Spam increases to reach highest point since summer

But holidays mean summer figures are distorted, says Softscan

Spam levels have risen sharply in the past month to 89.07 per cent, reaching highs
last seen in July, according to vendor Softscan.

In July, SoftScan reported that spam levels went as high as 95.95 per cent on
one day. In October they reached a record breaking 96 per cent.

Although these highs are seen at weekends when there is less business mail, the trend over the entire month has been much higher than seen in the last couple
of months. Whether it is set to continue remains to be seen.

Diego d'Ambra, chief technology officer at SoftScan said: 'This is bad news. The spam highs' normally seen in the summer are bought about by the low levels of normal business email as many people are away from work taking their summer holiday. This time levels of legitimate email have stayed the same and instead the spike is purely due to a marked increase of nearly four percent in spam.'

Virus levels have remained low during October accounting for just 0.41per cent of email scanned by SoftScan, with phishing still remaining the predominant threat. The continuing release of new stration (warezov) variants has pushed it into the top 5 families, with an outbreak taking place yet again today.

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