Spam Poised For Shift In Overall Make-up

Spam e-mail continues to keep choking IT systems worldwide, but the junk e-mails may be changing some of its general constitution, as per the most recent figures from Symantec, issued on May 3, 2007 by Weblog.infoworld.

Though unsolicited e-mail suppliers are changing their methods of bypassing anti-spam filters, but junk e-mail figures remain same. Symantec alleged that spam concentration -- found at the SMTP level -- stayed quite steady in April 2007, comprising about 65 percent of total e-mail trailed throughout the month. Spam concentrations have stayed within 65-70 percent of total e-mails from the beginning of 2007.

But, image spam -- spam e-mails whose text is imbedded within the image to elude text-supported filtering -- dropped to 27 per cent during April, as opposed to 37 per cent in March, Symantec declared in its State of Spam monthly statement for May. It is uncertain whether the variation symbolizes a drift past image spam or is just an anomaly.

About 8 percent of overall junk e-mail contained some sort of fraud in April, with a further 4 percent associated straightaway with scam, like phishing. Adult-content spam dipped to just 3 percent of overall e-mails.

Another spam e-mail layout presents itself as publicity or award conveyed by a fast food outlet but carries the unkindest censure of such food ("X firm's food is beset with dead bugs, like flies and worms," to cite Symantec). The firm is assigning the medium as " firm defamation spam," according to news released by the May 3, 2007 Weblog.infoworld issue.

"Exploiting an irregular URL via a complimentary image hosting service could compound some problem to a few anti-spam program that needs an exact URL path. Nevertheless, any anti-spam program that considers configuration co-ordination in URLs can effortlessly justify this degree of organization," informs Symantec according to news released by Cbc.ca on May 3, 2007.

Such anti-spam program should identify sequence of text in the net address that is familiar to junk e-mail and check the content of such e-mails.

Related article: Spam Scam Bags a Scottish Connection

» SPAMfighter News - 5/10/2007