Symantec: In one way or another, there has always been "spam" in our daily routine, from junk mail and unwanted phone calls to today's spam emails, which occur with a high frequency. In recent years, it has been noticed that the volume of spam emails has gradually fallen relative to the higher levels of the past, which has made many wonder whether the spam market is starting to collapse. Symantec argues that although the market is declining, it is still far from the collapse and has begun its transformation.
In the recent report "Symantec Internet Security Threat Report"It was discovered that spam related to emails of businesses declined marginally by 3%, by 30 billion spam emails per day 2012 to 29 billion 2013. This includes different types of spam, from popular diets, pharmaceuticals, adult-related spam and dating sites, which can be incredibly annoying, to more dangerous malicious spam, containing attachments that carry malicious software.
The second kind of spam, used to transport malware, is becoming more and more popular. Many spammers who previously used botnets to spam spam, now have focused on creating different kinds of malware or running Phishing scams. Cyber crooks looking to spread malware are willing to pay someone with a spam bot to install malware on large networks of computers. For example, in the past year ten million customers in the UK were attacked by the Cryptolocker malware via a mass spam campaign. Clearly, spam is still, in some cases, profitable for cyber criminals and poses a threat from which users and businesses need to be protected.
The spam in the Social Media Networks
Although everyone is familiar with spam via email, however, the spam that exists today is not just by email. As millions of Internet users use social media and providers have improved in spam detection and filtering, spammers turned to social networks where they were more likely to act without locating them. In fact, the report "Nexgate's 2013 State of Social Media Spam Report"Discovered 1 at 200 posts of social media is spam and that 5% of all social media applications have some kind of spam. It has already been noticed that spammers have penetrated almost every community of social media, including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, Tumblr, the Snapchat even his mobile dating app tinder.
What is the driving force that leads to increased spam on social networking sites? The affiliate marketing and motivation it uses leads users to respond to surveys, buy products and material goods. Social networks provide an ideal shelter for spammers because of their huge impact, as a post can be seen by thousands, compared to an email that will reach a single user at a time. In addition, they are difficult to detect and may include everything from left-wing with fake ones accounts up to applications containing spam.
Initially, many spammers will rely on fake ones accounts to handle spam, but it has recently been noticed that more and more spam come from accounts belonging to real users. Accounts, featuring simple users and public figures, have been exposed and carried spam, which may indicate a growing market of online credentials between spammers and can act as real users.
Obviously, spam is here to stay, but you can use these tips to help protect yourself and your network:
Obviously spam has come to stay, but with the help of the following tips you can protect yourself and your network:
- Make sure you use anti spamming products such as email Symantec Email Security.cloud
- Never open, click or reply to anything that looks like spam
- Always remember: If something sounds too good to be true, then it is
- Make sure the password you use in all social media is powerful and unique
- If available, enable two factor authentication as an additional safety measure
- If you click on a link and suddenly find yourself on a social network page asking for your login information, do not type - it's a phishing attempt
- Continue updating at browser to ensure you have the latest security patches
