I use Yahoo Small Business for web hosting and email services. Because they conveniently scan for spam, I try to check the spam folder at least once day. Their scanning is highly accurate, but perhaps one legitimate email a day is erroneously labeled spam. On a typical day, I will see possibly 200 spam emails. The titles of the emails are frequently graphic and I feel dirty after checking the spam folder.
Lately the number of spam messages has decreased noticeably, perhaps by over 50%. Malware, spam dip in November confirms this was an international trend. They cite two explanations; first, Notorious Spam-Linked Web Hosting Service Goes Offline explains that McColo, the web hosting service responsible for 75% of the world's spam was stranded offline on November 11 when the company's two primary ISP services cut it off. McColo Shutdown Strands Tons of Zombies tells of hundreds of thousands of bots hopelessly trying to call home in the aftermath of the shutdown. One security firm noted over 450,000 bots trying to access Srizbi, a zombie control center previously hosted on the McColo servers. This was an opportunity for internet security specialists to identify the bots because once McColo finds a new ISP home, (most likely in Russia) they will patch the bots and they will go silent again.
Security analysts also suspect that the cyber criminals were taking the month of November to organize for attacks during the Christmas online sales peak. In particular, we are warned about key loggers, searching for banking and credit card information. Three of the top 5 malwares are currently variants of the Goldun family of threats.
When I review my spam folder, one of the more disturbing spammer tricks is to place my own email address in the 'from' field, making it appear that the email actually came from me. Spam Appears Sent from Your Email Address? Here's Why explains that the 'from' field in email is one of the easiest things to forge and is a primary tool for today's phishers.
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