Kaspersky says that Spam Levels in June 2013 Surged

According to a spam report by Kaspersky Lab, Spam levels continue to rise by 1.4% during the month of June 2013 with an average of 71.1%.

The security firm said that during June 2013 spammers actively used the name of Apple Founder 'Steve Jobs' in most of their spam. The unsolicited mail invited recipients with title "get to know the secret of his success" but the content of the mail contained an advert for training sessions on "how to make a profitable business out of a hobby in just 1.5 hours".

Apart from Job's 'secret of success', the spammers also targeted buyers by sending spam messages offering huge discounts on gadgets of Apple with the company's name in the 'from' field.

To get more response and to encourage quick decision from buyers, spammers announced that there were very few products available under this offer.

In June 2013, spammers exploited another theme which was offer of admission to US universities as well as online education at user's convenience. These spam emails often included links to application forms for the course. Interestingly, the addresses of web pages vary from email to email and often created on the day of mailing. This is probably how the authors of mass mailing collect personal data of users.

As expected, in June 2013 spammers continued to spread adverts dedicated to Father's day which is celebrated as a holiday in U.S. in mid-June. Apparently last year dads dreamed of expensive watch but in June 2013 Cigars were offered as gift. There was little change here: same patterns appeared in email traffic several months ago and has been seen time and again with color of pictures and text changed and the general design remained almost same.

HELP NET SECURITY PUBLISHED A STATEMENT ON 31ST July, 2013 quoting a comment by Tatyana Shcherbakova, Senior Spam Analyst at Kaspersky Lab, saying "In June 2013, spammers continued to use familiar tricks."

And finally, the geographical distribution of spam was also highlighted by Kaspersky in its latest report, with China (23.9%) remaining at the number one place followed by United States (17.2%), and South Korea (14.5%).

» SPAMfighter News - 8/6/2013