Spam-a-shedload

Google Mail constantly deletes spam that’s over than 30 days old. In the main, I don’t see any spam, it being filtered directly into the Spam folder. And on the few occasions I’ve checked, I’ve never found anything that’s been placed there by mistake, anything that should have been destined for my Inbox.

The number of unread items in the Spam folder generally hovers around 1,800. (Google Mail kindly tells me the number of unread items therein, as might Outlook.) Given the 30 day rule, that works out at about 60 spams per day. Wow.

Of late, however, I’ve noticed two trends:

So we’ve now hit an average of 96 spams per day, so I’m hugely thankful to Google for saving me trawling through all of these. But the increase in the contents of my Spam folder cannot by any stretch be accounted for by the few that have made it there via my Inbox—maybe 30 in the last ten days, so around 100 in total.

While we’re on the subject, here’s some analysis of all that spam. First of all, the most prolific senders:

Surprising to see that I’d sent 19 of the emails, nice to know that the Viagra emails are from the official site, and comforting that Yahoo! has been correctly punctuated.

Barracuda and its numerous, less frequent variants were responsible for a further 57 emails.

Senders’ names aren’t as imaginative as they were three years ago, and middle initials are now a rarity, whereas before they were by far the norm.

As for subjects, the focus is very much on tricking people that they’ve sent undeliverable messages:

Half of all the spam (1,450 messages) shared one of only 93 titles. (Half of the same spam came from only 87 sender names.)

I was offered an Anjelina Jolie XXX Video Free.‎ ten times and Angelina Jolie seen with Justin Timberlake on Monaco yacht‎ three times. I also received 30 emails with Chinese titles that I don’t understand, perhaps offering me more Angelina videos:

Quite a lot of spam, all in all.

July 29, 2008 | Filed Under Numbers and stuff 

Comments

4 Responses to “Spam-a-shedload”

  1. The Incredible Hulk on July 30th, 2008 13:19

    Surely informational emails about the progress/success or otherwise of mails you’ve sent aren’t truly spam? They may me mails you don’t wish or need to see, but sometimes you really do want to know if something made it through? They’re certainly not in the same league as the viagra/Angelina blanket emails.

    I think you’ve distorted the spam thing by including these in your analysis.

    Only my view, of course.

  2. Dan on July 30th, 2008 20:48

    Ah no, my green friend. None of the “Mail Delivery System”-type mails are genuine delivery failures. They’re spams asking for me to click them (and their contents) under the mistaken belief that they’re proper delivery failures…

  3. Niknej on July 30th, 2008 20:53

    I would suggest that your ISP doesn’t do a very good job at filtering spam – and you might also want to consider changing your anti-spam software!!

    Oh, and you really shouldn’t proliferate your email address on those rather dodgy websites!

  4. dac on January 5th, 2009 22:00

    Some other keywords:
    = “Votre message pour allusers a ete rejete”
    = “Your E-mail has been Blocked”
    = “** Message blocked **”

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