There is a Lot of Spam Out There…

...and some of it masquerades as “marketing” and “newsletter” emails.
In March 2010, spam continued to account for a high percentage of all email traffic, peaking at 93.6% of all messages. The majority of this spam email was sent using certain tactics that were deployed to hijack unsecured computers and hide the senders’ identity. Recently, however, there has been an uptick in spam “marketing” and “newsletter” emails. These spam marketing and newsletter emails share one significant commonality with “regular” spam emails, which is that they are unwanted email messages sent to individuals who have no formal relationship with the message sender.
The distinction between the spam marketing and newsletter email and regular spam email includes the following:
•    The sender of the spam marketing and newsletter email may not go to extraordinary lengths to hide their identity. Specifically, they may not forge or randomize email headers. These spam messages may not be sent from an IP that has been identified as a compromised zombie machine that is sending spam. These messages may not contain words or phrases that are purposely misspelled or obfuscated.
•    This spam marketing and newsletter email is often targeted towards a certain individual or a specific group of people within an organization. With the growth in social and professional networking sites it is more convenient for spammers to collect profile information and target an (continue reading...)