Spam levels have risen for enterprise clients supported by Google's Postini message and virus protection service between January and March 2009, the company reported.
In the last
two weeks, Google has seen levels for the Postini service jump to about 57 spam emails daily -- a level not seen since prior to the demise of McColo, an Internet service provider that many in online
security suggest acted as a network to clog email systems with spam and malicious code.
Google security and archiving services, powered by Postini, provides email security to more than 50,000
businesses and 15 million business users daily. The numbers do not reflect Gmail.
While McColo operated as the command and control system, the new version acts as a distributed botnet -- where
many individual computers on a network, rather than one ISP, send spam to others.
Google refers to the latest attack as a "blended threat," a spam message that takes the email recipient to a
link on a Web site that delivers a virus or malware. It combines the Web and email to infect computers.
The spam message customizes the location for each user by determining the geographical
location of the user's IP address and then identifies the nearest major city. The addition of location creates a heightened level of interest, and the user is tempted to click on the embedded video,
which in turn downloads a virus to their computer.
The overall spam volume growth between January and March 2009 has been the highest since early 2008 -- increasing an average of 1.2% daily,
according to the company's blog. Putting that number into context, the growth rate of spam volume in the first quarter of 2008 measured about 1% per day, which at the time was a record high.
Similar to each year before, 2008 set a new record for overall spam volume. But in 2008 spam growth flattened during the summer and early fall months, and then declined sharply after McColo site came
down. Daily growth declined to .8%, .3%, and then .01% in the last three quarters of the year.
Adam Swidler, Google product marketing manager for Postini Services, said users can protect
themselves against spam by depending on reliable spam and virus protection platforms and staying vigilant in identifying threats that might invade their email, which can come from both familiar and
new sources.
Businesses can outsource message security to a company such as Google, whose Postini division aims to protect an organization's email before it reaches their network.