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March 10, 2008

I have a gmail address whose account name I have never published or revealed to another soul outside of Google. In fact, the only times I use the address are for access to other Google services. Unfortunately, the account attracts its share of spam, presumably via dictionary attacks.

Out of curiosity, I checked the account today to see what has been happening in the last 30 days. The Spam folder contained 75 messages. Here is how the message content measured up:

On the face of it, Google does a decent job of diverting spam addressed to my account. And yet I'd expect Google to do a better job of completely blocking such email. Perhaps they are blocking medz spam that advertises brand-name pharmaceuticals—spam that floods my regular email server. The penile spam that made it into my gmail Spam folder isn't at all subtle, frequently using leet-speak spelling for male body part lingo (rhymes with d0ck). It would seem easy enough to identify that kind of junk for what it is.

I do wonder if my gmail address is actually on the address lists of spammers, or whether 75 dictionary attacks within the last 30 days got lucky. Dictionary attacks can be massive, such as the 25,000+ attack that came my server's way on March 9, 2008 (shown in the Spam Statistics page for that week). In truth, I hope my address is on the lists sold and traded among spammers because it helps dilute the quality of the lists (albeit microscopically).

Anything that helps reduce the potential return on investment for spamming activity is A Good Thing.