Highest Record of Spam Mails in Irish Businesses

The majority of e-mails that Irish inboxes received during February 2007 comprised of spam, claims IE Internet. The firm reported that 60% of e-mails going out to Irish businesses were spam.

It said that a number of spammers took advantage of the Valentine's Day occasion to lure Internet users towards malicious sites through e-mails advertising romantic gifts.

The U.S. continues to be the largest generator of spam with Russian Federation following close. IE Internet's monthly statistics revealed Poland as a major source of spam for the first time, targeting Irish enterprises. Such targeted spam from Poland accounted 10% of total spam in Irish inboxes during February 2007.

Chief technology officer of IE Internet, Ken O'Driscoll told ENN that the early February spam targeted the Valentine's Day business and that could be the reason for the large amount of unsolicited e-mails moving during the month.

Among the top five spam generating countries to Ireland is Britain, which sent out slightly less than 9% of unsolicited e-mails and Slovakia that distributed 3.61% of spam mails, to Irish inboxes.

IE Internet reported a drop to 8% in virus rates in Ireland in February this year. The viruses most blocked were those that were responsible for creating botnets. These are large networks of infected computers under the control of virus writers who often give the networks on hire to spammers.

Evidences indicate that early this month a large gang of Russian virus writers targeted unprotected Polish PCs, which it incorporated into a botnet to send out spam, all in the absence of the owners' knowledge.

A noted aggressive botnet virus, W32/Tibs arose in February 2007 that tried to woo unwary romantics by posing as Valentine's Day e-mail.

The amazing part is that even after the "I Love You" titled e-mail that appeared many years back, people are still falling in similar traps by clicking into such kinds of messages, O'Driscoll added.

There are many countries other than Ireland that are dealing with surges of spam. According to security specialists at SoftScan in U.K., the firm cleared 90.3% of British spam in February, the highest recorded so far.

Related article: Hacked Mall Websites Leave Little Impact on Business

» SPAMfighter News - 3/16/2007