Spam set to soar this Christmas Christmas is coming and spammers want to fill your inbox with more messages= =20 than ever.
Net filtering firms report that senders of spam are already starting to=20 change the messages they send in an attempt to cash in on the festive= season. The firms have noticed an increase in e-mails offering single products and= =20 hi-tech gadgets as potential presents. Also increasing are messages offering cheap loans to help people pay for=20 all the gifts they are planning to buy. Message mountain Filtering firm Clearswift said analysis of its October spam index revealed= =20 that almost a quarter of the messages it was stopping were related to cheap= =20 loans that are aimed at people who want help coping with the cost of=20 Christmas. In most months financial spam only accounted for 12% of all messages. Alyn Hockey, director of research at Clearswift, said that it was also=20 seeing an increase in the number of e-mail messages about individual=20 products such as DVD burners and other hi-tech toys that might appeal to=20 net users or their partners. "Not only are spammers developing more and more cunning ways of getting=20 around email filtering technology, but their marketing strategy is clearly= =20 up to scratch too," he said. The sheer number of spam messages being sent looks like it will rise this=20 Christmas too. Spam filtering and security firm FrontBridge said that now more than 70% of= =20 the mail it filters is spam based. This is a rise of almost 50% since the=20 start of 2003. FrontBridge said that now the average company with 1,000 employees sees=20 more than 2.1m spam messages per year. Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/3258179.stm Published: 2003/11/11 09:09:50 GMT =A9 BBC MMIII
