Spam News

McAfee spam report: Obama's first 100 days of spam

Monday, June 1, 2009

As spam volumes reached new highs in the first quarter of the year, web security researchers identified spam messages "branded" so as to appear to be coming from legitimate websites, image spam and headline spam as major trends to watch out for.

The June spam report released today by web security vendor McAfee traces the rise and fall of spam levels and trends through the first 100 days of the Obama presidency.

But the report identifies spam related to current events as having a bigger impact due to users' curiosity about the news. Spammers hopped on major stories like the swine flu outbreak to get more successful hits on their websites selling the usual pharmaceutical products.

Image spam is likely to drop off because images increase file size and slow down spambots from sending out large quantities.

However, branding spam messages to spoof legitimate websites is a successful spam strategy, the report said, because it can be very cheap and the hits per email delivered rises.

"President Obama’s administration is the first one in U.S. history that will have to seriously tackle the issues created by an interconnected world," the report said. "It will be interesting to follow his proposed policies to see if they have any more impact than those of previous governments."