Friday, January 2, 2004

Spam und drang: 136,235

At the stroke of midnight, the grand total was 136,235 unsolicited, commercial e-mail messages received on one account (my primary personal e-mail address) in one calendar year, 2003. That's 566,795K of worthless e-mail and wasted bandwidth. Not one of those messages advertised a product or service in which I was even remotely interested; hell, most of them didn't even make any sense, just strings of gibberish, random words and numbers.

By the end of December, I was receiving about 700 spam messages every day.

If I spent just one second scanning the subject line of each message and deleting it, that means I spent roughly 37.8 hours in 2003 dealing with garbage e-mail. Almost a full work week! I suspect I spent somewhat more than that, actually.

And if I'd kept track of all the crap messages received on all of the e-mail addresses I administer, for both work and personal projects, those numbers would be staggeringly higher. If I added in all of the spam that's sent everyday to non-existent addresses at my domains, you could multiply the total by a factor of 10. If I added in the bounced messages that come back to me because some unscrupulous spammer (and how's that for redundant?) spoofed my domain when sending out their shitty missives, you could count on another 20,000-30,000 messages.

What does it all mean? It means the noise is way, way, way outshouting the signal. It means that legitimate mass e-mail (say, newsletters my theatre subscribers have double opt-in requested) is automatically rejected as spam. It means that I can no longer send e-mail from bradlands.com to my friends with AOL or Road Runner accounts because those companies have gotten dozens of complaints of spam coming from my domain.

It means e-mail is broken, perhaps irreparably so.

A reminder: I'm taking measures -- short-term solutions, perhaps -- to personally opt out of the spam und drang. I have a new private personal e-mail address. If you're in my address book, you should have already received my particulars (except if you're using AOL or Road Runner). If you didn't, no hard feelings. I'm just trying to keep my e-mail safe and myself somewhat sane.

Beginning January 31, all mail to the old address -- nearly six years old -- will begin bouncing. Correspondence will also be accepted through a simple feedback form on this website, location to be announced shortly.

Wednesday, November 12, 2003

Spam Toteboard

Let's do the numbers: A short while ago, I predicted I was on track to receive about 100,000 spam messages by the end of the year. As you can see from the count at the left, my estimation fell somewhat short of the mark. If my inbox's spam intake continues apace, I'll hit the 100M mark sometime in the next day or so, probably whilst I'm away in New York. At this rate, there's no telling what the tally will be come December 31.

As if to mark the crossing of this particular landmark, some pluperfect scum-sucking sad excuse for a human being chose today to spoof dozens of non-existent addresses at bradlands.com, sending out an advertisement for an exceptionally shitty heterosexual personals/porn site in my name, as it were. I've been receiving the fallout in the form of bounced mail for the past few hours.

If you have received e-mail from me in the past 24 hours and it didn't come from the address under "Contact" in the left hand column of this page, I'm sorry. I'll never become a spammer -- never, ever -- but if I did, I'd send you tidings leading to a much higher class of porn. Of that, you may be sure.

Monday, October 13, 2003

Spam Update

The universe folds in on itself: The spam deluge continues unabated here, with a high-water mark of 658 messages received in one day last week. The most common products being offered? Vicodin, viagra and...anti-spam software. Irony, thy name is e-mail marketing asswipes.

Meanwhile, I've received my first incidents of "comment spam" here in The BradLands. Not surprising that I'm a latecomer to that pitiful party, since I don't often enable comments on materials posted here. But, sure enough, three plugs for porn sites -- hetero porn, even, so not particularly well-targeted -- were attached to entries here this morning. They were promptly deleted and the IP address from which they were posted was also banned from further commenting hereabout. The messages accompanying them were obviously hand-written, since they dealt more or less with the subject of the post they were spamming. The most ironic one there? A comment to my last musings on the amount of spam I receive, suggesting ways to mitigate my e-mail spam problem.

Porn site comment spam purporting to be about e-mail spam? The end-times are at hand.

Thursday, September 25, 2003

The weight of spam

The weight of spam: As of this writing, I've received 71,120 unsolicited commercial e-mail messages in 2003, and that count is growing by approximately 500 messages per day. Keep in mind that I'm only tracking mail on my primary, personal e-mail account; the total would be a bit higher were I tracking receipts on all domains and addresses which I manage. (Some poor sots get 3,000 spam messages every day.)

Since January 1, I've not only been counting my spam receipts, I've been saving them. Right now, I've got an archive totalling some 297 megabtyes of crap. My original thought was that the aggregate file would be handy to use as fodder for a spam filter, as a means of training it to recognize the dreck. But, truly, SpamAssassin has been doing a bang-up job for me since I began using it, and I can't fathom that feeding it 71,000 junk messages is going to make it appreciatively better.

So, what should I do with all this spam? Come the end of the year, I'm likely to have 100,000 messages or more. Are there any fun analyses you'd like me to do? Any word frequency charts? Weird pattern searches? I'm open to suggestions (and have provided a comments link for this post), but keep in mind that my programming chops are pretty meager, so if you can't explain how to do what you're proposing in BBEdit or a few lines of script, it's probably beyond my ken.

Monday, August 11, 2003

Weekend Spam Warrior

Weekend Spam Warrior: Evan Williams asks if there's more spam on weekends or simply seems to be. I have to say, I haven't noticed a difference between weekdays and weekends in my receipts but, just for giggles, I went back to look at the past few weeks:

Sun 08/10	297	Wed 07/30	393
Sat 08/09	287	Tue 07/29	387
Fri 08/08	392	Mon 07/28	400
Thu 08/07	511	Sun 07/27	335
Wed 08/06	448	Sat 07/26	365
Tue 08/05	476	Fri 07/25	378
Mon 08/04	458	Thu 07/24	396
Sun 08/03	354	Wed 07/23	399
Sat 08/02	330	Tue 07/22	389
Fri 08/01	406	Mon 07/21	362
Thu 07/31	370	Sun 07/20	346
		Sat 07/19	309

So, yeah, I think things are pretty constant day to day. If anything, I see a slight decrease in the amount of spam I receive on weekends. (Usual disclaimers: Unscientific approach, measuring spam messages on just my personal e-mail address, this is an exhibition, not a competition, no wagering please, blah blah blah.)

Sunday, July 20, 2003

Spam Count: 44,645

Spam Year Continues: As of this writing, the 2003 Spam Count has reached 44,645, which is significant only because it's just about where I thought it would be...at the end of the year.

When I decided, on a whim, to keep track of all the unsolicited, commercial e-mail I received this year, I estimated that on December 31, 2003, I'd wind up with about 45,000 spam messages, a guess borne out when by the middle of January, I was receiving an average of 118 spams each day. What a difference a few months make! We're 200 days in, over half the year past, and by the current count, I'm receiving an average of 222 spam messages each day.

On one hand, that's appalling. On another, it's perversely fascinating, watching number grow day by day. But one thing is clear, and was even before I began this little project: spam is out of control. Even though SpamAssassin catches nearly everything that isn't a valid e-mail message and shunts it into a separate folder so I can peruse it from time to time and even though I have a private, "unlisted" e-mail address for vital messages and family members, the amount of junk that passes through my server is intolerable.

I've hardly even got the worst of it. Last week, Lance told me he was receiving 3,000 spam messages per day. (It's a little apples-to-oranges, since Lance is trapping spam to every address at his domain, while I'm only counting mail to my primary address, but still!)

For the sake of the project, I'll be tolerating and counting spam for another few months but, come January 1, 2004, I'll start playing hardball in a couple of new ways, not least of which will be completely abandoning the e-mail address I've had for 5+ years. Until then, I'll be making guesses about what the year-end total winds up to be. My current bet is on an even 100,000.

Further: Within 30 seconds of posting this entry, another 31 spam messages arrived. And the beat goes on...

Tuesday, March 25, 2003

Things My Spam Wants to Know

Interrogatories Posed by a Sampling of Subject Lines:
(random strings of numbers deleted)

Hi? Huh? Sick of SPAM? Are you single? Are you smarter than George W. Bush? Are you looking for a way out? Ben Affleck NUDE!? Bleeding Gums? Gingivitis? Gum Disease? Are you a go-getter??? Have you ever had a Computer Virus? Do you suffer from joint pain? Looking for extra holiday cash? Do you suffer from mood swings? Do you need a vacation? Can you assist us? Can we give you a free Euro dollar? Can you believe what he did? Do you have what it takes? Over 40? Are you snoring yourself to death? Having troubles with emails? When can we meet? Do you measure up in bed? I've got your check? Is your phone bill too high? Bowels, how do you clean them? Buying a car? Buying a new car? Buying a car soon? Buying a home? Can you handle an ebony fox like this? Can you verify you wish to be listed? Depressed? Did you know you can copy your DVDs? Did you know you can legally own a cable descrambler? Did you receive the latest interest rates? Did you see this in USA Today? Do you need to advertise??? Do you owe more than your car is worth? Do you remember me? Do you own a master license for your site? Do you spend too much for MEDICATION? Do you want to stop using drugs? Do you want a permanent Internet address? Do you want free porn? Do you WANT to give your partner MORE pleasure? Do you want to be in a great mood? Does your pet have arthritis? Does your business accept credit cards? Does your cable TV bill make you cry? Tired of pay-per clicks? Ever bang a chick you just met? Fed up with aggrevating pop-up ads?? Feeling fat? Hate typing? Have a small dick? Have you got anything on Friday night? Have you heard? Have you heard of dot biz? How about this one? How about a game of poker this weekend? How bad is your credit? How close are you to being a genius? How could you say no to a smile like this? How did THIS get on my computer? How does this 24 year old bang so many babes? How does your pet measure up? How many credit cards can you get? How's your job working out? I need to masturbate, and you? Is there something on your credit that shouldn't be? Is your high school sweetheart single? Like delectable big boobs? Looking for love? Looking for love, friendship or romance? Looking to get a move on your future? Looking to meet someone nearby? Love to cook? Need $24,000 in 24 hours? Need a break? Next to a palm tree? Need more energy? Need to learn Excel? Need to learn Powerpoint? Need to see your family more? Tired of eBay? Tired of feeling sick and tired? Tired of the 40x40x40 plan? Tired of waiting for an allowance from your husband? Tired of deleting junk e-mail?