Spam jam clogs emails

A huge and disruptive wave of spam emails hit New Zealand email addresses last week, crippling internet service provider ihug and causing difficulties for its rivals.

Ihug communication manager Cherie Lacey said the spam that clogged ihug's email service was bypassing filtering systems because it was embedded in images rather than plain text and could not be spotted by anti-spam software.

The amount of spam being sent to ihug addresses rose 50 per cent last week and was part of a worldwide phenomenon mostly coming out of Asia, Lacey said.

The image-based spam was also responsible for a noticeable rise in spam reaching private inboxes, as it evaded the filtering systems of internet service providers (ISPs).

» stuff.co.nz - Greg Meylan - 05-11-2006