Bangkok--22 Jun--APPR Media I’ve attached the latest State of Spam report from Symantec, covering the month of May. No, spam hasn’t been eradicated. In fact, spam levels are consistent with previous reports at about 65 percent of overall email traffic. What is most notable though, or perhaps I should say most observable, is that image spam has indeed trended downward dropping to only 16 percent of overall spam—that’s down from 27 and 37 percent in the months of April and March respectively, and 52 percent when it peaked in January. With the recent decline in image spam, Symantec has observed an increase in spam which use links and embedded URLs to reference images contained in spam. According to Doug Bowers, senior director of anti-abuse engineering at Symantec, “The drop in image spam this year has been significant. It’s clear that spammers are focusing on other techniques such as using links to hosted images to try and get their messages through. Spammers are always going to follow the money.” Additional highlights include: - Scams and fraud spam combined continued to rise from 9 percent in March to 13 percent of overall spam in May. “This upward trend is indicative of the continued shift in spammer behavior to targeted, financially-motivated attacks and the success that they are generating," said Bowers. - Scams spam accounts for 17 percent of all spam attacks in the Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) region. This compares with a global figure of 9 percent for this type of spam. According to Bowers: “Symantec has observed an increase in fraud and scams globally, particularly in the APJ region. This could be due in part to the prominence of invoice spam in that region. With invoice spam, spammers will create fake invoices associated with ‘legitimate’ companies and try to sell them to generate profits. It’s a trend we’ll continue to monitor to see if it spreads worldwide.” - 419 spam continues to evolve from the traditional offers of oil and gas reserves or large sums of money to offers of prospective careers now. For more information please contact: Jarunee Sinchairojkul ( Kay ) PR Consultant APPR Media Co.,LTD Tel : 66-2-6556633 Fax : 66-2-6553560, 254-7369 Mobile : 66-8-14888442 Click for photo release at www.thaipr.net