Spam Level on a Constant Surge

As per spam statistics released on February 16, 2010 by the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG) in San Francisco (US) (at its general meeting), spam continues to play havoc on the Internet at a steady rate.

MAAWG, an industry group with some of the biggest e-mail providers and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) as its members, collects quarterly spam data from leading service providers and generates the only spam statistics that come straight away from ISPs.

Executive Director of MAAWG, Jerry Upton, stated that in spite of a small decline in the last quarter of 2009, the number of e-mails found "abusive" by service providers continuously pegs at around 90%, as per the news published by searchsecuirty.techtarget.com on February 17, 2010. The data of spam volume is based on over 200 Billion e-mails delivered and 500 Million mailboxes.

Other members present in the meeting also highlighted the fact that the spam volume is on a continuous surge.

A security expert from Symantec, Sandy Jensen, opined in the meeting that botnets currently account for over 83% of the total volume of spam across the world, reported mercurynews.com on February 17, 2010.

Translating Jensen's view into simple words, Upton added that earlier spam e-mails might have been pouring in from a server in China, but now they might be coming in from the laptop in the neighborhood which might be controlled by a hacker located in Romania, reported mercurynews.com on February 17, 2010.

Upton also said that spam might be coming from the user's system itself or his/her friend's or relative's system and that's a major change which has taken place.

In addition, the national spam source is changing, as Symantec's Jensen as well as Nilesh Bhandari (a product manager at Cisco) claimed that US and Brazil have declined as a source, whereas there have been inflation in spam pouring from Vietnam, Netherlands, Germany and India, as per the news published by mercurynews.com on February 17, 2010.

Experts claimed that spam activity bounds to flow in a country with the increase in its broadband Internet connections, especially if several people are using systems with fake Windows operating systems and do not have appropriate security solution.

Related article: Spam Scam Bags a Scottish Connection

» SPAMfighter News - 2/26/2010