Early in 2009, SPAM email was reported at being sent around the net at 600 million messages per day. By the end of 2009 this number had increased to 300 million messages per day being sent which is a 5 fold increase in the amount of junk we see on the web.
An interesting set of numbers show that five botnets account for 78% of all spam, while out of all email sent each day, over 90% is spam which is a crazy amount of junk floating around.
The main problems arise when first, users actually click on messages sent as junk and "act" on what's in them and secondly the botnets are just sending more and more junk.
A spam filter can be put in place on web users accounts, but if no filtering is done then this increases the chance of messages being acted upon, which in turn, gives even more incentive for botnets to exist.
"The major spam botnets such as Rustock and Pushdo (or Cutwail) continue to dominate spam output, supported by second-tier botnets such as Mega-D, Grum, and Lethic, and Donbot. The spamming botnets are constantly in flux, waxing and waning, morphing, becoming obsolete, being replaced, taken down, and upgraded. It is important to identify the major contributors to the volume of spam, so the industry can take action against them, such as the botnet takedowns that have already occurred. Consider the impact on Spam levels if the top 2 or 3 botnets were disabled," the company said in the report.
Just remember that when you get an email, make sure it's clean and not spam before you open it. The general rules are that you don't open attachments from unknown people, not do you click on links requesting you to update your "Paypal" or "online banking" information as these tend to be fake and can steal password details.
Via: Threatpost