A real threat or just a nuisance?
Sometimes I am asked whether Spam is really a threat. Here is the answer.
In 2005 an Israeli anti-spam company, Blue Security, indulged themsevles in a public war on spam. Their tool, Blue Frog, used tit-for-tat tactics – sending a “Do not intrude” notice to the spammer every time they spammed one of the Blue Frog users. They offered free tools to allow spammers to wash their lists and remove all Blue Frog subscribers.
One spammer, however, did not back down. He unleashed the biggest DDOS attack ever seen. The attack brought down Blue Security, blog company Six Apart who hosted the Blue Security blog, and UltraDNS an ISP who provided services to Blue Security.
Spam is lucrative not because it advertises products, but because it can distribute robots that infect computers. These robots can be used in a variety of scams and fraud.
Spam is a real threat, and one which must be taken very seriously.