A billion reasons to be wary of emails from Australia!

Peter Dinham
Tuesday, 07 July 2009 14:35

Business IT - Security

In a word of advice for companies, McAfee says corporations should also review policy decisions that are based on reactions to spam, pointing out that “one-shot policies often ignore the continuing evolution of spam over the long term,” and that with spam changes “security effectiveness can erode and actually create a situation in which a company actually has less security and suffers from more false-positives.”

“For example, blocking all incoming email from a particular foreign language without determining whether the email is from friend or foe may stop a business from getting its next big sale, partner, or opportunity.”

McAfee says its survey revealed a dominance of spam bounce-backs in the .com, .org, and .us domains compared with other countries, in which bounce-backs were insignificant.

“Although spam is international, it seems that spammers prefer to forge sending domains with these three to a degree out of proportion with the rest of the globe. Was that choice made maliciously, by convenience, or by slacking?” questions McAfee.

According to McAfee, spammers appear to understand their customers as well as or better than the average corporate marketing department, tailoring their messages and products to what is “most likely to appeal to a specific audience, and it says, at the same time, spammers are smart enough to avoid directing traffic to URLs in the countries in which they operate.

“After all, how upset can a government get if its own citizens aren’t being taken advantage of?”