Visual history of spam and viruses

Raymond Chen from Microsoft has been saving all his spam and virus mails since 1997 and created a graphical representation of them: a dot per mail in time/size coordinates.

Spam history

Some of his observations:

  • Spam went ballistic starting in 2002. You could see it growing in 2001, but 2002 was when it really took off. 
  • The big red splotch in August 2003 around the 100K mark is the Sobig virus.
  • The horizontal line in 2004 that wanders around the 2K mark is the Netsky virus.
    Source: Visual history of spam 
  • But no worries, Bill Gates promised to terminate spam by 2006.

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