According to security firm MessageLabs, the large number of spam coming from Gmail is the result of those spammers who have broken the captcha mechanism deployed by Gmail, mechanism designed to check if a person and not something else is opening an e-mail account.
When signing up for Web services, we all meet the captcha programs, nothing else than a box with some characters, distorted or displayed against some noisy background. In order to sign in you must type the letters and numerals in the same order you saw them. Then, the system will accept your presence.
The automated programs called bots, written to create new accounts for spammers to use, can be stopped or caught through these programs. Although sometimes their presence proved to be exasperating, the captcha systems done their job and maintained the bots at distance.
Gmail submitted recently, but MessageLabs announced that Yahoo Mail and Hotmail captcha mechanisms were the first victims and this happened in July 2007.
The same source declared that the proportion of spam sent from Gmail accounts, increased, actually doubled from 1.3 percent in January to 2.6 percent in February. Those mostly promoting were the adult-oriented Web sites. Although a Google representative confirmed that could be remarked an increase in spam recently, she refused to clarify if the captcha method used in Gmail had been broken.
Websense, another security firm, also reported the problem since February. According to it, the spammers aim Gmail because a Google account is free and offers access to a wide range of services and, further more, Google domains aren’t blacklisted.
