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News
Spam trends
Message labs Africa News shot– January 6th February, 2007
New spam trends detected in 2006
Financial spam is close to overtaking pharmaceutical spam as the most common form of junk e-mail, according to figures compiled by Messagelabs Africa, Antispam server report analysis for the year 2006.
Spammers appear to be abandoning porn for more profitable offerings, says Ochieng Maxwell; Chief Technology Officer with Messagelabs Africa. Pornography spam continues to decrease, reaching its lowest level since the company began assessing the types of spam clogging mailboxes in august 2005 when it accounted for 22 percent of all junk e-mail. Now it accounts for only 5 percent of total spam, Says Maxwell.
Healthcare spam dropped from 57 percent of unsolicited mail in July back to 40 percent in January 2007, with financial spam growing from 26 percent to 35 percent over the same period of time.
The other category which saw large increases this month was direct products, which includes spam e-mails trying to sell products or services (excluding adult services), which grew from under 5 percent of spam in July to 23 in January.
"We've seen no sign of a letup in the amount of spam traffic, so it seems quite clear that the legislative efforts of governments around the world are having little effect on the spammers, However, from the dwindling amount of pornographic spam e-mail, it appears that adult products and services are not generating sufficient returns for spammers. Instead, they are switching to more profitable models using stock tips and consumer products as a hook."
The figures, which were extracted from the millions of unsolicited e-mails received by Messagelabs Africa on a weekly basis, are made up of spam generated by seeding e-mail accounts and spam submissions forwarded to Messagelabs Africa servers by its current Customers who keeps swelling.
Since The company set up its Operations in Kenya early 2005 “ Their has been tremendous subscription requests by corporate Organizations who have either been suffering silently for lack of antispam solutions in the region or had subscribed to other solutions out of the country which has several negative implications says Nashon Onyalo; Messagelabs Africa Business Development Manager
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