An e-mail security firm has reported spam made up 82 percent of all inbound e-mail the firm processed in August and 90 percent of all mail sent during one day that month. Yet there could also be thanks given to Hurricanes Charley and Frances for the overall volume turning out lower than that of the previous month.
FrontBridge Technologies said late last week it blocked 2.5 billion spam messages in August out of 3.1 billion messages the company processed during the month. And, FrontBridge added, 90 percent of the e-mail it processed on August 30 alone was spam.
Much of the August spam it processed tied to the accelerating U.S. political campaigns and back-to-school shopping specials, FrontBridge said. By comparison, the company continued, 80 percent of July’s processed e-mail was spam, and in August 2003 the spam volume was 57 percent.
FrontBridge compiles data from over 2,200 worldwide customers and 15,000 e-mail domains. The company said they also stopped about 34 million virus-infected e-mail messages in August. But the overall hard volume turned out lower than July because Hurricanes Charley and Frances knocked out power over large portions of Florida – including Boca Raton, which is notorious in cyberspace for being headquarters for several spam operations.
But that isn’t quite as encouraging as it might sound. FrontBridge said spam overall has risen 1,600 percent since they began filtering spam four years ago.
