Ireland Spam Touches Peak in October 2007

The volume of unsolicited commercial e-mails delivered to Internet users in Ireland was the highest in October 2007, according to latest statistics.

The data compiled under the initiative of Web monitoring and hosting company IE Internet reveals that almost 70% of total e-mails dispatched to Irish inboxes in October 2007 was spam making a 4% increase over the preceding month of September 2007.

Chief Executive Phelim O'Connell of IE Internet said that the amount of spam being relayed from the US has declined. Siliconrepublic published this in news on November 1, 2007.

Although the volume of spam emerging in United States has come down, yet the region was responsible for almost a quarter of all unsolicited marketing e-mails in the world during October 2007. France followed next as one of the top originators of spam accounting for 20% of global spam, while China was responsible for 18% of all junk e-mails. Others like the Russian Federation and Japan accounted for 17% and 9.8% of unsolicited e-mails respectively.

O'Connell commented that United States has always been the foremost country in generating spam since 2003 when IE Internet started collating the figures. ENN reported this on November 1, 2007.

While spam levels increased in October 2007, the number of virus attacks on Irish Internet surfers declined marginally to 3.4%. The statistics point the emergence of a new malware for botnet called HTML/IFRAME with which spammers could take over whole networks to use them to spam out unsuspecting e-mails. Nearly 10% of the total number of attacks launched in Ireland in October 2007 carried the virus.

In October 2007, the most deadly malware namely W32/Netsky.BR was responsible for 18% of all virus attacks. The traditional W32/Zafi.B was also highly prevalent accounting for 12% of all attacks, while W32/Netsky.P and W32/Mytob.CQ were the other viruses among the five that topped the list in October 2007.

A limerick-based Web Company, Elive, estimated that junk or spam mails were responsible for more than 85% of total e-mail traffic in Ireland during August 2007. The company arrived at the figures by analyzing over 13 Million e-mails it monitored during July 2007.

Related article: Ireland Sees Record Increase In Spam Rate

» SPAMfighter News - 11/17/2007