July 23, 2007
So have you gotten any e-mails recently touting Viagra? No? How about V.i.a.g.r.a or V!A6RA? How many ways are there to spell Viagra, anyway? One answer is 6 times 10 to the 20th. That prompts an interesting essay by Brian Hayes on spam and spam filtering.
Diseases tend to evolve from an epidemic to an endemic state. For the first population exposed, the infection is dire and deadly; later, everyone gets a little sick but survives. It's not really in the pathogen's interest to kill the host; and although the host might well like to exterminate the disease, that seldom happens. The future of spam may be a low-grade fever.
Even if you haven't gotten a Viagra spam, I'd almost bet you've gotten a "You have received a greeting card" spam. One e-mail security company says there has been at least 275 million of these, just this month.