Spam

No one reading this needs to be told how the volume of spam has increased lately. If any of you are considering changing email addresses to get out from under the deluge, however, take care to select a name (that is, what appears to the left of the @) that does not appear in a dictionary -- and preferably, one more complex than a common name followed by a single letter or number.

We did some switching around of business and household account names a few months back, and the one new mailbox that has filled up with spam the quickest was the one that was posted nowhere -- but was in the format "david@validdomainname.com", which was enough to make it vulnerable. Yes, brute force dictionary attacks now appear to be the norm among spammers.

Posted by David on June 13, 2003 10:46 AM