Anti spam specialists and companies predict an average of 78 billion peaces of spam to be sent daily as we get closer to Christmas.
Anti spam software and mail servers have to work hard to process more and more loads of emails to fight this onslaught of spam but as we all know, this is a cat-and-mouse game.
Sophisticated spammers design and test their spam messages against the current spam definitions. Spam filters will not be able to catch 100% the spam.
Say, a spam filter catches 99% of the spam, there is still that 1% that will be missed. That is 1 out of 100 spam sent. Not a big number. But 1% of 78 billion is certainly a very big number.
The server statistics for Geek With Laptop show that my mail servers are hit with more than a million peaces of spam each day, which is close to quadruple the hits in the previous month… but I don’t like spam!
Mail servers are designed to handle large number of emails, but with the sudden influxes, even the most powerful mail server requires time to digest all the emails. Hence, mail delivery is delayed.
It is unfortunate that my mail server has to work so much harder to process the large load of emails, a large percentage of which is junk mail. Thanks spammers. Lumps of coal for you this year.
And it’s not just spam that is a concern to me, there is also the email viruses and other email-borne threats that inundate our in boxes.
So what am I doing to help prevent this nightmare of spam-tastic per portions from hammering on my servers?
- Implemented new measures and procedures to monitor and ensure the effects of spam are kept to the lowest.
- Employed more mail servers to alleviate the load of my existing mail servers.
- Installed a Barracuda Spam Firewall.
and some other behind the scenes secret sauce which I won’t disclose because the spammers subscribe to my RSS feed.
I’ve also made sure that my personal and work machines are all patched with the latest security updates, all my anti virus products are up-to-date and I’ve done some serious house cleaning on all my hard drives, done a ton of registry fixes and cleaning and triple checked for spy ware and male ware on all my machines.
At this point all is well on the Island of Misfit Toys but it will still require daily monitoring and tweaks but with what I have in place now, I’m better prepared for the storm of spam coming my way this holiday season… are you prepared?
- Email issues | July 26, 2004
- Microsoft Patches For January 2007 | January 9, 2007
- Dumb Regulators To Legalize Bluetooth Spam | October 8, 2007
- Google Maps Mashup Shows Spam Sources In Real Time | July 30, 2007
- Attention fellow Geeks: Cover your Web tracks | January 27, 2004
Call me lazy, but I just use my Gmail account for everything. I setup tons of filters to label my incoming email, and I rarely see a spam message in my inbox.
You’re not lazy Brandon, you just use the tools provided to you by Google which is fine but you can bet Google has done a lot of the same things I’ve done and put into place, just on a much larger scale to defend against spam this holiday season.
I’m sure they have - I’ve noticed a large jump in the number of messages in my spam folder in just the past few days.
I don’t have any spam in my Gmail folder, and my school address only gets spammed by people in the school, so nothing I can do about that (and I guess it is arguable that job offers are spam, but in defense of my calling them that, I am not eligible for 95+% of them).
My Hotmail and Yahoo accounts barely get three emails in a year, and while I might get spam at my AOL/Netscape, I forgot how to access those so long ago it doesn’t really matter.
In comparison my Lycos account gets hammered by spam, with up to ten spams on the really bad days…
Hi Luke,
You have just a few email addresses don’t you?
You’re very lucky to not be getting hammered with spam, especially with Hotmail and Yahoo accounts.
Your issue with Verizon Wireless is fixed in the upcoming release of Bad Behavior, which should be out in a day or two.
Next time please contact me if you’re having problems.
Hi Michael. Thanks for popping by my little space on the Internet.
It’s good to know you have an update coming out for Bad Behavior.
I think your plugin does an amazing job but as mentioned, the latest release doesn’t seem to like Verizon too much.
I’ve received all kinds of messages from friends and clients that have had issues, so I’ll be keeping my eyes out for your new version so I can get the people I know updated to the new release.