Noticed you’re getting less email spam? It’s at a 5-year low
A report says that one of the reasons for the drop is the gradual shift of advertisers from spam to more legal ways of promoting their services.
Finally some good news for spam haters.
Cybersecurity company Kaspersky recently released a report that says that the amount of unsolicited junk mail people have received in their inboxes is at a five-year low.
Last year, the percentage of spam decreased throughout the year and during the last three months of 2012, remained below 70 percent. Kaspersky attributes the drop to the gradual shift of advertisers from spam to more legal ways of promoting their services.
However, the report also warns email users not to get too excited, saying that spam is not "headed the way of the dodo anytime soon."
"Malicious spam, fraud and advertising of illegal goods cannot simply or easily migrate to legal platforms, due to their own inherently criminal nature," the report says, adding that 2013 will see negligible decline in spam volume at best.
The average percentage of spam in 2012 was substantially lower than in 2010 (82.2%) and 2011 (80.3%), when botnet command centers and pharmaceutical affiliate programs were actively shut down.
Kaspersky credits the decrease in spam volume primarily to the overall heightened level of anti-spam protection. With spam filters in place for almost every email system, the spam detection level typically bottoms out at 98 percent, the report says.
Other reasons for low spam volume include mandatory DKIM signature policies (digital signatures that verify the domain from which emails are sent) introduced by many email providers.
Although DKIM was first introduced in 2006, email providers have started to see it an important criterion for determining whether an email should be delivered to the intended recipient in the last couple of years.
In 2012, the range of subjects used in malicious emails included fake messages from airlines, hotel reservation services and coupon services such as Groupon. This is in addition to earlier tactics like fake notices from hosting services, social networks, delivery services and messages from financial and government organizations.
The most common malicious programs in 2012 were those stealing usernames and logins, focusing primarily on account information for financial services. However, malicious users were also interested in other types of passwords, such as those for social networks and email accounts.
China, which wasn't even in the top 20 for countries from which spam originated in 2011, topped the list in 2012, accounting for 19.5 percent of all spam. Spam originating in the U.S. increased to 15.6 percent, taking the top spot
So how do you avoid falling victim to malicious emails?
Kaspersky says that when you receive an email, make sure you verify that it was actually sent from the resource it claims to be, never click on links in suspicious emails and remember to update your software regularly.
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