Spam Surges Again After McColo Takedown
Last month we reported that spam levels dropped by half when rogue ISP McColo was taken offline. Well it now appears that spammers have regrouped and are finding ways to send more junk mail. “At the current rates, we’ll be back at those pre-McColo takedown levels probably within the next three to five weeks,” said Adam Swidler, senior product marketing manager for Google Message Security. Almost 75% of all email this month was spam, a figure which reflects spammers’ changing tactics to ensure their messages are not blocked. They are using programs that detect a person’s ISP and then route the mail through that ISP, which avoids it getting blocked. ISPs are not currently set up to stop that kind of abuse. An interesting side note from InfoWorld about the McColo takedown: “It was the community of researchers rather than law enforcement that caused McColo’s upstream providers to disconnect it from the Internet.” See our guide on how to prevent spam.
According to the stats I get from my mail handler, I am getting an average of 500,000 spams per month. Since my email address has remained unchanged for over a decade, it isn’t surprising that I’m on all the lists, probably multiple times.
My solution is expensive, but worth it. I signed my company up with AppRiver (Appriver.com) and have never regretted it. Yes, it does cost me a bit over $500 per year to have them screen all my mail, but the hours I save each week make the yearly fee paltry.
With AppRiver also screening my staff’s email accounts I find that so little spam gets through to us that the value of the staff time saved each week more than pays the annual fees of AppRiver.
I’m sure that there are other services that have comparable products, but I have not tried them as yet.
Respectfully submitted,
=== Bob
Thanks for your unbiased insight, Bob. Seems like Bob is a spammer himself.