Commentary on Statistics?

[thepam]

Can the Administrators offer any commentary on the 2004 statistics, for example, on these topics?

What was the reason for the drop in spam reports for June?

Why is there a decrease in % of Reports Sent of Submitted spam since July?

Attribution of sharp spikes?

Thanks.

---Pam

[dra007]

If you look carefully at the plot, not all submitted spams are reported. There were some server upgrades/problems in June which may account in part for the drop. As for the spikes, people tend to report in a pattern, say end of week, and some, I suspect are due to worm/trojan attacks which are solved quickly. Many ISPs have also started implementing various filters recently.

Overall, if you follow the trends week to week and month to month there seem to be some patterns emerging. In general, if people are on vacation and stop reporting for a while the spam picks up by the time they return. That I think is the most important factor, reporting seems to keep the spam in check somehow. I have also noted that spam from North American sites has decreased considerably while no such trend affects spam from the usual .cn, Korean and Brazilian sites.

Spammers have found ways to defeat the system that does things to keep them in check, they keep moving to what seem to be the most spam-fight-reluctant, incompetent or corrupt ISPs and countries. That is also the common origin of virus/trojan/worm programming. Spammers and virus programmers are in kahutz.

[Wazoo]

In addition to dra007's offering, I will repeat the words used in the past .... there are just some things that are not going to be made public. On the other hand, there are some things that have been much discussed .... for instance mole reporting has an entry in the Announcements Forum if I recall correctly ...

[turetzsr]

Hi, Wazoo,

...Please consider moving this to the Lounge. ty

[Wazoo]

It does relate to "reporting" .. and strangely enough, I just pointed some newsgroup traffic to this very Topic today, as the same question came up again.

[thepam]

Incomplete, but tantalizingly satisfying. I suppose that gives me a worth of a care to keep up reporting for the moment. I have developed some prejudice about which spam I report without designating any of the suggested administrators. I suppose this is equivalent to mole-ing? I seem to get some feeling of being both retailiated against and list-washed, so it is kind of interesting. It could just be reading something out of nothing, too. But there is always the urge to try to make sense.

---Pam