Who's Behind the Spam Surge?

As I discussed several weeks ago, everyone's seen that there has been a massive surge in spam over the last couple of months. More researchers are weighing in on what's behind it.

One point many sources make, and I made in my last column, is that there was a "Christmas Spike" last year too. Spam shot up roughly from November 2005 through January 2006 and then tailed off until the late '06 surge, yielding a bowl-shaped curve for the year.

Will this year have a tail-off in February too? Ask me in March, but the people at MessageLabs don't expect to see one. They see a steadily increasing spam load through 2007, pushing the limits of our tolerance.

Like Postini, with which I talked for my last column, MessageLabs is a hosted secure mail vendor. Such vendors process a tremendous amount of e-mail to and from areas all over the world (Postini was the biggest last time I checked).

Read the full story on eWeek.com: Who's Behind the Spam Surge?