Email Security

According to Websense (State of Internet Security Q1 & Q2 2009), 87.7 percent of email messages were spam during the first half of 2009. While I have seen the percentage by other vendors be higher, it does represent a 3 percent increase over the previous 6 months (again according to Websense).

85.6 percent of all unwanted emails in circulation during the first half of 2009 contained links to spam sites and/or malicious web sites.

Shopping remained the leading topic of spam (28 percent), followed closely by cosmetics (18.4%), medical (11.9%), and education (9.5%). Education themed spam has almost doubled over the previous 6 month period and some believe that is due to the recession. Often times these education themed emails seek to exploit people looking to gain new skills or obtain fake qualification to help their job prospects.