What was once a joke
Last year, Nerdist.com announced Artisanal Spam, in new flavors, like Sriracha-pickles or lemongrass-coconut oil. It was introduced as purely an April Fool’s joke, and a good one at that. Unfortunately, the digital world is seeing the emergence of artisanal spam – not the kind that’s popular in Hawaii, but the kind you get in your email. What is it and what can be done about it?
Small-batch, micro-brewed artisanal spam
Today’s anti-spam filters typically relegate junk email to folders that you may never even look at. Yahoo and Gmail both have spam folders, and rarely does a real email get dumped into it. Spammers have had to be smarter to get around the filters. One way they’re doing this is to use a small-batch approach with smaller hosts that aren’t on the DNS Blacklist. Hence, the name, artisanal spam.
One company sent out 5,000 emails through a Belgium server linked to a fake login page for Apple. Because of the size of the mailing, it was able to fly under the radar of the anti-spam filters. Spammers get excited when they can just get into your inbox, because they know that even if a few people click on the links, it’s effective.
Be smarter than the spammers
It’s thought that artisanal spam now accounts for about 15 percent of the junk messages which are sent out every day. To put that in perspective, 400 billion spam messages are sent out daily. Do the math, 60 million of these messages are considered artisanal spam.
Artisanal spam isn’t going to go away. Cyber-security experts recommend a global registry for retailers who send out emails to customers. Getting everyone on the same page internationally may be a difficult challenge. Don’t expect any easy solutions.
In the meantime, be careful what links you click on in your email. Always go to the direct site to enter a password or update personal information. We have to be smarter than the spammers.
