Sudden sea change

[jducoeur]

Well, that isn't a welcome change. Something happened today -- the levels of spam I got this morning rose severalfold. Doesn't seem to be localized, either -- I'm observing this at home, at work, and on my mailing lists. I'm not sure whether the absolute numbers have risen, or if it's a technology change: a lot of the spam is of a new sort that seems to be slipping through the filters. But based on what I'm seeing in my moderated lists, it certainly *feels* like an absolute rise.

Are others seeing this?

Comments

[msmemory.livejournal.com]

Whoever sent all that spam to the Borough list sent almost exactly the same number of spam to the Daystar list. When I did my delete pass before breakfast the main box was in just about perfect alternation, one to my list, one to yours, etc.

[(Anonymous)]

i get several hundred spam comments a day - in addition to regular commenting. However, mine are easy enough to clean out.

Waves

[dkapell.livejournal.com]

It hit me hard on friday. A quick upgrade of Spamassassin, and it's back to where it was before.

Re: Waves

[msmemory.livejournal.com]

It's not so much the spam sent to us, as the spam sent to our moderated lists, which comes into the Moderators' box for approval/rejection. I didn't think SpamAssassin could help that unless it's running on the list host machine.

[ian-gunn.livejournal.com]

I noticed a few more messages getting by Comcast's filters the last couple of days. Comcast's filters have been working very well and till yesterday I'd only been getting 2-3 spam messaged per week making it to my in-box. I've had 3-4/day the last couple of days. I've not been tracking on the absolute volume of spam though.

[antoniseb.livejournal.com]

Spam mail has been on the rise for me. It is about double what it was six months ago (total number getting through my filters). Also worth noting is that the forum I moderate is getting not just an increase in spam, but they are getting new varieties of spam and spammers who are working the forum rules to keep their stuff on the forum longer. This change started about a week ago. It used to be that a spammer would join as a member and post one spam. Now they join as a member and post as many spams as they can to every forum section before they are caught and banned. We have a one post per minute limit for non-moderators which limits somewhat the damage done.

[antoniseb.livejournal.com]

A significant fraction of the new offenders are coming from Russian IP addresses.

[heatermcca.livejournal.com]

Yes. I returned from this weekend to find much more spam had gotten through a few filters in my personal email (normally I get NONE that aren't immediately shunted to the spam folder), and that several of the lists that I moderate had received an unusual increase in spamming attempts. I moderate all new members for a good long while.

Absolutely

[blindleadsblind.livejournal.com]

I'm seeing it in guesbooks all over the net. My Baronial website has been getting mega spammed lately. We simply decided to delete the guestbook altogether.

On my personal site, I'm seeing the same thing.

[doubleplus.livejournal.com]

I haven't noticed anything unusual, myself.

[patsmor.livejournal.com]

Site advisor this morning reports that many of the "Top Ten" movie sites are collecting spam-able info as well as setting trojan cookies. You can read their feed if you're interested (I'm having trouble getting two pages to load simultaneously, so I'm going to go do some poking in the corners of the machine, myself...

[johno.livejournal.com]

The anti-spam provider for my $employer has been generating 5-10 updated day for several months now. This weekend it jumped to 20+ a day.

I'd say there is a new spam generating script out there.

[laurion]

I agree. It seems like over the weekend one or more of the Russian (according to IP) spamhaus organizations unleashed either a massive wave, or just one tuned to slip past existing filters better.

Economies of scale make it unlikely the problem will go away soon enough. (No such thing as too soon.)

[siderea]

Yup. (*grrrrr*)

[cellio]

The spam trap at pobox seemed to be fuller than normal when I cleaned it out yesterday, but I didn't make specific notes. (I check it about once a week.) Actual spam getting past pobox to my account (where SpamAssassin kicks in) doesn't seem to have changed much, but yesterday and today mail delivery has been intermittantly slow and they posted a notice tonight attributing that to a sudden increase in spam.