Dramatic increase in spam hits internet

Posted on 29 Apr 2009 at 12:46

Following a recent and dramatic swelling in spam, the vast majority of email on the internet is now unsolicited junk mail. Over 85 per cent of all email messages are spam, according to MessageLabs, which also believes that spam levels have increased by ten per cent over the last month.

The email security company claims that this level of spam has not existed since September 2007 and attributes the success of the spammers to their ability to change their techniques. However, the online criminals have not been innovating but are rather revisiting old methods. Paul Wood, MessageLabs Intelligence Senior Analyst, spoke to Computer Shopper at the Infosecurity conference in London:

"We've seen the spammers relying on old techniques such as image spam, which was popular in 2007. They are recycling old ideas to avoid spam filters. But they have a few new tricks too, " said Wood.

The old technique currently in vogue involves displaying an image that contains the advert's text. This is easy for humans to read but less easy for a computer to analyse. Originally such images were included as attachments to email messages but today's spammers are using other methods to make the messages appear less suspicious. "The gifs and other images in the spam appear to be served from legitimate sites," said Wood. This means that anti-spam systems will find it hard to distinguish between media-rich legitimate email and unwanted or even fraudulent adverts.

Author: Simon Edwards

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