For a while now, the mainstream media has been reporting on the upcoming ability of Google's Picasa photo organizer to recognize faces, thanks to a revolutionary technology. While everyone is focused on the new feature and the possibilities it presents, security experts recommend users stay away from any unsolicited emails that include links to Picasa.

 

“Over the course of this year, spammers have been highly focused on using as many of Google’s free, hosted services as possible to distribute spam,” said Chief Security Analyst at MessageLabs, Mark Sunner. “Not only are the links contained within the spam emails difficult for traditional anti-spam filters to detect as they appear to be legitimate URLs, but it is also much more unlikely such filters will block emails based on the URLs they contain without causing significant collateral damage.”

 

In fact, the chances of being spammed, no matter the method employed by hijackers, were very high this year. In August, for example, one in 1.28 emails was not legitimate. Compared with the previous month, the spam rate increased by 3.12%. August also brought a boost in terms of the quantity of e-mails containing links to websites promoting either rogue security products, or other types of malicious content. The percentage was up by 12.2 points, exceeding 15.

On the upside, phishing attempts were not so prominent during the past month. The MessageLabs report showed that the phishing activity decreased to the point where only 0.19% of all emails contained such threats.

 

According to the same report, France could easily receive the award for the most spammed country, as August data showed that 82.8% of all emails sent to French recipients were spam. Where viruses are concerned, Switzerland was the least lucky of the lot – one in 34.9 messages contained this particular type of security threat.

 

Education was the favorite subject used in spam messages, followed by topics related to the accommodation/catering industry. Surprisingly, the medical field only came out third, showing that attackers are looking for new ways to make people click on links that lead to malicious websites.