If you think that the spam industry (I’m not talking about Hormel) is also experiencing a slowdown brought about by the global economic crunch, then you’ve guessed wrongly. A recent report from MessageLabs reveals that spam levels rose by 4.9 percent last month to 74.6 percent.

To give you a clue as to how significant the increase is, the Mega-D (Ozdoc) botnet sent billions of spam in January at an obnoxious rate of 26 million annoying and fraudulent emails per minute!

While e-mail service providers have hired security firms, such as Symantec, to scan mails and attachments, spammers are reinventing their pernicious creations in such a way that they could easily pass off as legitimate correspondences.

Many have complained in recent months that they’ve been fooled into signing up for stocks and other financial services by e-mails that purportedly come from banks and other known financial institutions. Distinguishing legitimate Web sites from fake ones have become more and more difficult in view of the cunning ways by which hackers make them.

Do not immediately trust the e-mails that you receive, especially if it’s an advertisement of some product or service. Scrutinize it thoroughly. If it contains an attachment, have it checked by your antivirus software first. If the source seems dubious, don’t even bother opening it. Delete it immediately.

Re-Tweet This Post