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Randy Cassingham's BlogHistorical Details and Author's Notes from This is True®
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How to Deal With Spammers
Less spam? For the first time ever (in my experience, at least), I'm getting noticeably less spam. My spam load -- the vast majority of which my server catches for me and reports in a nightly e-mail -- is down to a "mere" 350 to 450/day.
That sounds like a lot (and it is), but it's about half of what was coming in just weeks ago. What do I attribute this to? Well, last month police in Spain raided a spam scam operation in Malaga ...and arrested 310 people in the operation!
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A few days later, Vardan Kushnir, who was described as Russia's "most prolific spammer", was found in his home -- beaten to death. It's unclear whether some spam victim tracked him down and said "take me off your list, please" with a baseball bat, or what. It frankly amazes me that this is only the second "spammer murdered" story I've ever heard. (The first was several years ago, and involved a spammer shot in the head "execution style". That one was in Russia too. Russians seem to know how to deal with those who don't just break the law, but thumb their noses at their victims in the process.)
I've been using this space to talk about spam, how "they" got your address, and what to do about it, for several years. The culmination of it all is a helpful microsite -- my Spam Primer -- but I don't advocate murder there, no matter how tempted any of us are by the notion.
Naturally, the dip in spam volume was short-lived -- except in Russia, there's so little punishment involved that other spammers rushed in to fill the vacuum. Spam is now more than 80 percent of all e-mail traffic.
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2 Comments on This Entry
All comments in this blog are reviewed prior to being published. Spammers: don't waste your time. The posting criteria are simple: if a comment is worth visitors' time to read, it's approved. If not, it's not.
Posted by William, Kansas on May 17, 2008:
I fully expect someone to write a protest that the Spanish Police has put 310 people out of work!!
Posted by Chris, Melbourne (AU) on May 19, 2008:
William of Kansas - Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
Some day, people will stop paying money to spammers (BTW - anti-phishing assistance like you find in Firefox is a Good Thing for the "average Joe" to use), and that'll make the sending of spam impractical. Hmm. That would invalidate the entire anti-spam industry...
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That's what I've been preaching for 12 years in my spam primer, but indeed enough people do buy from spammers to make it profitable. That tiny minority of people are directly responsible for the rest of us being bombarded. -rc