14 DAY TRIAL // Muammar Gaddafi, Steve Jobs and the holidays are still the favorite topics used in spam campaigns by cybercriminals who in one way or another are set on making a profit.
Kaspersky's October spam report reveals that in the past month spam email traffic increased with 1.4% compared to September, but on the positive side phishing slightly dropped. Malware spreading emails were recorded to represent 2.5% of all the emails sent, which means that this phenomenon also dropped if compared to September.
After Steve Jobs died, his name was used in a large part of the phishing and spam operations, one of the more interesting ones being about a special iTunes add-on that was launched to celebrate Apple's founder. Users who fell for the scam ended up paying $30 (21 EUR) for something that didn't actually exist.
The Libyan leader was also famous in October, his name being utilized in many 419 scams that involved his wives, daughters and former officers, all of them promising millions in return for a small sum of money.
Halloween brought the attention of crooks who advertised fabulous deals for products that imitated legitimate ones. Party invitations and costume offers also turned out to mask malware and phishing attempts.
When it comes to spam sources, India takes the lead with close to 10% of the world's unsolicited mail coming from that area. Korea, Brazil and Indonesia all take a 6% bite from the pie chart.
Malware mostly hit Russia and the USA, the UK, Vietnam and Australia following on a graph that's closed by South Africa with 3.27% of antivirus detections.
The largest part of phishing emails went after PayPal accounts (33%), eBay came in second (9%), Facebook, Santander and Google accounts also being targeted.
Considering all the alarming figures mentioned above, internet users are advised to be careful what emails they open, especially if they come with attachments or point to online forms that request credit card details and passwords.