The Spam Is Rising

A quick glance at the folder where my computer puts stuff it thinks is spam shows I'm getting a lot more of it lately (about 5 or 6 spams per day, right now, with more at weekends). The amount coming into the "spamtrap" addresses which report spam to the Distributed Checksum Clearinghouse for the benefit of the world at large seems to be going up too. The DCC works by counting how many times a particular message text has been seen in the wild. Messages with a high count are either spam or legitimate bulk email, so you need to whitelist the mailing lists you're on so as not to filter them by accident. Every other bulk email that you didn't ask for (and whitelist) is spam, by definition.

I'm actually doing some good with the spamtraps, as my computer is getting stuff which doesn't already have a high count and maxing out its count as it sees it.

I can't imagine what it'd be like for someone whose address appears somewhere on the web or Usenet and who doesn't have any filters. It looks like it's going to get worse before it gets better.