(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)

According to security vendor Symantec, a shift has taken place in the weight of the spam networks, the European ones having created more unsolicited e-mail than those in the US lately. Thus, approximately 44 per cent of all spam messages are originated from Europe as compared to 35.1 per cent originated from the US.

In the opinion of one of Symantec's European product marketing managers, Fredrik Sjostedt, the advantage taken by European spammers is due to the large penetration of broadband. "Historically the majority of spammers were U.S.-based, but now we're seeing a lot of Eastern European and Russian spam gangs active (.) We've moved away from traditional, individual spammers, to loosely tied groups of spam senders, malware coders, and people selling access to botnets," said Sjostedt.

The reports also show a very high increase of spamming during the holiday time in December, reaching up to 93 million spam messages. Kelly Conley, Symnatec enterprise security group manager, wrote on its security response blog that, for the holidays, the spammers had changed their techniques by inserting seasonal oriented keywords into URLs, subject lines and embedded images within their messages.

Other spam trends reported for the past month are the offering of rapidly dealing with visa problems in Europe or bio-fuel offers.

Europe still top source of spam (6.02.2008)
http://www.news.com/2100-7349_3-6229352.html

EU overtakes US in spam spewing stakes (6.02.2008)
http://www.itpro.co.uk/news/163215/eu-overtakes-us-in-spam-spewing-sta...