By John Leyden for The
Register.
This story has been reproduced with permission.
SoftScan is still investigating the possible cause of the
significant drop in junk mail volumes it's recording but reckons
the most likely explanation is that hackers have temporarily lost
control of a significant network of compromised machines. It seems
unlikely that new computers at Christmas had much to do with
affecting the number of compromised machines out there.
Alternatively the drop in spam might be a result of the recent
earthquake in Asia disrupting spamming activity from that region,
but this theory fails to explain a gradual (rather than more
sudden) drop off in spam levels this month.
By contrast junk mail levels remained much as normal throughout
December including the period around the 26 December earthquakes
off Taiwan. Nine in ten emails processed by Softscan last month
(89.4 per cent) were identified as junk mail. Only one in 200
emails (0.5 per cent) scanned by the firm last month were infected
by malware, despite the outbreak of a worm that posed as a seasonal
"Happy New Year" greeting late in the month.
Meanwhile anti-fraud organisation Early Warning reports that
fraud surprisingly fell last month, even though Christmas witnessed
a rise in e-commerce sales. Christmas sales rose 40 per cent
compared to last year while losses from fraud fell slightly. It
reckons greater vigilance by merchants is behind the drop in
losses.
"This is really an unexpected and encouraging first in internet
fraud statistics. As e-commerce goes on rising, we are used to
corresponding increases in fraudsters' activities to capitalise on
it," said Andrew Goodwill, managing director of Early Warning. "As
the number and value of sales has risen so sharply, fraud - as a
proportion - is definitely down. The reason for this drop is I
believe the increased awareness of internet merchants of the fraud
risks they face and they have measures in place to detect the
fraudulent attempts."
Goodwill said that he hoped the decrease in levels of fraud
would be sustained over upcoming months so that it proved more than
just a "blip". "Merchants should not be complacent, and need to be
looking for ways to keep this downward trend going for the year to
come," he added.
© The Register
2007
