To mix things up a bit here are a few interesting links on the current state of the blog spam universe.
The State of Spam [Karma]
This first link is a blog post by the developer of the Spam Karma anti-spam plugin. He talks about how until now, the programmers behind all the spam-post-bots (almost all spam is created by automated programs, hence spam being an attractive proposition) have been largely “stupid”, and thus their bots relatively easy to stop. However, a new breed of spam has emerged, and the bots behind this spam appear to have grown immensely in sophistication and code quality.
His writing style is easy and fun to read, and gives an interesting perspective on the issue. After all, he is both a coder and a blogger.
Mark on Weblog Spam
This next link is much older, from November of 2003, and is much more about the nature of Spam as an industry; and spammers as a group of particularly unscrupulous businesspersons.
Akismet Eats 2 Million
Last is a quick link to the post on the Akismet blog celebrating their spam plugin’s two-millionth piece of spam. They write that it took two months to block one million, and only twenty days to reach two. This is of course also due to their plugin’s growing popularity, but still, that’s a lot of spams! (I use Akismet on my other blog and it performs flawlessly– farewell spam… for now)