McAfee Publishes Spam Report for December

According to McAfee's spam report for December 2009, anti-spyware and anti-virus vendors are continuously enhancing their security products each passing day. But despite that, hackers are exploiting US' technology and interest in pop culture for distributing spam.

The report further reveals that the Can-Spam Act of the Federal Trade Commission will be completing six years of its launch on January 1, 2010. The Act was introduced to reduce the burst of phishing and spamming assaults in the US via the imposition of a monetary penalty of $16,000 per incident.

However, McAfee claims that the Can-Spam Act and other legal and technological instruments that are supposed to curb spammers haven't been able to reduce the volume of spam messages flowing into people's inboxes in the US.

McAfee researchers, in their latest spam report, have stated that they had observed the total volume of unsolicited e-mails reaching an average e-mail address spiked and reached the peak of 92% of the total spam volume just some months back. Internetnews.com reported this on December 14, 2009.

Moreover, as per the December spam report, the months long job spam messages to 'Twitter' users are also escalating. The spam mails aimed at scamming people into opening new Twitter accounts and then using them to dispatch spam e-mails to friends and others for money.

Additionally, e-mail administrators, in November 2009, were surprised to find a steep fall in the volume of junk e-mails hitting their servers. The rate of decline in spam was as huge as 60-70%. This was because a leading spam supporting Internet Service Provider McColo had been de-linked from the Internet. Nevertheless, spam levels at current are much higher than the pre-McColo levels, McAfee highlights in its report. Indeed, in July 2009, spam levels had attainted their peak for the year.

Besides this, McAfee's new report also discovers that the Christmas-themed malicious e-mails of this season concentrate on the economic downturn, promoting bogus brands and luxury items for online sale. Indeed, McAfee highlights one particular spam scam in its December report that originates from the Cutwail botnet, which abuses Christmas topic to trick users into logging on to malevolent websites.

Related article: McAfee Alerts Windows about Accessibility Hole in Vista

» SPAMfighter News - 12/23/2009