9 out of 10 email messages sent contain spam
I was digging through some blogs recently and happened upon an interesting post on the TechRepublic IT Security blog site tited: Spam: Previous record toppled. http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/security/?p=1769
The opening line held my attention....Incredibly, out of every 10 e-mail messages sent nine contain spam and that’s a new record. Hard to actually believe it, isn't it? The article goes on to detail which countries it comes from and the time of day that spam email is most prevalent. It does mention that the number of e-mail messages containing virus code has decreased to one in 317 e-mail messages and the number of e-mail messages containing phishing content is leveling off at one in 279 e-mail messages.
The article goes on to state that there’s a significant amount of spam (40%) being sent out by smaller and relatively unknown botnets. Also the people controlling these botnets seem to prefer using stolen Web-based e-mail accounts like Gmail for sending spam. The writier identified that a possible explanation for this is that using stolen Gmail accounts allow botmasters to apply spear phishing and social-engineering techniques on the specifically targeted organizations or individuals. This usually increases the success rate. Using Web-based e-mail accounts also increases the likelihood of getting to the intended victim since most administrators don’t filter e-mail emanating from sources like Gmail.
The opening line held my attention....Incredibly, out of every 10 e-mail messages sent nine contain spam and that’s a new record. Hard to actually believe it, isn't it? The article goes on to detail which countries it comes from and the time of day that spam email is most prevalent. It does mention that the number of e-mail messages containing virus code has decreased to one in 317 e-mail messages and the number of e-mail messages containing phishing content is leveling off at one in 279 e-mail messages.
The article goes on to state that there’s a significant amount of spam (40%) being sent out by smaller and relatively unknown botnets. Also the people controlling these botnets seem to prefer using stolen Web-based e-mail accounts like Gmail for sending spam. The writier identified that a possible explanation for this is that using stolen Gmail accounts allow botmasters to apply spear phishing and social-engineering techniques on the specifically targeted organizations or individuals. This usually increases the success rate. Using Web-based e-mail accounts also increases the likelihood of getting to the intended victim since most administrators don’t filter e-mail emanating from sources like Gmail.
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