There is a serious glut of spam out there. Literally, a glut! Microsoft’s spam team is having fits. All SimpleTicket development has been put on hold until we get a better handle on the new spam problem.

Terry Zink from Microsoft’s spam team explains better than we can,

“In the past, we used to get spam outbreaks every few months. Then it was every couple of months, then once a month. This past year it started once every two weeks, then it summer it moved up to once a week. Now, we get new spam outbreaks two or three times per week. Volume doesn’t drop off for one or two days, it drops off for maybe 12-16 hours before the next spam blitz occurs.”

Architel’s spam filtering efficiency hasn’t dropped over the past three months (in fact it has improved slightly) ~ we are still blocking as much spam on a percentage basis as we have been for the past two years. You ask, “so why are we seeing so much more spam?” Again, Terry from Microsoft explains better than I can,

“The reason people see so much in their inboxes (where “so much” is a relative term) is because there is so much traffic flowing around. Like I said, our resources are stretched as much as they can go but that’s because there is literally so much to do 8 hours a day per spam analyst sometimes doesn’t seem like enough.”

Let me put it this way, our system is blocking 97% of messages that are spam. So we let 3% of the total number of spam messages you get actually reach your inbox. If you received 1000 spam messages per day last month you would have seen about 30 spam messages in an average day. We have seen the volume of spam increase up-to 10 times for most users for the past two months. Now you receive 300 spam messages in an average day, and our spam filters are operating perfectly. Get it? The industries filter rates from between 70% and 97% are not the problem ~ it is the sheer volume of spam messages. This is a HUGE problem for everyone.