Spam now speaks your language
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Spammers are using translation services and templates to develop batches of spam in multiple languages, raising the ratio of non-English spam email to one in 20 spam messages in July, according to the latest monthly web security report from Symantec's MessageLabs.
Local language spam now makes up 46 percent of spam in Germany and 53 percent in France, two countries with the highest spam rates in excess of 95 percent. In the Netherlands, 25 percent of spam is in Dutch. The Japanese receive 62.3 percent non-English spam and in China non-English spam is 54.7 percent.
Globally, spam continued to hover near a two-year high of approximately 90 percent of all email. In the U.S., spam averaged 86 percent of all email in July, the report said.
"Translation services and templates enable the spammers to push out multiple-language spam attacks and some dubious translations through the use of poor online services highlight the use of these antics," said Paul Wood, MessageLabs Intelligence senior analyst for Symantec.
Reflecting this trend, web security firm Sophos said on its security blog that it has spotted Michael Jackson related spam email written in Chinese.
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