E-mail bomb

E-mail bomb: Fascinating. I just received over 600 spams in one minute, all to (various names which are not me) @ (thisdomain). Many of the messages were literally empty of content.

I don't pretend to understand all spam strategies, but I think these were tests to check if certain e-mail addresses would get through or bounce as invalid. Since I have a catchall box, none of them automatically bounce. So, now someone thinks there's a real person at the other end of 'bentley@...', 'clark@...', etc. etc. Joy. Maybe I should rethink the catchall and just accept mail to specific addresses.

I'm trying a switch to Apple's Mail client, which has a pretty good Bayesian spam filter (as well as many other nifty features - thread highlighting! Safari's HTML rendering!). So far it's working better for me than Eudora 6/free-with-ads; my only real complaint is its sluggishness when dealing with large mailboxes (and I'm on an 867MHz G4, OS X 10.3.3). I'll split my mail up differently and see how it goes.     4 comment(s)  

Manually organizing your email is so 2003.
      ...posted by Seth on April 13, 2004 6:35 PM

Catchall mailboxes were a fine idea when the email landscape was less hostile, but now they should be avoided. It's a luxury (allowing contacts to misspell your email address) that we can no longer afford.
      ...posted by pete on April 14, 2004 5:04 PM

Apple's spam filter was working very well until just recently. In the past few days more spam has been getting through. But, really, it's about 10 messages a day. It's catching about 50 a day or so, I guess these bursts happen occasionally, then it tapers off again.
I too have a catchall mailbox, but it hasn't been too big a problem yet
      ...posted by Toni on April 15, 2004 2:03 AM

I just read your October 30, 2001 entry about using ibuprofen plus caffeine to treat headache. Ever wonder why caffeine relieves headache?
      ...posted by Barry Spencer on April 17, 2004 11:15 AM

Add a comment...