brian

    --
    Are you a Candy Addict?
  4. Re:Wow... no FL? by ergo98 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Most spammer businesses seem to be based out of Boca Raton, FL

    The businesses themselves might be, but the hordes of trojaned or rented computers circle the globe. This service is merely tracing the source IP and mapping that.

    Personally I think it's pretty craptacular. I was expecting something like colour coding of each country per the current volume of spam emanating from them, perhaps zoomable to political subdivisions (state, etc). Some lamely coded pushpins doesn't really provide a lot of info.

  5. Bill Gates and Google Tools... by MosesJones · · Score: 4, Insightful


    Ummm so when Bill said that they wanted to give people the tools to organise the information....

    How is Google not providing the tools? Seems to me that Google is providing better tools, just not requiring people to buy and operating system to use them.

    --
    An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
  6. Re:haha look at all the Americans by Ph33r+th3+g(O)at · · Score: 3, Insightful

    China is where the "bullet-proof hosting" services are mostly housed. You can't shake a stick at a group of spamvertised sites without hitting Chinanet. The emails themselves don't come from China because lots of intelligent mail admins block the whole country.

    --
    I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.