Industry News Home More stories like this... RSS Feed

More than nine out of ten emails are spam

A malware analysis and detection laboratory has highlighted the increasing number of spam emails after revealing that more than nine in ten of analysed messages in the third quarter of this year were spam.

Some 91.77 per cent of emails delivered to business inboxes were spam and the peak was noted in August when more than 93 per cent of all mail traffic analysed by online security firm Panda Security was recorded as spam.

A sample of more than 123 million emails was used in the study, which showed that most of the rogue emails were sent from computers infected with bots, the company states.

"The percentage of infected emails increased significantly in September, to more than double the levels that we had witnessed in previous months," explains Ryan Sherstobitoff, chief corporate evangelist for Panda Security.

This could be related to the financial crisis, as cyber-crooks step up attacks to enhance their chances of success and avoid the effects of the economic recession."

In April and May the number of spam recorded was 94.75 and 94.71 per cent respectively.

Internet security featuring our award-winning anti-spyware, anti-virus, firewall and spam protection. Visit www.pctools.com to upgrade your protection