Spammers prefer Gmail Accounts

Gmail: The Choice of Spammers?

An examination of spam originating from the major free e-mail providers shows that like consumers, spammers prefer Google.

In a three-week period from mid-June to this month, e-mail filtering firm Roaring Penguin said it saw an explosion of spam originating from Gmail, while Microsoft Hotmail and Yahoo Mail remained flat.

The company attributes this meteoric rise in Gmail spam to the cracking of Google's CAPTCHA. A CAPTCHA (define) is a test, typically used in Web site registration, that is designed to tell humans apart from programs designed to hack or automate registrations. It consists of a word displayed in such a way that it's difficult for a computer to read, but not a human. A user would be able to successfully enter the word into an input box to gain entry.