Re: Image SPAM Increase?

[Les LaCroix <Les.LaCroix () CARLETON EDU>]

Yes, we're seeing a big increase in this sort of spam over the last few
months.  Mostly for market advice, but also for male enhancement drugs
and mortgage refinance.  Based strictly on my inbox (not a statistically
significant sample), this is most of the spam that makes it through to
me.  I believe there is more getting through to my users as well.  We
delivered about 25% more mail from off-campus in February and March than
in we did in January.  We're in full session in January, and I don't
have a better explanation.  Over the same period, the total amount of
mail coming at us stayed roughly the same.  Which, by the way, is about
double what it was last September.

We are a Barracuda shop.  (The admin running it inherited it when he
started last summer, and it's not what he would prefer to do.)  If you
follow Barracuda tech support advise, you're kinda stuck:  In order to
report them to Barracuda Networks so they can improve their methods, you
also have to put them in your Bayesian database.  But they tell you not
to do that for messages that contain things meant to poison a Bayesian
database, such as the gibberish that is included in most of these
messages.  Makes it hard to get the messages reported.

Les LaCroix
Associate Director of Network Services
Carleton College


Gary Flynn wrote:
> Over the past few weeks we've seen a slow increase in SPAM messages
> related to stock market advice. We're starting to see regular reports
> from our users of this new ( for us ) activity. The messages are
> composed:
>
> 1) entirely of images
>
> --or--
>
> 2) Images prepended with gibberish
> ...