US cyber-crime initiative
US cyber-crime initiative

Spam frittered away by FBI diet

US Operation Web Snare may be responsible for drop in junk mail volumes

Dinah Greek

An American cyber-crime initiative may be helping to limit volumes of spam and viruses, according to MessageLabs.

The security firm has reported a 10 per cent fall in the amount of spam it has seen hitting mailboxes in August, and that the proportion of emails carrying viruses dropped about half a per cent during the same month.

Advertisement

Of all email scanned by MessageLabs' anti-spam service, 84.2 per cent was categorised as spam, compared to 94 per cent during July.

The company reported that 6.9 per cent of the emails it scanned were identified as virus-infected during August, a decrease from 7.3 per cent during July.

MessageLabs suggested that, while some of the fall could be attributed to the cyclical nature of spam and viruses, which often drops during the summer months, the US Operation Web Snare initiative could have a bearing.

Web Snare was launched in June by the US Justice Department involving a number of US and foreign law enforcement bodies.

The initiative is targetting significant cyber-crime, such as identity theft, fraud, phishing attacks and computer intrusions, and has resulted in over 105 arrests and 53 convictions to date.

MessageLabs chief technology officer Mark Sunner said in a statement: "The drop in spam volumes may be partly as a result of Operation Web Snare.

"This operation may have removed some of the perpetrators from active service and could have worried others enough to suspend operations for now."

However, Steve Linford, founder of anti-spam organisation Spamhaus, told vnunet.com that there might be a more prosaic explanation.

"We have been joking that it's been hurricane Charlie [as most US spammers are based in Florida]," he said.

"We also think that the Chinese promise of very harsh jail sentences for pornography spammers will have worried those people in China who work with the US spammers."

  • Have your say
  • Send to a friend
  • Print
  • Digg
  • Reddit
  • Share

Tags:

Do you agree?

Further reading

Bounty on spammers

US ponders $250,000 bounty on spammers

Federal Trade Commission looking for junk mail 'whistleblowers'

Opposition to Sender ID

Sender ID loses open source support

Apache Software Foundation among developers shunning Microsoft anti-spam measure

Spam pushes email storage costs higher

Junk 'plague' and data retention policies force need for better email management

Bugwatch: Vi@gra anyone?

The staying power of spam

Related whitepapers

Related jobs

Most watched

eu flag

V3.co.uk weekly debrief, 6 Nov 09

This week, Europe decides what to do with illegal file sharers

Intel unveils its micro server platform

Small-enclosure systems take aim at hosting market

IT white papers

Search white papers

Top categories

Poll

Impact of Information Overload poll

Impact of Information Overload poll

What is the biggest problem your firm faces as a result of the data explosion?

View poll results

Advertisement

Advertisement

Newsletter signup

Sign up for our range of FREE newsletters:

Existing User

Newsletter user login:

Enter email address to edit your newsletter preferences

Job of the week

Search thousands of IT jobs :

Search thousands of IT jobs:

Advanced search

Hiring now on ComputingCareers:

Related IT jobs

Search thousands of IT jobs :

Search thousands of IT jobs:

Advanced search

Spotlight

Piracy, privacy and processing power set to be hot topics for V3.co.uk Summit

Have you got a burning desire to quiz experts from...

iPhone

World's first iPhone virus surfaces

Images of 80s icon Rick Astley spell trouble

Airvana HubBub

Airvana debuts 3G femtocell for offices

HubBub improves indoor network coverage for businesses

shopping key

E-commerce on brink of SaaS revolution

Figleaves founder argues platform-as-a-service vendor will emerge to shake up...

Primary Navigation