Ara Trembly - Insurance Tech Guru - www.insurancetechguru.com

McAfee, Inc. has released the results of its S.P.A.M. (Spammed Persistently All Month) Experiment, in which 50 people from around the world surfed the Web unprotected for 30 days.  As a result, the company concluded that, spam “is an immense problem and it’s simply not going away. It’s no longer a question of ’solving’ it, but one of ‘managing’ it.” 

McAfee researchers said that spammers are as active as ever; and they are increasingly using psychological tricks to lure Internet users to part with their contact details, identity information and cash. 

In the first experiment of its kind, the participants from 10 countries received more than 104,000 spam e-mails throughout the course of the experiment, said McAfee. That’s 2,096 messages each - the equivalent of approximately 70 messages a day.

Many of the spam messages received were phishing e-mails; e-mails which pose as a trustworthy source to criminally acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and bank account details. Other e-mails carried viruses and many allowed malware to be silently installed on the computers by persuading participants to surf unsafe Web sites, the company noted.

Significantly, a number of participants noted a decrease in their computers’ processing speeds, as well as an increased number of pop-ups, said McAfee.

“Many of our participants noticed that their computers were slowing down, which means that while they were surfing, unbeknownst to them, Web sites were installing malware,” said Jeff Green, senior vice president of McAfee Avert Labs. “In just 30 days there was quite a noticeable change in the system performance of their computers, notably showing just how much malware was being installed without their knowledge.”  

The results of the experiment also reveal a shift away from mass spam e-mails towards more targeted campaigns, said McAfee. Foreign language and social engineering spam are two areas in which participants received a larger than anticipated number of e-mails.

With the United States being the traditional territory of spammers, participants there were unsurprisingly at the top of the “Global Spam League.” Emerging economies such as Brazil and Mexico also took their place in the top five of the Global Spam League, suggesting that spammers are increasingly targeting new regions, said McAfee.

The most popular subject received was financial spam, McAfee added. For example, pre-approved loans or credit card offers were common, which may be symptomatic of spammers taking advantage of the current personal finance climate and global credit crunch. 

So what’s your take?  Is spam simply a fact of life in the cyber-age?  Is protecting against spam a cost of doing business?  Should we simply throw up our hands and hope we can somehow keep this menace in the “manageable” range?  That sounds awfully wimpy to me, but perhaps I’m not being realistic.  Post your thoughts here!