Russian spammers earn $1.5 billion this year

Russia is the biggest spam sender in Europe and the third largest sender of spam messages in the world. Russian spammers earned $1.5 billion since the beginning of the year on this form of advertising, experts calculated. As for the world rating, Russia comes third after India and Brazil. The Russian language comes second after English in spam messages.

Spammers also like to take a rest in summer. In August 2011, the global share of spam in world email traffic dropped to 75.9 percent, a report from Symantec Intelligence said.

The daily stream of spam in 2010 was estimated at 95.5 billion messages, whereas the share of Russian spam made up nearly 3 percent of the total amount.

In August, the report said, the share of Russian spam increased to 6.5 percent. The increase of spam from Russia resulted over the closure of many bot-networks which united PCs in different countries of the world in 2010.

Russia (81.1 percent) gave the second place in the world on the amount of received spam messages to China (81.6 percent). The first place is taken by Saudi Arabia: 4.8 percent of email messages, which the people of this country receive, are spam. The third position is taken by Italy (81.3 percent).

As for phishing, Sweden suffers from this problem most. According to experts' estimates, one in every 45.3 messages received in the country was a phishing message. Sweden takes the lead on the amount of email viruses - one in 53.2 messages.

Luxembourg comes second: viral content in this country could be found in one per every 85.1 messages. In Britain, one in every 86.5 emails was blocked as infected message.

The state sector suffers from phishing and virus messages most. The prime target for massive spam attacks is the automotive industry, where the share of spam in the mail traffic made up 79.0 percent. The volume of spam in the sector of education reached 78.9 percent, in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry - 75.5, in IT services - 75.7, in retails - 75.7, in the state sector - 75.4 and in the financial sphere - 75.3 percent.

A notable trend has recently appeared in the financial sector when spam messages artificially instigate interest in stocks.

It is especially noticeable on large volumes of spam messages that convince potential victims to purchase small shares at competitive prices. After this pump, the shares are dumped at inflated prices, and malefactors receive profit. This fraudulent technology became known as pump-and-dump, the report said.

America and China hold the leadership on this volume of spam, whereas the remaining part of such emails is generated in other Asian countries. Such attacks primarily target the residents of North America.

Vitaly Salnik.