Spam News

Spam increasing despite McColo takedown

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

After nearly a month since McColo was shut down after a connection to spammers was discovered, the level of emailed advertisements has increased, rendering the takedown almost irrelevant.

The day McColo was closed, spam levels decreased by 42 percent, dropping the level of spam being sent around the world to approximately 64.1 billion.

Since then, the amount of spam has been steadily rising and reports this week indicate that approximately 94.6 billion messages were sent worldwide, ComputerWorld.com reports. This is inching closer to 153 billion spam messages sent prior to the McColo takedown on November 11th.

One reason that may account for the recurrence of spam could be various botnets either new or resurrected from the past.

Though past botnets such as Srizbi and Rustock appear to be fading away, a new generation seems to be on its way up with Xarvester and another named "Gahg," according to the website.

Earlier this week, it was reported Mega-D botnet had re-emerged and clogging email accounts with the all-too familiar penis-enlargement advertisements, the Register reports. The botnet has been linked to a network of compromised zombie computers, but its actual location is still unknown.