[OT] What the *&^#$!#$ Just Happened - SPAM

[Richard Gaskin]

Kay C Lan wrote:

 > I use this email account almost exclusively for this Use List now;
 > so I haven't recently given it to anyone, company or whatever.
 >
 > Up until yesterday I usually received 1 or 2 false SPAMS a day;
 > typically from Dunbarx's AOL account or some other legitamate Use
 > List user with an AOL account.
 >
 > Up until yesterday I usually receved a single actual SPAM every
 > couple of months.
 >
 > Today I accessed this account and I had over 50!!! That's more than
 > the TOTAL email SPAM I've ever received on this account.

This is a public list where the archives are publicly available:
<http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode>

Every resource publicly available is easily spiderable.

I think all you're seeing is what seems to me a recent uptick in the 
aggressiveness of certain spammer-controlled botnets.  I've been seeing 
a lot more spam myself lately, mostly for junk stock tips and bots 
claiming to be Russian women who want to marry an American.

There is no cure.  Spam consumes so much of our Internet that an 
estimated 5-10% of legitimate email never arrives at its destination 
because all systems are bogged down trying to stay on top of spam.

Windows still has about 90% of the computing market, and most botnets 
are run on unsuspecting end-users' machines.  The rest are often 
installed on Web servers that didn't stay on top of the updates for 
their CMS frameworks.  When we combine millions of compromised servers 
with tens of millions of compromised desktop machines, the botnets can 
only win.

Sorry, don't have a "glass half full" for this one.

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems
  Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
  ____________________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com