V1@gra from the Source

by Brian Hayes

Published 6 September 2007

The last time I was ranting about spam, I inquired of Pfizer, the makers of Viagra, how they filter spam from their own incoming mail stream. They can hardly block all messages that mention their own product. They never got back to me with an answer. Now perhaps I know why. Wired News reports that zombies on Pfizer’s internal network are the source of a recent spam storm!

Responses from readers:

• A comment from john, 7 September 2007 at 4:22 am

  It’s true - a friend of mine works at Pfizer and often complains that they get more SPAM than other offices because they can’t use standard filters. Not sure I believe him though - Bayesian filtering should still work and let correctly or slightly incorrectly spelled versions through. No real customer is going to use the spelling V1@9ra, surely?

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Tags for this article: computing, modern life.

Publication history

First publication: 6 September 2007

Converted to Eleventy framework: 22 April 2025