Kaspersky Lab has released its latest spam report for Q2 2013 which details the trends in spam from April – June 2013.
The report saw the percentage of space in total email traffic increase by 4.2% from the first quarter of 2013 and came to 70.7%
However, the percentage of phishing emails in global mail traffic fell by 0.0016% and came to 0.0024%.
One unusual feature of spam in Q2 was the distribution of eCards, targeting the prominent American greeting card company Hallmark. These contained malicious attachments sent out to users at major holidays.
One of the tricks used by spammers in Q2 was "white text," which is essentially random text added to the bottom of an email to make it appear as a newsletter.
Particular focus was placed on stories about Hugo Chavez, the Boston Marathon and the conflict in Korea.
Spammers also used famous names in attempts to fool recipients.
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As far as the top sources of spam by region are concerned, the ratings did not experience any major changes from the first quarter, although the percentages of specific regions did change a bit. Asia’s percentage rose by 4.5%, and remains the number one regional source of spam.
Eastern Europe’s percentage increased by 2.6%, primarily due to greater activity in Ukraine and Belarus.
The percentage of spam originating in Western Europe was 3.7% lower, as was the percentage of spam originating in South America (-2.4%), which reached a new record low.
