AppRiver – Spam Accounted for 96% of Total E-mail Traffic in June 2009

AppRiver, an e-mail security solutions vendor based in Florida, have revealed that spammers were busy in creating more lethal spam messages that accounted for slightly below 96% of total mails during June 2009.

The security firm also said that an aggressive campaign by the Federal Trade Commission against Pricewert, a rogue ISP (Internet Service Provider) and bullet-proof hosting firm, led to its shutdown in June 2009. Despite the closure of Pricewert, the spam pressure did not come down.

While one botnet was almost become inoperative, the intensity of junk e-mails attack reduced but remained at the annoying level.

Besides, image attachment spam picked up momentum in June 2009, said AppRiver in its report that recorded these spam (image attachment) at more than 80 Million against the previous month. The most common image attachment in the month was .jpg attachment, followed by .gif and .png attachments.

AppRiver highlighted another interesting aspect of spam scanned in the last two weeks of June 2009 in its report that says spam containing random words flooded the internet. Word count between one and three appeared in the subject line whereas between three and six words appeared in the body. This kind of spamming is called "word salad."

Security researchers at AppRiver have said that Europe retained its top position of producing the highest number of spam by generating a whopping 2.6 Billion spam in June 2009. Europe's contribution to the global spam traffic during June 2009 stood at 40.9%.

Asia followed Europe in spam creation by accounting 25.0% of total spam message traffic blocked by AppRiver. South America had a share of 22%, North America (11%), Australia & Oceanic (1%) and Africa (0.2%) of the total global traffic in June 2009.

Furthermore, Brazil had increased its spam production to 950 Million messages, which is the highest for the country in AppRiver's record. In fact, Brazil continued to withhold its position of top spam generating country.

Apart from this, other spam producing countries were US, Poland, Turkey and India.

Finally, spam level surged phenomenally during June 2009.

Related article: AppRiver Reports Security Trends for November 2008

» SPAMfighter News - 7/14/2009