Actually, this doesn’t surprise me at all.

Criminal gangs using hijacked computers are behind a surge in unwanted e-mails peddling sex, drugs and stock tips.

The number of “spam” messages has tripled since June and now accounts for as many as nine out of 10 e-mails sent worldwide, according to U.S. email security company Postini.

As Christmas approaches, the daily trawl through in-boxes clogged with offers of fake Viagra, loans and sex aids is tipped to take even longer.

“E-mail systems are overloaded or melting down trying to keep up with all the spam,” said Dan Druker, a vice president at Postini.

His company has detected 7 billion spam e-mails worldwide in November compared to 2.5 billion in June. Spam in Britain has risen by 50 percent in the last two months alone, according to Internet security company SurfControl.

9 out of 10 emails now spam – Reuters via CNN.com

As some of the old timers might remember, in March I was averaging around 3000 spams a night. Part of that is because I forwarded everything that came to the catchall address of de-generationx.net to my Gmail account. This was because I couldn’t really remember all the addresses I’d used over the years and this just made things easier.

In the past few months I’ve had to disable the catchall addresses on all my domains. de-generationx.net was sending through an average of a little over 8000 spams in a single night. In the end, I just gave up and dumped them and now the only addresses I keep are the main ones I actually used. This also meant that I had to resubscribe to several mailing lists, but it was necessary.

Google’s spam filters I have found to actually be pretty good. I’ve now reduced my spam down to around 350 a day and of that Google only misses maybe 10-15. Thats still a pretty high percentage, but its better than what I’ve had from other spam filters in the past. I just wish it was more consistent and learned from its mistakes. When I say something is spam, take note of that and remember it for next time.

Unfortunately, there is no cure to the spam issue. It is the cheapest and most cost effective marketing in the world. As long as people click on and buy from those spammers, they’ll always have incentive to keep doing it. As long as there are no teeth to the laws against spam, they won’t care. As long as people continue to use computers running older or unpatched operating systems, they’ll always be untraceable. There is no technological way to stop them. It has to come down to economics and user education.

For me, I have all but given up on email outside of Gmail. I don’t even have any email addresses set up for the stevesramblings.com domain. There is no point. If anyone wants to email me, they know my Gmail address. If people I don’t know want to email me, there is another gmail address visible on EVERY page of this blog that I call my free-for-all address. It gets forwarded to my main one anyway, but at least I keep the flood of Google Talk invites away. ;-)

However, now days the best way to get hold of me is in Google Talk, Skype or on the phone (voice preferably, but SMS will do too.) While I do always have Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Reader open, Google Talk is by far the best way to contact me now. And yes, it is because of spam that this has come about.

So no, it is no surprise that spam has nearly tripled in 6 months. I’ve seen it myself in my own emails. And I wouldn’t be surprised if it continues to get worse. You can thank sloppy mail server admins, Microsoft and stupid users that believe everything they read for that.

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