Volume of spam increased 147% in 2006
These are just amazing statistics that the volume of spam increased 147% in 2006 and that 94% of all email in December was spam! The primary reasons are armies of zombie computers “botnets” (that are hijacked due to users inability to protect their systems from malware) all ready to send out a distributed attack from anywhere; mail servers are helpless. Plus the problem is going to get worse because not only, “…the rising volume of spam that’s a problem, but the size of the spam messages. Because botnets use stolen bandwidth, spammers can send files of any size at no cost. And that’s just what they’re doing. In order to defeat content filters that might block their messages, spammers are increasingly using images. The result is that unsolicited bulk e-mail is getting bulkier. The 147% increase in spam that Postini observed in 2006 resulted in a 334% increase in e-mail processing requirement for companies. “This is causing the e-mail infrastructure of many businesses to melt down,” says Druker. “Nobody budgeted for four-and-a-half times more infrastructure capacity in one year.“
