Gettin' Slammed with SPam

[felipe808]

Is everyone else getting slammed over the last week or two? The pass through is really noticeable.

Are the Spammers Baysean learning filters operating at "geometric rate" while Postini puts one foot in front of the other?

[AndrewT]

Spam protection is very reactive in nature. It will never be perfect and it takes time to adapt to new spam.

If you are using Postini, you'll want to check the headers of the spam emails to see if postini.com is even present in them. If not, then the spammer is bypassing your MX records and sending directly to the server where the domain resides. This is rather common and you can setup an account level filter in cPanel to discard these.

[felipe808]

Most are for watches and Viagra.

[AndrewT]

Are you using Postini? Did you follow my advice?

[felipe808]

Yes, sir....all have Postini headers...it just seemed to spike up...everyone in the office has mentioned it. Thanks.

[AndrewT]

If Postini is present in the headers then there really isn't much that can be done. You may want to consider increasing the aggressiveness of the Postini filtering if you don't already have it maxed out. Otherwise it is just a waiting game for the filtering to adapt.

[felipe808]

OK. Roger that...pretty much figured that. It's interesting anyway to see how the spammers stay ahead. Very creative they are.

[ZYV]

As for me, I am always wondering what kind of idiots actually buy stuff they feature in the spam messages.

Just think about it: spam is a business. It has to obey to all of the normal business rules. If nobody buys junk they're selling, than they won't make money and will be unable to pay the rats that write spam bots and the internet connection they use to send it out, right?

I have never bought anything from anybody sending spam in my life, but... now we come to the logical conclusion that nevertheless they should actually have a pretty large customer base, otherwise they just won't stay afloat...

[Frank Hagan]

As for me, I am always wondering what kind of idiots actually buy stuff they feature in the spam messages.

Just think about it: spam is a business. It has to obey to all of the normal business rules. If nobody buys junk they're selling, than they won't make money and will be unable to pay the rats that write spam bots and the internet connection they use to send it out, right?

I have never bought anything from anybody sending spam in my life, but... now we come to the logical conclusion that nevertheless they should actually have a pretty large customer base, otherwise they just won't stay afloat...

I'm convinced its not the people selling the stuff via spam that makes any money, but rather the guy selling the mailing list and "hosting" the mail server.

What does an email campaign cost? I suspect its that end of the business that is profitable.

[ZYV]

Let's assume that the only party who actually makes some money is the spammer (by selling his e-mail campaigns). Who in the world is going to buy from him if the ROI is between null and zero?