We all receive a lot of annoying spam e-mails in our e-mail accounts. Spam level not only keeps growing, but also is more effective due to different attack techniques combined. It was revealed that it reached 87% of all e-mall traffic in May 2009 only in the US, according to a study by Symantec, a global leader in providing security and other systems management solutions.
In summary, spam messages are sent from valid webmail hosting providers; those that are created in the US mainly come from free Webmail such as Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail. Most of them just have a subject line, a valid hyperlink and little content. Now, we are going to point out some conclusions of this interesting research:
• Spammers are most concentrated in some regions of the planet. 31.6% comes from Europe, followed by Asia, South America and North America.
• Spammers are using reputable and trusted Websites to host and hide malware, instead of using those less well-known, for instance adult Web sites.
• Spam’s activity operates more during US working days, and US people get more spam e-mails from 9.00 a.m. to 10.00 a.m.
• 7.0 % of malware conveyed via e-mail enclosed links to malicious websites.
• About 1,149 new websites per day were detected hiding malware, spyware, adware, etc.
Therefore, we would like to recommend you some tips to keep you away from spam:
• Firstly, avoid being picked up on spammers’ lists. Don’t publish your e-mail addresses wherever you can. Avoid publishing your e-mail address on blogs, forums, newsgroups, etc. Check that privacy policies don’t say that your e-mail will be sold or passed when you fill out a form.
• Use anti spam filters for your e-mail account.
• Try not to open spam and never reply to them. For instance if you request removing your e-mail address from a mailing list, you are actually confirming that it is valid.
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