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Spam Expected To Rise 20% In March
SecurityProNews
Staff Writer
2009-03-09
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Spam is expected to increase by 20 percent in March, according to McAfee, and exposure to each one percent is expected to cost companies about $41,000.
 | | Spam Expected To Rise 20% In March |  |
Companies with 1,000 or more employees can expect an average of $182,500 in spam-combat costs this year, according to McAfee's March Spam report. If a spam filter isn't aggressive enough, grabbing say 95 percent of spam instead 99 percent, that four percent can be costly, affecting bottom lines already severely injured by current economic conditions.
"Spam is costing companies more than they think - it affects the bottom line, and can lead to cybercrime," said Jeff Green, senior vice president of McAfee Avert Labs. "It's more important than ever that companies protect themselves from the threats of spam."
What types of spam are on the increase? The most popular right now is replica watch spam. Peaking in February, the spam targeting customers for cheap imitation luxury watches like Rolex reached 20 percent of all spam.
Often marketing spam is among the more benign so long as it doesn't carry viruses, adware, or spyware, or link to places that do carry those things-which is often the case. Other times spam is very deceptive and is targeted toward gathering personal information.
McAfee reports a rise in emails related "e-tickets," which most will associate with an airline ticket. The body of the email appears to be a confirmation of an airline ticket purchase. It is designed to scare the recipient into thinking their identity or financial information might have been compromised to make a purchase. Clicking on the attachment begins a download sequence for a .zip file, within which is the Zbot Trojan.
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SecurityProNews is a daily online and email publication focusing on internet security issues.
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