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Spam and Phishing Landscape: May 2011

18
May
2011

The unexpected raid and resulting death of Osama Bin Laden shocked the world. As always, spammers were quick to jump on this headline and send a variety of spam messages leveraging the event. The “Fallout from the Death of Osama Bin Laden” section includes samples of some of the spam monitored in different languages.

The effect of the Rustock shutdown from the previous month continued this month. After falling 27.43 percent in March, the average daily spam volume fell another 5.35 percent in April. Compared to a year ago , it is down 65.42 percent. Overall, spam made up 74.81 percent of all messages in April, compared with 74.68 percent in March. Going back a year, the percentage of spam was 89.22 in April 2010.

To find out more, click here to download the May 2011 State of Spam & Phishing Report, which highlights the following trends:

·         Fallout from the Death of Osama Bin Laden

·         Spammer Wishes You Happy Mother’s Day

·         Let the Games Begin!

·         Free Coins for Online FIFA Players

·         April 2011: Spam Subject Line Analysis

Best email practices are:

Do Not

·         Open unknown email attachments. These attachments could infect your computer.

·         Reply to spam. Typically the sender’s email address is forged, and replying may only result in more spam.

·         Fill out forms in messages that ask for personal or financial information or passwords. A reputable company is unlikely to ask for your personal details through email. When in doubt, contact the company in question through an independent, trusted mechanism, such as a verified telephone number, or a known Internet address that you type into a new browser window (do not click or cut and paste from a link in the message).

·         Buy products or services from spam messages.

·         Open spam messages.

·         Forward any virus warnings that you receive through email. These are often hoaxes.

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