NEWS

Majority of Email Sent to Companies is Spam; Image Based Spam Increased in November

WebProNews
December 26, 2007
By Mike Sachoff

During the month of November 2007, close to 90 percent of the email volume received by large companies was spam according to a report from Proofpoint.

Image based spam increased for the second consecutive month. In November image-based spam rose to 9 percent of total spam volume, up 23 percent over October. Microsoft Word document spam (.doc attachments) increased by 64 percent over October levels to 4 percent of the total spam volume.

PDF spam remained a very small percentage of total spam volume. But rose to its highest levels since September. The use of PDF spam increased by 101 percent over October levels and represented 1 percent of total spam volume.

MP3 spam, where the spammer's message is attached as an MP3 format audio file continued to decline. During November, MP3 spam accounted for just 0.04 percent of total spam volume, falling by 33 percent.


"Because the mix of different spam types is constantly changing, enterprises need spam protection that automatically adapts to the latest threats," said Rami Habal, director of product marketing for Proofpoint.

"Proofpoint's anti-spam solution, powered by Proofpoint MLX machine learning technology, has maintained extremely high effectiveness over the course of 2007, delivering an average of 99.87% effectiveness during the month of November."