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June Spam Returned to a Peak, Said SoftScan

SoftScan announced on July 2, 2007 that spam volumes returned to the high levels of 90.06% of all scanned e-mails during June 2007. However, on some days, the levels dropped to 86% but SoftScan attributed this to the less number of customers visiting the spam shop on those days.

Fluctuations in spam volumes normally occurs either due to variation in spamming tactics or a decline in the number of customers purchasing spam lists, said CTO of SoftScan, Diego d'Ambra in a statement reported by Sourcewire on July 2, 2007. Cyber criminals compile list of active e-mail IDs and then sell them to companies promoting various products. However, according to d'Ambra, when spam levels fall on a few days, it is not a call for celebration!

Unfortunately, thinks d'Ambra, the occasional drop in spam levels does not imply an improvement as overall trend is very high. Just as a normal business suffers poor marketing days, so does the spam shops have losses on some days, d'Ambra added. In June 2007, the top five virus families in terms of their percentage share were phishing -96.56%, Netsky -0.91%, Bagle -0.45%, Stration -0.45%, and Mytob -0.44%.

In June 2007, SoftScan counted the highest percentage of spam as 96.55% of scanned e-mail and rightly classified them as junk e-mails. The figure narrowly beat the February 2007 highest estimate of 96.22%. The June high records occurred during the weekend of the last week of the month. On weekends, there are fewer legitimate business e-mails. Spam rates on June weekdays rose to a peak of 91.36%. When viruses dropped in June 2007, the overall e-mails stopped at only 0.61%. The reason being the absence of major outbreaks and fall in phishing operations.

As long as users continue to purchase from spam mails, spam would not come to an end. It may not grow percentage-wise, but as more spam mails reach a larger population, there would be an overall growth. And it would be difficult for law to do anything, as spamming is a worldwide problem, said Dan Field, MD of anti-spam service ClearMyMail, as published by WebUser on June 30, 2007.

Related article: June Predictions Include New Storm Variants, More Spam and Phishing

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