I noticed today that it seems like a lot more spam is suddenly making its way into my Gmail inbox. I don’t know if that’s because a crafty spammer somewhere made a breakthrough, or because Google is having trouble, but it’d sure be interesting to find out.

1. Omar, August 6, 2008:

   You may already know all of this, but here’s a basic outline of the spam prevention process:

   1 – proliferation of your email address
   a – your own behavior in spreading your email address around
   b – your friends’ behavior in spreading your email address around (mostly by forwarding stuff)
   c – mailing lists (spammers buy commercial lists that harvest addresses) – this is obviously beyond your control

   2 – spam filters
   a – your email provider (on their servers – done before it reaches you)
   b – your email client (some clients allow more filtering criteria to be added)
   c – the ability of the spammers to evade filters (see SANS link below)

   Here is a recent entry on the Internet Storm Center handler’s diary:
   When spammers use your own e-mails
   http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=4834&rss

2. A.J. Van Beest, August 8, 2008:

   Thanks, Omar! I always appreciate expert knowledge!