Spammers Keep Exploiting NZ, Japan Disaster Charities

Symantec the security company, which released its most recent monthly "State of Spam and Phishing Report" covering April 2010, indicates that Australians wishing to donate for victims of the New Zealand and Japan earthquakes continue to be under threat since spammers keep managing to get their hands on the relief funds.

Stated Stephen Trilling, Senior Vice-President of Security Technology and Response at Symantec, spammers had been dispatching e-mails about the Japan disaster showing the Red Cross logo while directing recipients for providing their debit/credit card particulars so as to donate. Cio.com.au published this on April 19, 2011.

Moreover, Trilling stated that scammers had been applying similar tricks for exploiting relief endeavors in Christchurch, New Zealand too through the dispatch of spam mails having web-links that led onto a phony Red Cross New Zealand site while asking for information from visitors. And as usual, for making their charities, end-users were asked to feed in specific details that were by nature confidential.

Additionally according to the report, spam levels dropped following the shutdown of Rustock on March 16, 2011. Incidentally, following an 8.7% rise during March 2011, the mean amount of e-mail junk for a single day dropped 27.43% during March 2011.

In general, spam accounted for 74.68% of the total e-mail during March 2011 against 80.65% during February 2011.

Worryingly, USA was again the top spam generator, accounting for 28% of all e-mail during March 2011. Other countries following it were India (6%), Netherlands (5%), Brazil and Russia (4% each), Symantec observes in its spam analysis.

Furthermore, according to Symantec, phishing scams in general declined 22.71% during April 2011. Unique domains and automated toolkits declined in comparison to March 2011. Also, spoofed websites crafted with automated toolkits declined approximately 41.54%. Simultaneously, unique domain addresses too declined (14.02%) while spoofed websites having IP domains like http://255.255.255.255 declined approximately 30.94%. Meanwhile, services for web-hosting supported 13% of the entire phishing sites, accounting for a 22.31% fall over March 2011.

Lastly, Symantec reports that non-English phishing websites dropped 58.22%, with Spanish, Italian and Portuguese phishing sites accounting for the top non-English spoofed websites during March 2011.

Related article: Spammers Continue their Campaigns Successfully

» SPAMfighter News - 26-04-2011

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