In the run-up to Valentine's Day, Sophos has reported seeing a
rise in the number of spam campaigns selling romantic gifts such as
jewelry, chocolate and lingerie. However, a new Sophos poll reveals
that just five percent of computer users now admit to purchasing
goods sold via spam*, compared to nine percent this time last
year.
"The results are in - spammers are no longer facing such an easy
ride when it comes to flogging goods, whether they're personalized
Valentine's Day gifts or the latest and greatest in ten-day
weight-loss medication," said Graham Cluley, senior
technology consultant at Sophos. "The simple fact is that if no-one
bought goods sold via junk email the spammers would stop. It's
encouraging to see a drop in the number of people who own up to
making purchases, but with the number of email users worldwide,
five percent is still more than enough to keep the spammers in
business."
Two examples of Valentine's Day
spam.
According to Sophos, many of the Valentine's Day themed
campaigns make use of graphics embedded in the regular email text.
This type of image spam, most often used for promoting stock
pump-and-dump scams or medication, is popular with spammers thanks
to its ability to bypass anti-spam filters that scan text content
only. Image spam rose by almost 100 percent during 2006, from 18.5
percent in January to 35.1 percent at the end of December.
"Image spam is set to be one of the key spam trends during 2007.
Not only does it stand a better chance of reaching recipients'
mailboxes, but particularly when marketing visually appealing
products, it's a much more effective way of inducing people into
making a purchase," continued Cluley. "But whether they contain
images, weblinks or any other trick designed to bypass filters,
unsolicited emails continue to cause problems for companies around
the world, and in order to make the perpetrators disappear, more
people need to be resolute and stop responding to spam."
In January Sophos published its
annual Security Threat Report, which detailed the latest trends
in spam and the techniques used by spammers to commit identity
theft and swindle money out of internet users.
Sophos recommends that companies protect themselves with a
consolidated IT security solution to
protect against the threats of spam, spyware and malware.
* Source: Sophos online poll, 542 respondents,
February 2007.
Disclaimer: Please bear in mind that this poll is not
scientific and is provided for information purposes only. Sophos
makes no guarantees about the accuracy of the results other than
that they reflect the choices of the users who participated.
More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Sophos is committed to providing security and data protection solutions that are simple to manage, deploy and use and that deliver the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, and network access control solutions backed by SophosLabs - a global network of threat intelligence centers. With more than two decades of experience, Sophos is regarded as a leader in security and data protection by top analyst firms and has received many industry awards.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.