MessageLabs’, now part of Symantec Corp., February Intelligence Report highlights that although spam declined by 1.3 percent to 73.3 percent of all emails in February, levels as high as 79.5 percent were experienced at the start of the month due to a spike in botnet activity and spammers leveraging the financial crisis and Valentine’s Day for their latest spam antics.
“February saw the spammers pulling at both the heart and the purse strings with the emphasis on Valentine’s Day and the global recession. Although spam levels declined slightly this month, the level of activity around Valentine’s themed spam reached unprecedented highs accounting for nine percent of all spam messages,” notes Paul Wood, MessageLabs Intelligence Senior Analyst, Symantec. “With the financial crisis front of mind for many organizations and consumers, spammers and phishers are using this topic to their advantage and targeting people when times are tough.”
For the first time in more than a year, February saw the re-appearance of search engine re-directs which topically referenced the financial crisis. The ‘recession spam’ email messages contained text such as “Money is tight, times are hard. Christmas is over. Time to get a new watch!”
