Just as a quick example of spam proliferation–I have gotten spam on several occasions since late last year with a particular keyword in it. This happens fairly often, as spammers want some unique identifier they can use via Google to see which of their spam droppings got published, and how many Google has recognized. The one that I am speaking of includes the words “compliment whose” and then the word “wondered.” In the spam, those three words appear connected as one long word; I separated them here so they could not be found by the spammers via a Google search.

My point, however, is that if you do a Google search on that text string, you’d find Google reporting “about 130,000” hits. Considering that a great many of the spams sent get filtered by anti-spam software, including spam filters, registration, and captchas, then consider all of those that Google did not find, and you can estimate that just this one version of spam has been sent easily several hundred thousand times, probably millions–and it is very likely that this is just one of many different versions or types sent out by the spammer responsible. You will also find that blog or even newspaper posts which contain the keyword often have dozens if not hundreds of spam messages accumulated in the comments–this being the reason why spammers continue to spam so much.

Nothing huge or earth-shattering about this. I simply wanted to point out a small example of how outrageously prolific spammers can be, and some of the methods they use to check on their success. I’m still waiting for someone to institute a system that will do something to at least take the edge off of these people who take a valuable system of worldwide communications and use it as their own personal toilet.