Russian Internet Users Lost $200 Million Due to Spam

According to Alexander Gostev, Head of The Center of Threat Global Studies and Analysis at Moscow's Kaspersky Lab, Internet surfers in Russia lost an estimated $200 Million during 2008 on account of spam, as reported by MOSNEWS on July 21, 2009.

To explain the meaning of spam, experts say it is a form of e-mail abuse in which massive unsolicited messages advertising something are sent to users.

While addressing a high-profile meeting that was focused on the safety of Internet users, Gostev said that spam was responsible for 86%-96% of all e-mails that Russian users received on the world network.

According to Gostev, the majority of spam is channeled via social-networking websites that represent the most serious risk to computer security.

Social-networking websites like Facebook and Twitter provide a very effective platform for online crooks, reveals a study by the IT security and data-protection agency Sophos Inc. The report states that online crooks are exploiting social-networking websites doubly by employing them for identifying possible victims as well as for attacking those victims.

Moreover, Sophos notes that Twitter and other social-networking sites have become increasingly involved in accumulating members rather than ensuring users' safety. The report ended with the observation that nearly two-third of organizations apprehend that corporate security is threatened due to social networking and 89.7% of the total business e-mails are spam.

Score.com Inc. an organization that focuses on gauging the digital world conducted a study that found that majority of the global audience for social networks belonged to Russia where visitors viewed 1,307 web-pages and spent 6.6 hours at the rate of one visitor/month.

Social-networking people in Russia comprised the greatest of all active social-networking audiences among the forty nations that Score.com studied. Brazil was positioned as second (6.3 hours), followed by Canada (5.6 hours), Spain (5.3 hours) and Puerto Rico (5.3 hours).

Given the large size of Russia, people wanting to connect with each other across the country find it very convenient to use social-networking websites. Consequently, this large-scale engagement allows not only advertisers and marketers to get to these social-networking audiences but spammers as well.

Related article: Russian Hackers Break into NOAA to Push Pills

» SPAMfighter News - 8/14/2009