The spam explosion

Spam is increasing again. Is it all worthwhile

The last couple of months have seen a massive increase in spam. We're increasingly being asked how to control it and we're having trouble with the answers. The problem is the spammers have become smarter.

A spam message traditionally had content along the lines of "get rich quick" or "grow your hair" and it was comparatively easy for spam checking programs to find most of these messages. The new breed just jumbles together commonly used words or phrases. This is why so much spam looks like gobblygook.

To get their message across the spammers have started putting their messages in an image file. So we have a picture of the spam message. The spam detector can't read the image.

The final nail in the spam checker is that they traditionally used blacklists of known spammers or compromised servers to check where the spam was coming from. A larger proportion of spam now comes from infected computers or unsecured wireless networks so blacklists are harder to maintain.

While the spam checkers are getting better, this is a curse we are going to have to put up with until we see fewer compromised computers and networks.