Spam Numbers Rise, Although Porn Is Down
09.01.06

This article is reprinted in whole or in part from an article in PCMag.com written by By Natali T. Del Conte

A survey released on Friday shows that while emails pushing porn are down, overall spam emails – and phishing attempts – are growing significantly.

The survey was conducted by Ipswitch (Editors note: The Ipswitch release is reprinted in it's entirety on the right), a vendor of SMB security software. It found that 70 percent of all email received is spam, compared to 62 percent the previous quarter, and just 57 percent last Christmas. In spring 2005, however, the number of spam emails topped 80 percent, the company found.

The survey ranked the most prevalent forms of spam and found the most pertained to medication, at 36 percent. More significantly, financial/phishing spam entered the list at 19 percent of all emails received.

That, according to Ipswitch, was because filtering software and users have begun to recognize traditional spam, and have begun ignoring it. Phishing, on the other hand, uses social engineering techniques to mimic common and accepted web sites, luring unwary consumers to enter confidential information in an attempt to defraud them.

"Conventional spam, by which I mean non-phishing, is less effective than it used to be," said David Karp, director of product marketing for Ipswitch. "People are getting wise, and filters are getting better. And I think that is why phishing is on the rise, because a spammer can no longer sell fake watches or fake pornography."

Pornographic spam, once tops on the list, fell to 14 percent, most likely due to improvements in filtering software. Rounding out the top five were electronics and pirated software spam, followed by mortgage offers.

But what is spam? To Ipswitch, spam was defined as unsolicited email from businesses with which a user does not have a relationship.

"I might not have asked for Banana Republic to tell me they have a sale this weekend, but I have a business relationship with them, so I can expect to receive email from them," Karp said. "That's not spam. I can opt out of it, and the unsubscribe link actually works. Newsletters that you subscribe to are not spam, and a reasonable amount of correspondence relating to a business relationship that you have is not spam either."

Karp says that malicious spammers do not adhere to laws that mandate a way to opt out of unsolicited mail because they simply don't care.

"Its not that legitimate businesses have bad email practices," Karp said. "These are typically illegitimate business from the get go. Most companies know how to send emails that are valuable to their customers and take people off lists when they don't want to be on them."

Conversely, malicious spammers may hope that users opt to unsubscribe so that they validate that their email address is legitimate.

"If the emailer is really a spammer, all unsubscribing does is confirm your email address so you've made yourself more viable," said Rob Frankel, a branding consultant with Robfrankel.com, who says that targeted email campaigns are successful and not spam. "I'm on a one-man crusade to say that unsolicited [email] is unsolicited but it's not necessarily spam," he said.

But spam would not persist if it wasn't profitable. A survey from Reflexion Network Solutions in June showed that 22 percent of those surveyed had visited a Web site from a spam email. Still, Karp says that consumers are getting progressively hip to spam while filters are getting better.

The next generation of spammers will have to be more aggressive and possibly find new ways to electronically reach their victims, Karp said.

"The next generation may have new forms of communication, but I would suspect that they'll get a new form of spam," Karp said. "Spam is appearing in instant messaging, either computer or phone based. The difference is that the email spam filtering business is well developed, but I'm pretty sure there is no spam filter on my mobile phone, and I wouldn't know how to deploy one."