Getting more spam? It's not just you.

If you see an increase in spam, it's not your imagination. The following report from Postini (we are a customer) tells the story.

Threat Advisory: Spam Volume Increases in First Quarter 
 
Overall spam volume growth in the first quarter of 2009 was the strongest since early 2008. Spam volume temporarily dropped in November 2008 when the McColo web hosting service – allegedly a significant source of spam at that time – was taken offline. However, spammers have rallied since then, with spam increasing an average of 1.2% per day in the first quarter. By comparison, the growth rate of spam volume in Q1 2008 was approximately 1% per day – which, at the time, was a record high.

Data suggests that spammers are adopting new strategies to avoid another takedown of a web hosting service. The recent upward trajectory could indicate that spammers are building botnets that are more robust but send less volume – or that they haven't enabled their botnets to run at full capacity because they're wary of exposing a new ISP as a target.

In the past few weeks we've also seen the return of image spam – mostly in pharmaceutical ad images. Image spam was popular with spammers in 2007 but died out in 2008. It's unusual for spammers to re-use an "old" technique since most filters were perfected to block image spam back in 2007.

But spammers continue to prove their resilience. Whether it's bouncing back from the biggest takedown on record or finding new ways to exploit the ways we communicate for malicious purposes, they're clearly here to stay.

Source: Postini.com Threat Advisory email