[HLUG] spam

[Graham Cole]

I wonder if anyone can explain how the following happened.
Spam of 2 types kept arriving from a variety of supposed senders and with a variety of subject headings, thus avoiding automatic filters. One day recently they suddenly increased in rate of arrival and I rapidly put them into my junk place. This rapid reaction seemed to make the rate of arrival increase even more and then I got many messages in my inbox showing double! At this point I thought my mail client, Evolution, might be under attack by a virus so I removed it completely and re-installed.
Was there a virus perhaps generating the spam within my own system? Or did the spam originators have a way of knowing I was responding quickly and therefore speeding up their spam sending?
(In defence I am abandoning my uklinux email address and changing to grahamcole at nerdshack.com as well as abandoning Evolution and using Sylpheed)
Graham