May 2007 Archives

Here's a quick roundup of some snippets of interest, including a nostalgic little 'where are they now' look at the new venture of the folks behind Blue Security, more on an interesting spammer tactic, and a glimpse of the tangled thoughts of a stock spammer.

Recently, I launched a new dedicated spamtrap system with the intention of tracking how spammers acquire and distribute email addresses. It's been a bit of a slow starter, but it's starting to show results. Here's a quick summary of the first six weeks of one of my traps. This can be taken as a kind of model for what an ordinary Internet user might see if they were unwise enough to put their address on a web page.

An article at Government Technology comments on the recent rise of Mother's Day spam, referring to spammers trying to sell flowers, chocolates, and even baskets of fruit. They don't say who they have in mind, but from the list of products I'm guessing that they've been seeing the same spams that I have (and yes, The Fruit Company, we're looking at you).

I've been playing around with purpose-built spamtraps lately (and hope to post some comments on what I've learned at a later date). However, my spamtraps are purely virtual. Artist Bill Shackelford's "Spamtrap" is a different matter entirely.

I assume that when his printer runs out of ink, he is careful not to order refills from one of the many inkjet cartridge spammers around. That would be a little ironic, all things considered.

The organizers of the EU Spam Symposium were kind enough to offer me a press invitation to the symposium, which will take place in Vienna on May 24th. Due to scheduling conflicts, I won't be able to make it, but the line-up of speakers and topics sounds interesting. If you're in the neighborhood — by which I guess I mean 'Europe' — you might want to take a look.