Spam jumps by 35 per cent

SPAM WATCHER IronPort says that last month saw an increase in spam by more than 35 per cent.

The average number of spam email messages jumped to 85 billion messages a day during two periods.

IronPort reckons that in October 2005 all we had to worry about was 31 billion spam a month this increased to 63 billion in October 2006. But in November 2007 there were two surges that averaged 85 billion messages a day.

The October-to-November increase is higher than any other month we've measured, a spokesPort said.

Most of the spam comes from botnets and the increased use of image-based spam. Spammers are also registering more URLs to avoid detection, IronPort said.

They are becoming adept at taking malware development techniques and applying them to the junk mail business, the company warns. µ

You can read the full IronPort report here