Observation - New Year reduction in spam
 

A typical day sees about fifty spam e-mails to my work e-mail address getting trapped by Postini according to the report I receive each morning, and about twenty arriving in the spam folder of the personal e-mail address that I use exclusively for web shopping.

During the past week however both mailboxes have been the target of but a trickle of spam - 1 or 2 e-mails per day and yesterday and today, nothing. Zero. Zilch.

Probably simply a sign of how many PCs have been switched off whilst their owners have fun celebrating, but I have never seen this large a drop off at Christmas or New Year before.

I recall that one of the world's biggest spam botnets was recently shut down too, but have other PPRuNers also noticed the same thing over the past week?


XV

XV105,

Morning XV105 and happy new year to you.

I suspect you might be the exception rather than the rule. Unless another botnet has been shutdown you're probably just experiencing a run of good luck! The Lethic and Grum spambots for example have been showing an upward trend ever since the demise of one of their competitors in October.

Another example, take a look at the messagelabs stats for the last week..... spam rate has been pretty constant....

Messagelabs Intelligence

Thanks, mixture, and a happy New Year to you, too!

That is an interesting link, ta, now bookmarked for future reference. Interesting that I should have two accounts both bucking the trend but I agree with you that the charts point to exactly that.

XV

Received a 'bashed on the head, stranded in Nigeria, need $200,000' e-mail over the holiday period. First one I'd had for a very long time though.

XV,

It seems Symantec are seeing similar trend bucking to you. They are putting it down to the Rustock botnet suddenly going quiet.

Spam from Rustock, Lethic and Xarvester Disappears over the Holiday Season | Symantec Connect

I'm just seeing a general decline in email traffic, with the same percentages of spam still in there. Maybe not everybody's at work yet?

Awww...poor mikey, feeling the post holiday blues ? ..... tell you what, give me your email address, and I'll give you a bit more email traffic... :p

...ah! beaten to it with something in a very similar vein! :D

I was talking about my spam filter appliances, but yes i'm unloved too! :)

Aww come on, Mike, we all love you!

(Mind you, I also liked living in Bracknell for 20 years, so that might say something about me? There, I've said it now.)

It seems XV105 was right about his hunch....

BBC News - Global spam e-mail levels suddenly fall

See also here.....

Taking Stock of Rustock :Krebs on Security

Rustock has reduced spam volumes and is focusing on its pay per click fraud efforts.

It seems to be quite an interesting security blog in general, I haven't seen it before. His rather scary section on ATM skimmers is also worth a peek. Apartently the criminals are now starting to use GSM to get feeds of cards live. :eek: