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Zebras Get Less Spam Than Aardvarks
MojoKid writes "A recent study (PDF) by Richard Clayton at Cambridge University determined that the first letter of a someone's email address directly affects how much spam they receive. As shown in the graph at either link above, email addresses with numbers as their first characters receive even fewer spam emails. The corpus used in the study was 8 weeks' worth of email from the UK ISP Demon Internet, just over half a billion messages, of which 56% was deemed to be spam."
Spammers will now alter their programs to start with "z" and numbers, so they can get the people who aren't as desensitized by spam.
I guess that explains why I seem to get more spam than most.
-- Alastair
I can see why they'd start at the front of the alphabet, and why those folks would tend to get more spam.
But wouldn't numbers sort even in front of the letter A?
We had an ex-city manager, who had a son named Zachary Z. Zoul.
Zebra's and aardvarks don't eat Spam. Or ham.
The conclusion is ridiculous. There's more spam for addresses starting with 'a' than with 'z' because there is more traffic to those addresses. See the the graph. The line in the graph is the only solid piece of information, and it is just a lot of noise around the mean value of 56%; if anything, it indicates the opposite conclusion.
The state you are in while your HEAD is detached... - wait, what?
Sounds worse than being "a n other".
I thought most in the know see a far higher percentage, my ISP records over 95%:
Xs4all statistics
Makes me wonder about the rest.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
I dnrta ; but I'd imagine that's down to the filtering of mail..
The first x% make it through the filters; then they start getting flagged - be it by reports from the recipients (think AOL Scomp, etc), bouncebacks or by bayesian filters, etc - the spamtype is noted and starts getting blocked.
If my assumptions are correct; a bright spammer would run a mix on his list so they're not in alphabetical order.
The logic being - that those who receive lots of spam (the A's, B's, C's etc) have already started to take measures to block spam or have simply become desensitised to it. Mix it up and those in the M's, Q's, S's, etc start getting spam that previously never made it to their inbox.
how many e-mail addresses are there that start with a number??
d`oooh
mov ax,4c00h
int 21h
I know nobody actually bothered to read it, but from the graph it looks like there are much more email addresses starting with an "a" than with a "z". The former get about as much spam as legit emails, while the latter get about 2 or 3 times more spam than legit emails.
this post contain no useful information, no need to mod it down
and yes they get tons of spam, about 99.999% of connection attempts are spam, but a couple of RBLs and Spam Assassin takes care of it. If I turn the protection off, then I get about 10,000 spams per hour, which seems to be a limitation of the server. If the server was faster, then it would probably get more spam. With the filters on, I get about 1 message per hour, which is more acceptable. I don't like the idea of RBLs, but I see no other way to handle the problem - if you are a spammer, then I don't want to talk to you - ever. Stupid idiots. It is also interesting that all brute force attacks that I have observed start at 'a'. So the best passwords will start with 'z'.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I get more like 98% spam.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
email spammers also probably parse out email addresses that dont start with alpha characters...
But in the real world there is no such thing as perfection. It is a philosophical construct.
Deleted
From looking at that graph; it would be more interesting to see the signal to noise ratio for each of the letters and numbers. Those names beginning with an 'A' do indeed receive more spam, but also far more non-spam. In fact it looks to be more like 50:51 (non-spam : spam), whereas from first glance those email addresses beginning with a 'P' receive 40:60.
Spammers work from lists of email addresses, and those email addresses are typically sorted by domain and then alphabetically. So, the receiving domain gets a rush of emails for users with addresses beginning with A, B, C etc. But usually (at some point) many mail systems will detect that there is a spam attack in progress and they will block subsequent messages of the same format or from the attacking IP address (depending on the spam filtering setup in place).
So, but simply the people beginning with "A" get nice new spam that the adaptive filters don't detect. By the time it gets to "Z" a good filter will automatically block the attack.
What's sad is that I watch spam attacks often enough to know this.
Never email donotemail@WeAreSpammers.com
I just opened an email starting with 'z' you insensitive clod!
Am I the only one who actually paid attention to the graph? Yes, sure, the "overall" spam amounts for A is much bigger than for Z, but that is because there are more email addresses that start with the letter A than those starting with the letter Z. If not, check how spam/non-spam percentages all stay withing the 50%-75% interval.
In other words: more email messages = more spam, "OH GOD!!11ONE let's write a paper!"
Slow news day?
I rarely get spammed, even on hotmail
My servers get at least 95% identified (and blocked) spam vs. ham across ~200 domains that have different characteristics. And i know that some of them slip through the filters also.
Spam? wot that?
With two z's.
"But my name really is ZZwyggle!"
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I just created the e-mail address zh80lukgwggok4kko0kcbrhjm@hotmail.com (yes, seriously)
Now, let's see if that holds true.
Zebras already have big penises!
FRA: STFU GTFO
No spammer has ever bothered me!
I worship the letter "A" and sneer at these pantywaist spammers!
Aardvarks will NEVER give in to threats of spam!
Nor we aardwolves!
.
- Aaron A. -
Bringing Pinoqachole to the natives since 1643.
The reason zebras get less spam is because the spammers know that they are already hung like a horse!
I like my coffee the way I like my women - roasted and ground up into little tiny pieces.
So that explains it!
- arbitrary aardvark.
+3 funny, sad.
...who thinks this is nonsense? The spam/ham ratio isn't really conclusive, and that's what matters, right? Thanks, Chaz