Spam - An Ever-Increasing Problem for Asian Countries

As Asian countries prove to be promising for broadband penetration, spammers seem to be taking higher interest in exploiting this prospect. The surge in broadband penetration has turned the attention of hackers towards this region, thus making things more difficult.

The spam e-mails are continuously increasing in volume, targeting corporate and individuals, showing no sign of decline. In case of Asia, the problem is very severe.

Bjorn Engelhardt, vice-president at Symantec Hosted Services for Asia-Pacific and Japan, claimed that during 2008, spam level in Asia was nearly 5% less than the global level. However, since the second half of 2009, the region surpassed its contemporaries as far as spam received is concerned, as per the news published by ZDNetAsia on May 27, 2010.

Engelhardt added that the Asia-Pacific region has a higher spam level, presently touching at 91.8% against U.S. (82.6%), Europe, Middle East and Africa (at 80.6%) and the world (90.2%). As compared to 2008, Asia-Pacific region has attracted more spam and users could come across more spam in their inboxes in coming times.

The security experts stated that, with increase in e-mail volumes, the rise in spam messages is inevitable. Vice president of marketing and alliances at BoxSentry, Raj Dalal, noted that on an international level there were nearly 200 Billion mails sent every day, with spam mails estimating for almost 90%, as per the news published by ZDNetAsia on May 27, 2010.

The figures are certainly a cause of concern for IT officials who are always in trouble, as on one hand, strict policies at times results in the loss of authentic mails, and on the other hand, enabling them hampers their efficiency. While a second stage filtering could still be a probable solution, blocking spam messages seems impossible.

The security experts stated that the previous forecasts on the removal of spam were never based on the assumption that the onslaught was yet to emerge. In 2004, Chairman of Microsoft, Bill Gates, predicated that spam could be removed in another two years. However, the reality is that the uninvited mails coming from unknown sources have severely damaged the companies' networks.

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» SPAMfighter News - 6/10/2010