Medical Spam Up 90 percent in October
October has seen a massive rise in the proportion of medical-related spam targeting UK inboxes according to email management specialist Email Systems. spam selling medical products that claim to offer miracle cures to help with problems such as weight loss, muscle relaxants, stopping smoking, depression/anxiety problems, allergies, women's health, pain relief and sexual health have shot up in prominence through the month. Medical email comprised an average of 48% in October, a 90% increase from an average of approximately 25% in September. Other categories this month included pornography (15% approx.), gambling (11%), cheap software (8%), mortgages (9%), other (ie travel / anti speed camera kit / misc. 8%). spam as a whole rose by 9% from September figures to an average of just over 82% for the month. Viruses however dipped by more than a third from just under 3% of email traffic in September to an average of 1.9% in October. On average, Saturdays seem to be the worst day of the week for spam, with less work related email traffic impacting the figures. In total, spam peaked at more than 90% of all email traffic on no fewer than six days during October, four of which were on Saturdays and the other two on Sundays. The monthly spam peak occurred on Saturday October 16th with spam comprising 94.38% of all traffic and legitimate traffic only 4.25% on the same day. The lowest point of the month came on Tuesday 12th of October with spam comprising 75.01% of all traffic and legitimate email at a monthly high of 22.87%. Virus related traffic peaked at 2.44% on Monday 18th October and reached it’s lowest point at 1.2% on Saturday 23rd. Neil Hammerton, Managing Director of Email Systems commented: “The fact that we’re now into cold and flu season is potentially the reason behind the massive rise in medical related email, the majority of which were written in broken English, including phrases such as ‘meds affordable cause it is internet’ and ‘no extra money asked’. When analysed further, many of these mails originated from countries such as Uruguay, Sweden, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Moldova, Japan, India and Hungary and are quite simply unsolicited scams.”
Reproduced from an article published by Spamfo.co.uk
© Spamfo.co.uk
The original article can be viewed here:
http://www.spamfo.co.uk/News/Latest/Medical_Spam_Up_90_percent_in_October/2...
Permalink Bookmark Digg this story
