Yahoo! "most abused" web mail service

Stephen Withers
Friday, 07 March 2008 10:05

Business IT - Security

Overall, 72.7 percent of emails were spam during February, slightly down on the previous month. Australia and the US do slightly better than average, with 62.2 and 68.9 percent respectively. The UK does relatively well on MessageLabs' figures at 60.4 percent.

Symantec puts the global figure a little higher at 78.5 percent, but whatever the exact proportion, if three-quarters of the world's emails are spam, that's a massive waste of resources.

What's more worrying is the 200 percent increase in targeted Trojan attacks over the last few months. While the absolute numbers are still small (around 30 a day, each aimed at perhaps 1000 individuals) targeting senior executives by name increases the chance of getting through the defences and has a potentially large payoff for the criminals behind the attacks.

"Not only are we seeing a significant increase in the number of targeted Trojan attacks, but they often appear to be based on prior intelligence gathered about their targets," said Sunner.