State Of The Spam Report

At the moment the spam folder contains 38,416 spam messages. That’s about 1,280 per day!

I needed to respond to someone on Reddit.com. For some reason my direct message to her didn’t go through so I left my email address out in the open. A few minutes later another user sent me a private message.

You posted your email address and I would say that it would probably be best if you removed it – there are people on here and also a lot of bots that will pick it up and you’ll have spam coming for the rest of your life.

Too late on that. The horses are already out of the barn.

My me@geofffox.com address is hosted by Google/Gmail. Their spam filters are mainly great. Anything spammy goes into its own bin for thirty days. After that it’s automatically discarded.

At the moment the spam folder contains 38,416 spam messages. That’s about 1,280 per day!

I seldom look at it, but did now for research purposes. Scary!

Spam trends change often to try and evade filtering. At the moment there are dozens of messages claiming to be from Pfizer the maker of Viagra. Right.

There are phishing messages that say they’re from AARP. They’re not. This only establishes I am now in an age group too trusting for the net!

At one point spam used to contain lots of porn. Guess you have to search that out on-your-own nowadays. “Naked college girls who want to meet you” have been replaced by ads for those disappointed with their size. In fact the vast majority of my spam is for pharmaceuticals of all type.

Most of my spam is sad. I feel bad for the people who buy.

A Question About Spam

I don’t know about you, but I sure get a lot of spam. One of the reasons is certainly my ‘catch-all’ email address. If you send an email to, let’s say, weirdguy@geofffox.com, I get it (and after putting that bogus address here, I surely will get email at that address).

Much of the spam I get isn’t in English! I get a smattering in Chinese and a boatload in Russian.

How do I know it’s Russian? Just a guess, but those Cyrillic characters are a pretty good tipoff. It’s a product of my link being on Alex Moskalyuk’s website which is in English and Russian.

Here’s a sample email. It’s from a company that organizes tours out of Russia.

Туроператор организует:

* Конференции в Египте, Турции и Италии (мы разработаем индивидуальную программу работы и отдыха, деловые обеды и ужины для каждой группы так, что Ваши конкуренты Вам позавидуют)

* Корпоративный отдых в Египте, Турции и Италии (развлечения, праздничные обеды и ужины Вашим сотрудникам гарантированны)

* VIP -отдых частных лиц

Телефоны в Москве: (495) 585-4968; (495) 241-9489

плрнвьойи псдчйоасоен еебвши

If you’re like me (and you really should hope and pray you’re not), you probably think spam is the same worldwide. Based on the Russian spam, that’s just not so.

I can’t read it, but I can see from the structure, they’re not selling Cialis, Viagra and penis enlargement products. None of the structure used here in the states to fool spam blockers are evident. These seem to be legitimate businesses… or shady businesses marketed as legit.

I wonder what it is culturally that makes our spam so sleazy and their spam so mainstream? Someone reading this must have an idea.