Well if you meant recently, it would help to actually use the word (or a synonymous one) in your post. I can't read minds across the Internet. :S

I'm not sure what part of your view you think I found offensive either. Maybe you need to calm down. ;)

Certainly, recently, there have been significant increases in spamming. Five or six months ago sounds about right, and also in the past couple of months (especially e-mail-based stuff, in my experiences)
Probably a/some succesful virus/trojans creating lots more zombies or something.

My post stated that as far as I was concerned they had not been automated "for years", so it's kind of implicit that I consider to have started recently.

Irrelevant, mind.

I was reading, a few days ago, about "captcha" sweat shops where people are being paid a pittance to spend all day manually filling in formas etc specifically to get round the visual recognition thing

 

they post the exact same spam so it could look automated but it's done manually

I haven't heard of sweat shops, but I have heard about it being done on porn sites - complete a CAPTCHA or ten to get free access.
Afaik, it's just the actual CAPTCHA images which are being filled in, and the rest is automated.

Eitherway, if it's being done by mindless drones, does it matter if the drones are electronic or biological?