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Hey, with all the bad news floating around, how about something good for a change?
According to Symantec, the security company, which monitors billions of emails a month, spam is way down lately!
In fact, it’s dropped below the 50% mark – and that hasn’t happened since 2003. Plus, the level of spam is continuing to drop. Last month (June) only 49.7% of all the monitored email was spam. So far in July, out of the 25 billion messages monitored by Symantec, only 46.4% were junk.
Perhaps it’s due to the worldwide actions taken by law enforcement, putting some of the biggest offenders in jail and fining them millions to boot. Perhaps it’s because anti-spam programs are getting smarter. And people are getting wise to many of the spammers’ tactics.
It’s also possible that spam is declining because many of the bad guys have switched to a different method of attack – Malware! The Symantec Company also noticed a significant rise in the amount of new malware being produced recently. Just in June alone Symantec itentified about 57.6 million individual pieces of malware – almost double what it saw in April.SS
Malware is a computer program which does something evil. Malware can reach you via email attachment, or when visiting a bad guy’s web page. Some infect your computer and send information to its owner (covertly of course), information like user names, passwords, bank account data, or even your entire list of email contacts!
Before you open a file attached to an email, even if it appears to be FROM someone you know, look closer! Hackers can disguise the “From” address in an email to look like someone you know. Beware.
If the attachment has a file name ending with “.exe“, or “.zip” – DO NOT open it. Very few people send .zip files, and almost nobody sends .exe files (these are malicious programs 99.9% of the time).
The bottom line is – Pay Attention! And meanwhile, enjoy the decline of spam, at least for now.