spam numbers and spammers

daily spam

Number of spam mails received on @cobbaut.be. From less than 1000/day in 2008 to +2000/day last month. Luckily Thunderbird puts 99.6 percent of those in the Junk folder.

2008
Oct : 25252
Nov : 28153
Dec : 31573

2009
Jan : 38451
Feb : 33050
Mar : 36850
Apr : 50240
May : 68329

having a .be domain
Now before you say Thunderbird cannot be that good, let me explain my old anti-spam system. With every registration on a website, I used a unique address in the @cobbaut.be domain. This unique name contains where(website), when(date) and reason for giving an email address (usually no_spam_please). All these addresses are easily recognized by Thunderbird and manually added to the Junk filter upon receiving the first spam.

data mining the spam
- Two months ago zattevrienden.be started spamming the 1998 advalvas registration.
- About 8000 monthly spams are sent to my public 2006 slashdot address
- 33072 spams were sent to an address I used once to play a stupid flashbased online game (I played it once!)
- 15163 spams sent to an address used to communicate with one single person only!
- 16751 spams sent to my old usenet registration
- ... let me know if you want me to run grep on my spam collection

gmail solution
Gmail has the excellent feature that lets people mark a mail as spam and takes this 'mark' into account when filtering any Inbox.

For example today vroom.be sent out spam: "Je ontvangt deze mail omdat je tijdens jouw registratie hebt aangegeven op de hoogte te willen worden gehouden door geselecteerde partners van Vroom.be." Utter bullshit of course since I have never been to that website. Thanks to other people marking this as spam, the mail was sent directly to the spam folder!
(no i'm not archiving gmail spam)

spam van data4

Jawatte, kheb deze morgen eens in de Trash gekeken...vol met spam van data4. Toch leuk dat mijn filterkes goed werken, mijn Inbox blijft redelijk proper...dat wil zeggen, het beperkt zich tot een twintigtal spam mails per dag. In de Trash kom ik aan tienduizend per maand ongeveer...

Waarom spam data4.com spam mij plots wil spammen is een raadsel, ik ben zeker dat ik nooit bevestigd heb dat ik mail wil ontvangen... 't zullen weer van die pummels zijn die opt-out verkiezen boven opt-in.

Tips for Protecting the Home Computer

Wow, the New York Times is at it again. Only yesterday they explained about botnets, in other words they confirmed that Microsoft Windows is the origin of all the spam we are getting. And now this:
"Using a non-Windows-based PC may be one defense against these programs, known as malware..." read it all here.

Finally the mainstream press is paying some attention to valid alternatives to a convicted monopolist.

Zombie computers in botnets

Finally this gets the mainstream news. From the article:

"In their persistent quest to breach the Internet’s defenses, the bad guys are honing their weapons and increasing their firepower. With growing sophistication, they are taking advantage of programs that secretly install themselves on thousands or even millions of personal computers, band these computers together into an unwitting army of zombies, and use the collective power of the dragooned network to commit Internet crimes. These systems, called botnets, are being blamed for the huge spike in spam that bedeviled the Internet in recent months, as well as fraud and data theft."

Read the whole story in The New York Times (free spamless registration may be required).

Pesterij van een Belgacom-ADSL klant...

Iemand heeft me rond middernacht ingeschreven op een hoop mailinglijsten.
'k zit hier met tweehonderd confirmation/nieuwsbrief mails.

Heb ook reklame op de gsm gekregen rond middernacht :(

De twee gaan zeker verband hebben met elkaar, voor middernacht
onder andere free-sms, free-ringtones etc. mails gekregen.

Het is met zekerheid iemand met een Belgacom-Skynet-ADSL abo...
ik heb zijn/haar ip-adres in enkele van de confirmation-mails gevonden.

72.106-247-81.adsl-dyn.isp.belgacom.be (81.247.106.72)

Wat kan ik doen ? Want ik vermoed dat Belgacom nooit gaat willen
zeggen wie achter dat IP zat vorige nacht...

Hoe lang houdt Belgacom bij wie aan welke ip zit ?