Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam: how unwanted e-mails are taking over cyberspace
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.The volume of junk e-mail, or "spam", has exploded more than 25-fold since the beginning of the year, and now makes up 1 e-mail in 8 received in Britain.
Tracking by MessageLabs, an e-mail security company, has found that the number has grown from barely 1 in 200 e-mails at the start of the year. But the problem is even worse in America, where it has grown from 1 in 37 e-mails (about 2.7 per cent) in January to 1 in 3, or 33 per cent, today. And Mark Sunner, the chief technical officer at the company, said: "The situation will only deteriorate in the future."
The deluge of spam e-mails offers anything from health and financial products of dubious value, through pyramid and organised crime scams, to links to pornographic and other sites. Its growth had been helped by CDs with millions of e-mail addresses grabbed from the Web and programs that made it simple to send out millions of messages at once, said Neil Hammerton, of EMF Systems, which offers spam-filtering services to internet service providers (ISPs), companies and individuals.
"It's become more devious," Mr Hammerton said. "The programs that spammers use can fake who they're from, and the subject line and sender's name will be subtly different with each e-mail. That makes it incredibly hard to block."
Of the 30 billion e-mails daily, so many are now spam that they are putting a strain on ISPs' mail servers as they try to pass them on.
Subscribe to Independent Premium to bookmark this article
Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments