Spammers focusing on 2010 events

2010-01-25

Spammers have been busy with new campaigns focused on events in 2010, according to the January 2010 MessageLabs Intelligence Report from Symantec.

At the start of the year, spammers have typically initiated special new year offers for pharmaceuticals, fashion accessories, weight loss products as well as loans and jobs, MessageLabs Intelligence said.

Spam related to the new year accounted for 7.7 per cent of all spam at one point and the organisation is expecting to see spammers target Valentine's Day.

The report also found that over three-quarters (79 per cent) of webmail spam came from three well-known free webmail service providers.

"Despite the best efforts of the webmail providers to prevent this abuse of their services, there is still a viable market in the underground economy for buying and selling legitimate and usable webmail accounts," commented Paul Wood, MessageLabs Intelligence senior analyst, at Symantec Hosted Services.

RSA's 2010 Global Online Consumer Security Survey recently found that consumer awareness of phishing doubled between 2007 and 2009.

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