A 5pc drop in the level of spam targeting Irish businesses was recorded for the month of July, according to the latest statistics compiled by Irish managed email hosting company IE internet.
However, this is a temporary reprieve following the usual seasonal spam and virus trends as we reach the summer holiday months. The slight drop still leaves the spam levels at 63pc, and most businesses may not even notice the difference, said Phelim O’Connell, managing director with IE Internet.
“Every year we have seen a decrease in spam during the summer months since we first started tracking spam back in 2003,” said O’Connell.
Most of the spam hitting Irish inboxes came from the US and France, at 30pc and 25pc respectively.
On the virus end, things also quietened down as the level of infected emails dropped to 3.61pc in comparison to 4.12pc in June. This was the lowest recorded level since January 2004.
O’Connell said the main cause of virus spread was home users with infected PCs. Now that many are on holiday, computers are lying dormant thus slowing the spread of virus infection.
The most prevalent virus, according to IE internet, is W32/Zafi-B, a mass mailing worm that has been around since 2004. The W32 worm can only be spread to machines running Windows operating system, and is spread through email, shared networks and peer-to-peer file-sharing programs.
By Marie Boran
