E-Mail in December Dominated by Spam
From Bloomberg News
Spam surged to make up a majority of all e-mail messages during the holiday season as senders commandeered PCs with fast Internet connections to accelerate transmissions, according to computer-security firm MessageLabs.
About 56% of all e-mail was spam, or unsolicited e-mail, in December, up from 34% in the same month in 2002, said Mark Sunner, chief technology officer for MessageLabs.
“The big change in 2003 was the prevalence of computer viruses such as SoBig,” he said. Some viruses install programs on PC hard drives that can automatically send a flood of spam.
About 66% of spam last year was sent from captive computers, Sunner said.
