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| Spam: on the money, on the meds and on the mucky |
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| Tuesday, 29 January 2008 | |
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Ninth survey of nuisance/malicious e-mail shows rise in volumes and breaks out categories…
Ipswitch Inc, a According to Ipswitch the biggest category of spam, finance, accounts for 41% of all messages received in an e-mail inbox; a quarter of spam e-mails were categorised as medication; with pornographic e-mails accounting for 21%. The rise in financial spam mirrors the current trend for e-mails requesting recipients to call illegitimate call centres and pass over personal financial information known as 'vishing’ or ‘phishing’. Ipswitch's research also found that spam from botnets accounted for 72% of all spam generated. Medication spam has been knocked off the top spot for the first time in three quarters. Finance spam e-mails have risen from only 12% the previous quarter to 41% over the holidays. Pornographic e-mails descended to third position this quarter, down from 21% to 16%. Gambling accounted for 13%, and ‘undecipherable’ for 8%. "The trend that Ipswitch's figures show is a continued move from pragmatic, opportunistic spam being carried out by a single user for their own gain to fully organised criminal gangs using botnets to gain both volume of e-mails and a degree of anonymity from automated shut-downs, alongside the use of professionally run 'help' desks where the unwary are persuaded to give up their financial security details. This level of sophistication shows there really is only one solution to spam - to stop it before it reaches the end user," warns Quocirca Ltd service director, Business Process analyst, Clive Longbottom. "The current trend for vishing highlights the problem of criminals tending to be half a step in front of the law and causing significant damage before they are brought to justice. We are already seeing the impact on individuals who have become victims of Vishing," comments Ipswitch's Messaging Division president Tripp Allen. "Vishing has undoubtedly knocked consumer confidence in the security of VoIP technologies. Even though the vulnerabilities were generally down to the user not taking the proper precautions." And in other spam news the eMarketer website is reporting, incredibly, that half of consumers surveyed recently by Internet marketing company Endai Worldwide checked their junk mail on a daily basis, and that 16% reported making a purchase from a message tagged as spam. John Williamson |
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