Re: Report: Spam now 90 percent of all e-mail

On May 26, 3:42 pm, Sordo  <sordo @recdep.com> wrote:
 May 26, 2009 9:24 AM PDT

Report: Spam now 90 percent of all e-mail
by Lance Whitneyhttp://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10249172-83.html?tag=mncol

Spam now accounts for 90.4 percent of all e-mail, according to a report
released Monday from security vendor Symantec. This means that 1 out of
every 1.1 e-mails is junk. The report also notes that spam shot up 5.1
percent just from April to May.

http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/bto/20090526/Spam_Levels_May_2009.png

Symantec's May 2009 MessageLabs Intelligence report reveals other
disturbing trends, as well. Rather than just hijack disreputable Web
sites, cybercriminals now favor older and well-established domains to
host their malware. The report says 84.6 percent of all domains blocked
for malicious content are more than a year old. One type of domain now
especially vulnerable to threats is social networking, since most of the
sites' content is created by users.

"Spammers using better-known and thus more widely trusted Web sites to
host malware is reminiscent of the spammers who rely on well-known Web
mail and social networking environments to host spam content," said Paul
Wood, Symantec's MessageLabs Intelligence senior analyst. "The
trustworthy older domains can be compromised through SQL injection
attacks while newer sites are more likely to be flagged as suspicious--a
temporary site set up with the sole purpose of distributing spam and
malware--and thus faster to get shut down."

Where you live also determines when you're spammed, says the report. For
people in the U.S., spam hits its peak between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m. and
then drops overnight. Europeans get a solid stream of spam throughout
the day, while users in Asia-Pacific countries find most spam waiting
for them in the morning. One reason for this trend, says the report, is
that most spammers are at their busiest during U.S. working hours.

The popular CAPTCHA program, which asks the user to type in a series of
random characters, is no longer proving as effective as once hoped. Many
Web sites have relied on CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing
test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) to ensure that accounts are
created by actual human beings.

But criminals have now succeeded in generating profiles with random
names, apparently by using automated CAPTCHA breakers. The report notes
that some major Web sites are now exploring other ways to block
automated accounts, such as using photographic images that a user must
analyze.

Spam levels had dropped for a short while last year after the closure of
several malware-hosting Internet providers. But spammers have since
bounced back from those losses by rebuilding their networks.

Symantec's MessageLabs Intelligence gathers research on spam and other
malware from global data centers that track e-mails and Web pages.
Symantec releases a new intelligence report each month.
Lance Whitney wears a few different technology hats--journalist, Web
developer, and software trainer. He's a contributing editor for
Microsoft TechNet Magazine and writes for other computer publications
and Web sites. You can follow Lance on Twitter at @lancewhit. Lance is a
member of the CNET Blog Network, and he is not an employee of CNET.

Very possible since when you consider all your posts, that the rest
define as SPAM.
.