If you’re running an email server, one of the key challenges you’ll face will be how to cope with the large quantities of spam you’ll inevitably receive. This is a problem that’s likely to be more relevant than ever at the current time, as the danger posed by this issue is said to be increasing.
This is the warning of security firm Kaspersky, which stated in its latest spam report that even though the total volume of spam emails it monitors has fallen, more of the items being sent could pose a serious risk to computers and networks that receive them.
According to the firm, spam averaged 71% of email traffic in the third quarter of 2012, a drop of 2.8 percentage points from the previous quarter. While some of this fall can be accounted for by seasonal variations – with the summer months traditionally the slowest period of the year for businesses – Kaspersky added the main reason for the downward trend is the “gradual shift of advertising messages from email to other venues such as banner ads, social media, coupon services, and contextual advertising”.
While this might sound like good news if you’re frustrated with dealing with high volumes of spam, Kaspersky noted the main problem has shifted to what it classifies as “malicious mailings” – emails that contain malware such as Trojans. The percentage of these items has risen from 3% to 3.9%.
Therefore, anything you can do to cut down on the number of spam messages you have to deal with could play a key role in ensuring your networks remain secure. This may involve a staff education process to remind them of simple steps, such as not giving out their email address online.
You should try and make sure you keep the number of publicly visible email addresses on your website to a minimum, as spammers will be able to harvest these and add them to their mailing lists. While it may seem counter-intuitive, you also need to tell individuals not to click on unsubscribe links contained within junk emails – all this will do is confirm the address is in use and lead to it being passed on to even more spammers.
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