Spam Now Over 90% of All Email, Increasing Volumes Involve Social Networking Sites

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Spam Now Over 90% of All Email, Increasing Volumes Involve Social Networking Sites

By CircleID Reporter
May 26, 2009, 6:11 pm PDT Views: 9,444 Add Comment

Spam levels have increased by 5.1% since last month, reaching heights of 90.4%, according to latest report from Symantec’s MessageLabs Intelligence.

While Spam levels in Hong Kong rose by 2.4% in May to 92.3%, positioning it as the most spammed country, spam levels in the UK fell to 90.3% and spam levels in the US rose to 86.6% and 85.2% in Canada. The study also reports Germany’s spam rate reached 84.8%; 82.4% in the Netherlands; 89.7% in Australia; 91.1% in China; and 88.5% in Japan.

The majority of this increase in spam in May was comprised of messages with very little content other than a subject line and valid hyperlink, says the report. “Each hyperlink pointed to a different active profile on one of a number of major social networking environments. The profiles were likely created using random names and automated CAPTCHA-breaking tools. Moreover, the emails were sent from valid webmail hosting providers, which means they were not spoofed, as has been the case in the past for these types of domains.”

By CircleID Reporter — CircleID’s internal staff reporting on news tips and developing stories. Do you have information the professional Internet community should be aware of? Contact us.
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