Australia fourth on spam league table

Peter Dinham
Wednesday, 27 May 2009 08:50

Business IT - Security

Don’t worry about the swine flu epidemic there’s another epidemic - whilst not potentially fatal in human terms – which does, however, continue to plague the Internet with increasing ferocity.

The Internet scourge, of course, is spam and a report out today places Australia as the fourth most spammed country in the world with a whopping 31 percent increase in spam traffic in just the past 12 months.

Spam levels in Australia are currently sitting at 89.7 percent compared to 68.2 percent spam in May last year and, just last month (April) there was a worldwide  increase of 5.1 percent for the month, with spam reaching heights of 90.4 percent during April.

Symantec, in its May MessageLabs intelligence report, says virus levels in Australia were one (1) in 602.8 and the security firm also reveals that geographic location determines the time of day when spam is received, and residents in the Asia-Pacific region “start their day with an inbox full of spam and see less come in throughout the day.”

MessageLabs also seems to debunk what it says is a common misconception that cybercriminals are more likely to use less reputable web sites, like those containing adult content, to hide malware.

Instead, according to the report, the majority - 84.6 percent - of web site domains blocked in May for hosting malicious content were well-established domains more than a year old.

Symantec senior analyst, Paul Wood, says the majority of this increase in spam in May was comprised of messages with very little content other than a subject line and valid hyperlink.
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