Amount of spam in email traffic decreased by 2.5% points and averaged 69.7% during the month of May in 2013, according to a report from the antivirus company Kaspersky Lab.
According o the report, the amount of phishing emails increased slightly compared to last month, while malicious attachments were found in 2.8% of emails, which is an increase of 0.4% points compared to the previous month of the same year.
The report revealed that spammers used mimicked notifications from popular Internet services and logistics companies such as Amazon, UPS or Western Union to trick users to open the malicious attachments.
The majority of the world’s spam was generated from two countries including China and US, with 21.4% of the spams generated in China and 16.3% of spams in US, followed by South Korea that was responsible for 12% of spam in May 2013.
During the period, the spammers used national holidays in the USAm, like Mother’s Day and Memorial Day to target the users.
The phishing sites sent harmful messages, which seemed to come from the genuine microsoft.com domain, and read that the user’s Microsoft Window records would be suspended as the updates recommended in earlier messages were not being installed.
Kaspersky Lab Analysis & Research head of content, Darya Gudkova, suggested that if the users have any doubts about the authenticity of the email, they should contact the customer support of the organisation which supposedly sent the email and find out whether this mass mailing really was sent out.
"Remember that official mailings never ask customers to enter and confirm personal or banking information via links contained in emails. Nor do they threaten to block customer accounts. Never click on a link if your antivirus programme or a browser has blocked it."
