95% of email sent in 2007 is spam

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 13 Dec 2007 at 08:26

More than nine out of ten emails sent in 2007 were spam, according to a leading US security vendor.

Barracuda Networks' annual spam report says junk email levels have risen to between 90-95% of all messages this year, up from only 5% in 2001.

The figures, based on a billion emails sent between Barracuda's customers, are sharp increase on last year, where 85-90% of all messages were estimated to be spam.

Barracuda says spammers keep finding new ways to break through the filters, such as the emergence of PDF spam earlier this year. "The spam war is a continuous battle between spammers and security vendors," says Dean Drako, president and CEO of Barracuda Networks.

"Security vendors now require 24-by-7 defence operations to continuously monitor the internet for new spam trends and distribute new defensive solutions immediately. This combination can block a new spam attack within minutes of its start - virtually at zero hour."

Barracuda's research found that many businesses are being bombarded by spam, with 13% of workers claiming to wade through more than 50 junk messages every day.

The survey comes just a fortnight after Google claimed it may have turned a corner in the fight against spam,after it revealed that the amount of junk mail entering its Gmail system had declined for the first time.