Spam Volumes Peaked in April; Ipswitch

Ipswitch Inc., a company leading in development of network management, secure file transfer and messaging solutions declared the findings of its seventh survey on spam on May 7, 2007. The results revealed that 93% of all e-mails reaching inboxes was spam. This was the highest reading since recording started. The rate was comparatively higher than 84% in the previous three months and 62% during the same period in 2006.

Spam mails promoting medication products constitute one third of all unsolicited bulk e-mails. Stock scam spam mails and phishing scam e-mails follow closely. These were sent at the time when financial years bore recent changes on 1st April.

Medication and Finance/Phishing groups of spam interchanged places from the previous quarter. But the new receipt of gambling spam mails was most worrying. These spam mails were designed to mimic the current phenomenon of online gaming around the world.

Earlier in May 2007 a study by IDC warned that spam would rise again and predicted that more than 70 billion spam mails would move out every day across the world this year. With image-based spam successfully evading anti-spam filters, spam volumes are expected to grow faster. Also spoofing the sender identity in e-mails encourages spamming because of their high response rates, said research program VP of IDC's Collaborative Computing and Enterprise Workplace, Mark Levitt. Market WIRE published Mr. Levitt's statement on May 7, 2007.

Corporate are also concerned because of the large amount of spam interfering in their e-communication system with no signs of diminishing, said Tripp Allen, VP of messaging products for Ipswitch, in his company press release. Mark WIRE published the press release on May 7, 2007.

In April this year, The E-Communications Household survey showed that 28% of Internet users in U.K. had great difficulty in managing spam and viruses. Most commonly the attacks resulted in significant performance decline, a computer crash and receipt of offensive e-mails.

Despite the spam and virus havoc only 35 percent of those using the Internet deployed anti-virus software while a fifth bought some kind of anti-spam safeguard. Many downloaded the free software while others simply contended with ISP protection.

Related article: Spam Scam Bags a Scottish Connection

» SPAMfighter News - 5/16/2007