The Eleven Email Security Report February 2013 signals the United States' return to being the highest total spam volume in the world.
German email security provider Eleven announced on Wednesday it has released the Eleven Email Security Report February 2013, which signals the United States’ return to being the highest total spam volume in the world.
With a 10.6 percent share of the total spam volume in the German-speaking region, the US led all other countries in spam volume, followed by India with 6.9 percent, and Romania with 6.6 percent.
Previously, Romania led spam volume in October and November 2012, as highlighed in Eleven Email Security Report December 2012.
Geographically, the distribution of the 10 biggest spammers was comparatively spread out in January 2013, with four originating in Asia, three from Eastern Europe, two from South America, and one from North America. Western European countries are no longer on the list.
Other key trends highlighted in the report include the spam volume seeing a sharp decline in the last couple of months, dropping by 40.9 percent in December and another 15.8 percent in January.
Conversely, the phishing volume increased significantly in January, with the number of emails tagged phishing rising by 72.4 percent from December to January.
Virus emails also saw a rise during the same period, with the volume of known and new malware growing by 27 percent in January.
Additionally, the majority of spam, phishing, and malware campaigns are now country specific.
There was a 60 percent share of spam in the total email volume in January 2013, compared to 73.9 percent in November 2012.
Finally, the “classic” spam themes are seeing a decline, with the share of casino spam falling from 34.8 percent to 22.9 percent between November 2012 and January 2013, pharma spam seeing an increase from 7.9 percent to 12.9 percent, fake luxury products remaining at 4.4 percent, and dating spam at 18.6 percent.
The complete Eleven E-mail Security Report can be viewed at the Eleven website.
In October, eleven reported that the number of emails containing malware increased by 119 percent in September alone.
Talk back: Have you noticed increasing levels of drive-by malware? How do your security services protect clients against these types of attacks? Let us know in a comment.
About Justin Lee
Justin Lee has been a staff analyst with theWHIR since 2004. He writes about a range of web hosting and IT-related issues facing the industry on the WHIR website, as well the print version of the WHIR magazine. Follow him on Twitter @Justin_theWHIR.
