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Spam Volumes Touch An All-Time Low Since 2008

McAfee the Internet security provider released its Threats Report for Third Quarter 2010 on November 17, 2010 according to which, spam volumes have declined between July and September 2010 in terms of both local as well as global geographies.

States the report, despite spam remaining an extremely stubborn threat online, it has been the lowest during Q3 2010 ever since 2008 both nationally and globally. Other than the countries such as Greece, Russia, Indonesia and Belarus, the remaining ones which McAfee monitored displayed declines in spam levels.

These declines were mainly because of the takedowns of several major botnets, including Bredolab that had contaminated over 30 million PCs.

Nonetheless, in spite of the spam drops, Q3 2010 saw a rise in spam scams that tried to spread the Zeus infection while exploiting the names of reputed organizations like FedEx, eFax, United States Postal Service, Social Security Administration, Internal Revenue Service, and Western Union.

Conversely, malware, during this period, increased to its peak, as per McAfee's report. For, the security company detected a mean of 60,000 fresh malicious programs daily during Q3 2010 that was nearly four times that of 2007. For 2010 up till now, McAfee found 14 million distinct malware samples compared to 13 million for the same period during 2009.

Speaking further on the spam levels, the security specialists stated that they had fallen chiefly because the Stuxnet worm was discovered, a highly advanced malware ever found, which afflicted Internet users during the third quarter 2010. The worm, during July 2010, represented a new epoch's beginning, while by September, 2010, further examination of Stuxnet revealed that in addition to being a spying program, it was a weapon designed for destructing critical infrastructures. So far, the malware had contaminated several thousand non-targeted PCs across the world, the specialists estimated.

In the meantime, the specialists are further cautioning that albeit e-mail junk in general is falling, the dangers such as phishing attacks, identity theft, and malevolent web-links arriving through spam messages continue to be severe like ever before. Hence, users require remaining informed and updated regarding the most recent Web threats.

Related article: Spam Scam Bags a Scottish Connection

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