vRRitti.com, providing sentiency

“As far as spammers are concerned, any tactics that make it harder to block their spam emails are going to be exploited,” said Paul Wood, MessageLabs Intelligence Senior Analyst, Symantec Hosted Services. “When spammers include a shortened URL in spam messages, these shortened hyperlinks contain reputable and legitimate domains, making it harder for traditional anti-spam filters to identify the messages as spam based on the reputation of the domains found in the spam emails.”

MessageLabs Intelligence found that on average one website visit is generated for every 74,000 spam emails containing a shortened URL link. The most frequently visited shortened links from spam received more than 63,000 website visits.

Other report highlights:

Spam: In July 2010, the global ratio of spam in email traffic from new and previously unknown bad sources was 88.9 percent (1 in 1.12 emails), a decrease of 0.4 percentage points since June.

Web security: Analysis of web security activity shows that 30.5 percent of malicious domains blocked were new in July, an increase of 0.2 percentage points since June. Additionally, 13.0% of all web-based malware blocked was new in July; an increase of 0.5 percentage points since last month. MessageLabs Intelligence also identified an average of 4,425 new websites per day harboring malware and other potentially unwanted programs such as spyware and adware, an increase of 176.9 percent since June.

Geographical Trends:

--  Spam levels in Luxembourg rose to 2.4 percentage points to 93.5
    percent in July positioning it as the most spammed country.
--  In the US, 89.8 percent of email was spam and 88.1 percent in Canada.
    Spam levels in the UK were 87.8 percent.
--  In the Netherlands, spam accounted for 90.4 percent of email traffic,
    while spam levels reached 88.6 percent in Australia and 89.5 percent
    in Germany and 91.8 percent in Denmark.
--  Spam levels in Hong Kong reached 90.6 percent and 86.7 percent in
    Singapore. Spam levels in Japan were at 86.2 percent and 92.1 percent
    in China.
--  Virus activity in Taiwan was 1 in 50.0 emails, keeping it as the most
    targeted for email-borne malware in July.
--  Virus levels for the US were 1 in 520.1 and 1 in 430.8 for Canada. In
    Germany, virus levels were 1 in 487.8, 1 in 767.7 for the Netherlands,
    1 in 516.3 for Australia, 1 in 398.9 for Hong Kong, 1 in 874.5 for
    Japan and 1 in 696.1 for Singapore.
--  New Zealand became the most targeted for phishing attacks in July with
    1 in 111.2 emails comprising a phishing attack.


The July 2010 MessageLabs Intelligence Report provides greater detail on all of the trends and figures noted above, as well as more detailed geographical and vertical trends. The full report is available at http://www.messagelabs.com/intelligence.aspx. 

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Source: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/symantec-announces-july-2010-messagelabs-intelligence-report-2010-07-22