Email Spamming Levels Down

Published: Friday, August 19, 2005 Online-Casinos.com

EMAIL SPAMMING LEVELS DOWN

Mortgage and loan spam the worst

It's still way too intrusive and prevalent, but general email spam levels have dropped, according to the US research outfit Ipswitch in a report released this week.

The company says that spam is down by over 20 percent on the previously recorded period. But with 74 percent of e-mail received over the summer period classified as unwanted spam, (down from 93 per cent over the Easter period) it is still unacceptably high.

Although mortgage and loan spam held on to the top spot, it fell from 44 percent - a third of spam e-mails this time. Second remained unwanted e-mails offering various types of medication or 'pharmaspam' (up from 18 percent to 22 percent).

Next was the new trend of e-mails attempting to 'phish' recipients' banking details with spurious claims of Lottery wins and online gambling accounts (12.5 percent up from 9 per cent), with various pornographic offerings rising to the occasion at number four. Last was spam offering pirated software with 9 percent of the total spam received.

"Although the percentage of spam arriving in e-mail inboxes can vary substantially, the importance of having efficient filters in place is as relevant as ever because productivity can be adversely affected by even small amounts of messaging spam," said Ipswitch's vice president of marketing, Alex Neihaus.

"Businesses lose countless man-hours a week in staff having to sift through the deluge of e-mail in their inbox to get to those that have a real affect on the bottom line. Collaboration is a cornerstone of doing business in the 21st century and companies cannot do enough to protect this vital part of their business communications."

Quocirca analyst Clive Longbottom said, "Although the user is becoming more knowledgeable in their approach to spam, the spammers are at least one step ahead. The rise in phishing spam is the most worrying, as this is often quite sophisticated - and has the highest financial repercussions for users. It is of massive importance that users have suitable anti-spam capabilities in place."