Spam Increasing In 2005

The company also forecast that Directory Harvest Attacks (DHA), an attempt by hackers to steal a businesses email directory and send spam, will increase by 25% in 2005 and that most victims won’t even know if they’ve been attacked. This year Postini has protected its customers from over 164 million DHAs and blocked over 38 billion invalid delivery attempts.

The study also predicted that “phishing” fraudulent email used to steal the recipient’s identity information will also rise significantly in 2005, recasting Spam as a damaging activity rather than a nuisance.

This past year saw the amount of legitimate email drop from 22% to just 12%, while viruses rose over the past year from roughly half a percent to one and a half percent according to Postini’s Email Stat Track. The virus infection average ratio during 2004 was 1 in 67, compared to 2003, when 1 in 200 messages were infected with a virus. Towards the end of the year viruses were infecting 1 in 25 emails (see Spam And Viruses Deter Online Users)

Postini has more than doubled its customers since this time last year, increasing from 2,000 in December 2003 to 4,100 and currently the company processes over 2.4 billion email message per week and quarantines 88% of messages as spam or viruses for leading companies and enterprises.