Spammers are increasingly turning to instant messaging, mobile text services, blogs and social-networking communities such as MySpace.com, according to e-mail and Web security provider MessageLabs.
The firm found that spam in e-mail traffic rose to 64.8% around the world in June, a 6.9% increase over May’s level.
But the MessageLabs report also noted that spammers are turning to new media beyond e-mail, in an effort to defeat the protections being applied to combat e-mail spam. Fraudsters can also send links to phony phishing Web sites or spyware downloads in spam instant messages—known as “spim”—and embed them in misleading blog comments.
Social networks and other non-email channels also help spammers target recipients more effectively based on age, location and other characteristics, the report said. The firm sees a decline in “shotgun” tactics that broadcast spam messages to large populations in favor of subtler tactics that use highly selective targeting.
“The increased convergence of threats across e-mail, Web and IM combined with the increasing sophistication of techniques is an interesting new development,” said Mark Sunner, MessageLabs’ chief technology officer, in a statement. “Today we see a growing number of e-mails and IMs containing links to Websites where malware or spyware is automatically downloaded, as opposed to the traditional method where the message itself has a piece of malware attached.”
MessageLabs, which sells instant-messaging and Web-filtering services, found that one in 531 e-mails in June contained a phishing attack, down slightly from May’s level. During second-quarter 2006, one in 377 e-mails were phishing attempts, down less than 1% from the previous quarter but up 6.5% over the same period in 2005.
