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

Spam 'accounts for 92% of emails'

Spam emails, which are often linked to ID theft of phishing attacks, account for 92 per cent of all emails, according to a new study.

Data from McAfee showed that this figure from June is growing at a rate of 117 billion spam emails per day, a growth rate it describes as alarming.

"June produced the highest amount of spam we have ever seen, beating the previous high month, October 2008, by more than 20 per cent," the report stated.


The firm attributed the vast rise in spam emails in part to the growing number of 'zombie' computers which are infected with malware which makes them send out huge amounts of spam.

According to the firm, the number of computers infected in this manner is growing by 150,000 per day.

A recent study by the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group found that over half of people questioned have opened a message they thought was spam.

PC Tools internet security, safeguards your PC against cyber threats with proactive defence. Visit www.pctools.com to upgrade your protection