Spam and Phishing

At various times over the last few years, we’ve posted comments on different aspects of UK computer crime legislation, and the policing of cybercrime, on our weblog.

It’s already May and almost half a year since Christmas. There’s more than six months until next Christmas

Last week there was a lot of media attention devoted to a phishing attack on Facebook

And the winner is…

It’s no surprise that spammers have jumped on the swine flu bandwagon

It may sound strange, but the volume of spam is pretty much a constant; sharp fluctuations are usually linked to a major event – the closure of McColo meant a very noticeable drop in the amount of spam circulating.

If you’ve ever looked at our monthly spam reports, you’ll know that Russian spammers put quite a lot of resources into advertising their services – and the amount of e-advertising spam has increased sharply over the past few months.

You see all sorts of things from all around the world if you’re a spam analyst.

Smack on the bot for the Beeb

The amount of spam in mail traffic averaged 87.2%. A low of 81.4% was recorded on 20 February, while there was a high of 93% on 22 February.

Phishing for dummies

The year 2008 was special for a number of reasons. On the one hand, the first serious steps were taken to combat spam on an international level.

Crime and punishment

The closure of US hosting provider McColo, which hosted the command and control centers of a number of large botnets, resulted in a sharp decline in the amount of spam in November

In October, the average percentage of spam in all mail traffic was 79.9%