Archive notice: This article was originally published on November 13, 2007. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
95 percent of all e-mails sent in the third quarter of the current year were spam. In the thematic breakdown, advertising for pharmaceutical products emerges as the winner. Nearly one-third of the unwanted digital mail beats the advertising drum for Viagra and Co. According to security provider G Data, the recipients of the spam e-mails pay the lavish salaries of the spammers. The simple formula is: The higher the number of spam e-mails sent, the more generous the remuneration from the clients. Sending 20 million spam e-mails can be had from as little as 350 euros.
The most common form of spam is pure text spam. The spam e-mails with pdf attachments that first appeared in spring 2007, by contrast, are declining. “The share is now only five percent”, Thorsten Urbanski, spokesman for G Data, explains to pressetext. Image spam is likewise declining; the share is also around five percent. According to the experts, the recently emerged case of spam in the form of mp3 files was merely a trial balloon that hardly brought the hoped-for success. “The trend is going back to pure text spam”, says Urbanski. The other forms are very expensive to produce and would thus also represent a cost factor.
However, spam is not only annoying when it clogs the e-mail inbox, but also has unpleasant side effects. It is not uncommon for links to websites used to inject malicious code to hide in spam e-mails. Their share is currently a good eight percent. According to G Data, infections through websites are clearly on the rise. 50 percent of malware infections worldwide are attributable to these so-called drive-by infections. With the pre-Christmas period, the IT security experts also expect a further rise in spam attacks. “The Christmas season will bring rich pickings to online criminals. We therefore expect a significant increase in phishing attacks in the run-up to the Christmas business”, says Ralf Benzmüller, head of G DATA Security Labs.
Further links:
- G Data
