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By Edward Cone on 2010-03-04
The German email security firm eleven releases a bimonthly report on spam and malware, based on its analysis of a billion emails each day from 30,000 global installations. These numbers are from the the December 2009/January 2010 report. See also: Email Management Lags
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- 97.5% of email was spam, a new record.
- 1.9% of email was meant for specific recipients.
- 0.6% of mail consisted of legit mass mailings, like newsletters.
- 0.1% of email was sent to transport malware.
- Casinos replaced pharma as the leading spam topic as the new year began.
- 6.6% of all spam in early 2010 was from "Royal Euro Club Casino."
- A surge of spam promising big discounts on Viagra soon reclaimed the lead, accounting for 17.4% of all email at one point in January.
- Spam campaigns are getting shorter, with new versions replacing older ones more quickly than in the past.
- Spam filters and short-lived URLs - sometimes up for less than an hour - help drive the shift to brief campaigns.
- "Event spam," i.e. spam tied to current news, is a trend to watch.
- Christmas e-cards bearing Trojans were a menace in December, followed by iPad themes and then Valentine spam.
- 9.4% of January's spam came from the USA, pushing it past December leader Brazil as the world's largest spammer.
- PayPal and Visa were top phishing targets, with many fake emails looking highly legit.
- Access data for social nets, especially Facebook, also interested the phishers.
- Trojan Horses made up 75% of malware, often disguised as messages from package delivery or money-transfer services.
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