Spam Tripled in 2006?

Spam is up, spam is down. No one seems to be able to get their story straight.

That's in contrast to Softscan's report that spam was down about 30% during at least part of the same period.

Once upon a time, SpamButcher tried to run its own index to track how bad the spam problem was. After a little time it became clear our methodology was at least a little flawed, so we gave up on it. In addition, we got a bored with the task of keeping it up to date.

That's right, we were wrong; our data collection was imperfect to say the least. Our underlying methodology was poor.

At the same time, I've got a highly-anecdotal method of suggesting how bad spam has gotten.

A year ago, SpamButcher's spam filtering picked up about 300 spam each day. Now it's closer to 450 / day. My belief is that spam in general is about 50% worse than it was a year ago.

Like all similar monitoring efforts, this doesn't take into account missed spam, or false positives. However, I monitor things closely enough to say with some certainty that those factors only play a small part.

From talking with co-workers and others, I also get the general impression the problem is getting worse, not better. Even after improved server-side filtering, more junk is landing in inboxes.

In contrast, SpamButcher is performing better than ever. Even with the increase in junk mail, SpamButcher is letting fewer unsolicited messaged into my inbox than it was a year prior.

There is one more minor statistic that may give an indication on the status of the problem. Spam solutions seem to be selling like hotcakes. SpamButcher in specific is doing about three times better than it was a year ago.

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