Project Honey Pot Traps Billionth Spam

EastDakota writes "Project Honey Pot today announced that it had trapped its 1 billionth spammer. To celebrate, the team behind the largest community sourced project tracking online fraud and abuse released a full rundown of statistics on the last five years of spam. Findings include: spam drops 21% on Christmas Day and 32% of New Year's Day; the most spam is sent on Mondays, the least on Saturdays; spammers found at least 956 different ways to spell VIAGRA (e.g., VIAGRA, V1AGRA, V1@GR@, V!AGRA, VIA6RA, etc.) in mail received by the Project; and much more."

Comments

People fall for spam?

[rehtonAesoohC]

It's been a long lonnnng time since I've actually seen a spam message that I didn't immediately recognize as spam... Maybe some people are completely ignorant of the fact that someone on the internet is out to take your money (*gasp!*), but honestly, how can the amount of effort expended in creating spam compare to the amount of money they receive from suckers who click on "V1AGRA!11!!" links?

I'm just sayin'...

Re:People fall for spam?

[Thanshin]

You should reason the opposite way.

Knowing that spam gives benefit. Who are the people who fall on all those traps and how could we help them not to?

Re:People fall for spam?

[castironpigeon]

how can the amount of effort expended in creating spam compare to the amount of money they receive from suckers who click on "V1AGRA!11!!" links?

You're saying you don't know anybody who clicks on ads because they read "Click Here" ?

Re:People fall for spam?

[zullnero]

You'd be surprised. There are still people out there dipping their first toe in the Internet pool because they felt it was time that they learn this "email" thing for various reasons. Those are precisely the people that spammers are targeting.

That said, bulk email is very 1999, and the spammers know it. The real goal these days is to try to get as many systems out there connected to botnets as possible and try to "force feed" as many people with spam as they possibly can. The key is to fashion emails to look as concise as possible, and get your parents' and friends' computers to send that email to you instead of a complete stranger. Suddenly, the basic spam defense tactics that we all know and live by go out the window. Everyone's mom or dad has a mailing list for forwards, and that is a prime target. If you got an email from your dad saying "I just made my own website!" and a link, you can bet there'd be at least a few kids who'd try to be good kids and click that link. And they're always the ones who don't patch their systems up, too.

Maybe

[machinelou]

Maybe now with a billion samples, we can start training people how to recognize it.

Re:ok

[maxwell demon]

Did you check if your mail server is actually an open relay?

Re:956 ways?

[daveime]

Pare, considering you've been in the "editing" stage since February 2007, perhaps it's time to update your sig to "I've grown tired of making a Low Budget HDV Filipino Horror Movie in NYC" ?

Re:Spam = spy chatter?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

in short... yes

This is not true. All SPAM needs to get published is somebody to spend a few bucks to get their message out there. That's it. SPAM rates are not goverened by success of the ad. SPAM is, however, dirt cheap (I think I read something like $100 for 50,000 messages...) and a number of people use that stupid "if I only get 1% of those...." logic.

Advertising in general works like that. We still have pop-up ads because some dumb-shits out there are ordering them.