Lot of Spam? You Might Be an Aardvark.

Text:

| Print

| Share:

14 commentsFriday, August 29, 2008

Report: Spam Ratio Depends on Address's First Letter

Lot of Spam? You Might Be an Aardvark.

13 Comments

By Forensic Fran (WPN reader) - Thu, 09/04/2008 - 04:53

I agree with the credibility

I agree with Dan its make than just coincidence

By Guest (WPN reader) - Wed, 09/03/2008 - 09:16

Makes perfect sense. Spammers start with a list that by default is probably sorted in alpha order. They start the sending and as they work their way through the potentially gigantic database the early receivers start to flag the spam and the various ISP's and other begin to filter so by the time the sending gets to the bottom of the list, the recipients have been innoculated against receiving it.

By John (WPN reader) - Tue, 01/20/2009 - 08:15

Spam

I have noticed when looking in my Mailwasher log that a lot of the spam I receive starts mainly with the letter "s".

I have been monitoring this and there definately seems to be some sort of pattern.

John

By Guest (WPN reader) - Sun, 09/07/2008 - 19:35

You missed the point - it's

You missed the point - it's not the order (of cause half of the readersx would be confused by this Zebra example), but the usage frequency. Noone says spum percentage reduces from A to Z

By Web Design Company (WPN reader) - Wed, 09/03/2008 - 01:22

Spam ratio depend on email first letter??

How is it possible..Can anyone explain?

By ron (WPN reader) - Wed, 09/03/2008 - 00:52

Spam Ratio Depends on Address's First Letter

You realise now that this survey has been seen by thousands of people, a lot have acted accordingly apon this informaition( including the spammers & junk mail (promotional to them of course)senders that because of the changes caused by this in the equation the information is no longer valid!

By Debbie Morgan (WPN reader) - Tue, 09/02/2008 - 23:23

True for the UK but what about USA?

It sounds like the research for the UK is probably accurate but is it safe to assume that it is also true for those email addresses here in the USA?

If so, then to use this information to my benefit, I should change my email address to one that starts with Q or X to keep my spam to a minimum or should I just have a good spam filter in place?

Thanks, Chris, for this insightful article. Feel free to use my questions as seed for your next one!

By Debbie Morgan (WPN reader) - Tue, 09/02/2008 - 23:19

True for the UK but what about USA?

It sounds like the research for the UK is probably accurate but is it safe to assume that it is also true for those email addresses here in the USA?

If so, then to use this information to my benefit, I should change my email address to one that starts with Q or X to keep my spam to a minimum or should I just have a good spam filter in place?

Thanks, Chris, for this insightful article. Feel free to use my questions as seed for your next one!

By Anastasiosyal (WPN reader) - Tue, 09/02/2008 - 06:50

Conclusion slightly flawed...

Interesting find but just a slight miss on your conclusion...

Q and X may well be two of the characters that gets the least mail overall since there are not so many addresses starting with those letters, but they both have some of the worst SPAM ratios, which means that they receive the most junk.

To reach valid conclusions you need to divide the Spam vs No-Spam (it also appears on the chart as a line) so this would means that from the graph we can conclude that emails starting with the characters 0, A, W and S seemingly receive the least SPAM according to this data

By Guest (WPN reader) - Mon, 09/01/2008 - 12:02

Label Error

It appears that the ratio is miss labeled.

It appears to be: spam / total messages

By Staging a comeback (WPN reader) - Mon, 09/01/2008 - 05:37

I find it hard to believe

I find it hard to believe theres some sort of algorithm that targets certain letters. Its surely a coincidence.

By Dan (WPN reader) - Mon, 09/01/2008 - 11:10

I find it quite credible

Weighting the letters in randomly generated target addresses based on frequency would result in a higher fraction of it reaching active accounts. You'd probably find the same patterns if you looked at the amount of spam vs any arbitary character in the address.

By Spam Thwarter (WPN reader) - Sat, 08/30/2008 - 19:23