Kaspersky Lab reports Spam Data in January 2013

The percentage of spam in email traffic was down 7.7 percentage points compared with December and averaged 58.3%Personalized gifts, which have recently made up a big part of spam mailings, took on a Valentine’s theme in January. 

In January, malicious files were found in 3% of all emails, a decrease of 0.15 percentage points. As expected, the total amount of spam decreased in January due to the post-festive season break. In mid-January, the first mass mailings exploiting the theme of Valentine’s Day and International Women’s Day (March 8) appeared. The annual Valentine’s Day spam – emails with malicious attachments imitating Valentine’s cards – did not materialize in January. 

In January, China and the US remained the leading sources of spam worldwide by producing 48.1% of global spam.Junk emails from China offering business partnerships have spread all over the Internet. These emails usually contain a warm greeting, but one that doesn’t address the recipient personally. Asia remained the leading regional source of spam (50.9%). 

The percentage of phishing emails in total email traffic halved in January and settled at 0.003%.The number of phishing attacks against social networking sites increased by 9.71 percentage points, accounting for 39.62% and keeping this category at the top of the ratings. 

Although the share of spam in mail traffic decreased, the percentage of mass mailings that contain malware remains quite high. Trojan-Spy.HTML.Fraud.gen regained its position as the most widespread malicious program carried by email. Banking-related phishing is still very popular on the Internet.