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December 03, 2007

If you follow my Spam Stats charts on a regular basis, you've certainly observed the pattern of lower overall volume on weekends compared to weekdays. Thus my surprise to see Sunday, December 2, 2007 showing up with a hefty spike in regular spam activity (not dictionary attacks, which can occur on any day). Curious about what might trigger such a rush, I checked the logs of Subject: lines of the server-deleted messages.

A vast majority of the volume appears to have been selling various prescription medicines—or medz, as I call the spammed variety (whose actual medicinal contents are questionable). Pain and anxiety were the main targets (Vicodin, Hydrocodon, Valium), with sleep (Ambien) and weight loss (Phentermine) next in line.

(Damn! I also saw that an Internet millionaire was giving away his business plan, but the message got deleted.)

Here in the U.S., the news media have created nicknames for a couple of pre-Christmas shopping days: Black Friday for the day after Thanksgiving; Blue Monday for the following Monday when Internet shopping supposedly spikes. I wonder if this first Sunday of December deserves its own such designation based on the amount of spam that suddenly flowed across the wires. But what color? Pills come in all kinds of tasty-looking colors. Black is already taken. Then it occurred to me: Based on the apparently uncontrollable spew of medz spam, the spammers could use a sizable dose of Immodium. I think I'll call it Brown Sunday.