I’ve been getting much more spam than usual lately, both in my email account reserved for spam and in my spam queue here. None of my activities have changed. I’ve used my spam account only for spammy purposes and for email that I can safely ignore for months without anything major happening (in fact, if it weren’t for the fact that my student loan and Amazon accounts happens to be registered with that address, I could just log in once a month or so just to avoid losing years of NaNoWriMo and Script Frenzy pep talks). Whatever the case, spam is on the rise, and Google’s Postini services is tracking it. You might note that despite the well-known tales of Nigerian princes in spam email, Nigeria is light on the spam, though it is one of the heavier parts of Africa. Clicking on a dot shows how many IPs have been associated with spam or viruses. Unsurprisingly, major US cities are hotbeds for spam, though this may have something to do with the presence of more IP addresses than anything else. Clicking on a dot for New York City while zoomed in gives me 174 spam IP addresses and 14 virus-associated IP addresses for a total of 176. I’m doubting that for some reason. I didn’t click around that much, but figuring out the spammiest city would be doable with such a map, especially if it really is real-time.
And because I know you were wondering, North Korea contained no red dots. Interestingly, neither did Myanmar, Chad, the Central African Republic, or a decent chunk of the Pacific. the Marshall Islands remain spam-free for now. The dot record in my clicking adventures was in Mumbai, which contained 536 spam IPs and 167 virus-laden IPs in one dot. Wow.