Beware the Emails of Halloween

October 28, 2009

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Beware the Emails of Halloween

Symantec's

Meanwhile, spam from the Cutwail botnet uses both Thanksgiving and Christmas as a theme to sell replica watches. MessageLabs says that to date, holiday spam accounts for approximately 2% of all spam, with over 2 billion Thanksgiving or Christmas-themed spam emails expected to be in circulation globally each day.

Thanksgiving Spam

The early-bird approach Wood speaks of relates directly to the fact that spammers are already gearing up for next year's holidays and events. The firm is already encountering first runs of Valentine's Day spam as early as four months before it arrives. They are even seeing spam related to next summer's World Cup event.

In case you're wondering how successful these spam campaigns can be, MessageLabs says consumers fall victim to messages like these all the time, fueling an underground economy worth an estimated $105 billion in profit from fraudulent activities.

Related Articles:

> Symantec Urges Windows Users to Patch Systems

> Top 10 Most Spammed States in the US

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