OK. I’ve been running a test where I’ve been attempting to gather Viagra spam into a Gmail mailbox, viagraspamtest@gmail.com
I started the test in mid-May, posting the email address to questionable and shady mailing lists, as well as linking the address in plain text on my blog.
And 6 weeks in, how is it going? Well…it’s not. There’s not even a hint of Viagra spam. Nothing in the spam folder, nothing in the Inbox. Just all legitimate mailings from newsletters.
Possibly, it takes time to get onto shady mailing lists. I imagine lists of emails get hacked and resold to spammers, but that it takes a while for a given email list to work its way down to the spammers.
Also possible — there’s no more Viagra spam. As in, spam mentioning Viagra by name. They are either advertising whole pharmacies, a class of drugs (blood pressure, E.D.), or the ad is in an image that gets embedded into the email.
Maybe I should retry this project with the word “pharmacy”. Viagra spam is *sooo* 2002, anyways.