EMAIL SPAM RATES DROP IN JUNE

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For most of us, email is a part of our everyday life. Whether you are communicating at work, reaching out to your family, or simply looking to get updates on the latest tech news from TechSmash; email is something we cannot live without. Regardless of how you use email, the simple truth is almost all of us use it in some way. With that said we have some great news for you. In the month of June, the percentage of spam mail received through email dropped to 49.7%.

According to Symantec’s June 2015 Intelligence Report, June marks the first time in over a decade that the spam rate has fallen below 50%.  Although we are excited by this news, the report did present some bad news as well.



Symantec

Phishing rates and email-based malware were also down this month. However, there were 57.6 million new malware variants created in June, up from 44.5 million pieces of malware created in 
May and 29.2 million in April. This increase in activity lends more evidence to the idea that, with the continued drops in email-based malicious activity, attackers are simply moving to other areas of the threat landscape. Ransomware attacks are up in June, with over 477,000 detected during the month. While still below the levels seen at the end of 2014, this is the second month in a row ransomware attacks have increased since they reached a 12-month low in April. Crypto-ransomware is also up in June, reaching the highest levels seen since December 2014.

Additionally the proportion of email traffic containing malware also decreased in June, down from 1  in 207 to 1 in 319.

The report opens your eyes to the amount of threats that are reaching the general population each day. I knew that harmful threats were being created each day, but did not realize how high the number truly was. Luckily there are some companies such as Symantec working hard to help keep us safe from many of these harmful threats. 

Keep in mind that the report is not perfect and there could be a percent or two variant simply due to the way Symantec uses its clients to extrapolate the data. With that said, Symantec is a one of the largest global data intelligence in the world with 99% of Fortune 500 companies utilizing Symantec in some way. 



If you are interested in reading the full report, you can visit Symantec’s website here.

What are your thoughts? What were you most surprised to see when reviewing the Symantec Intelligence Report? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.