Study: Spam Scam Numbers are Up

Symantec released May statistics on spam volumes today and there is good and bad news. Bad news is scams and fraud spam continues to rise representing 13 percent of all spam in May - up from 9 percent in March. The good news: The particularly annoying trend of "image spam" is abating. Image spam volumes have been cut nearly in half now representing 16 percent of spam compared to April and March when it represented 27 and 37 percent of spam.

According to the report State of Spam: June 2007 overall spam levels remain flat when compared to April and May volumes. Symantec estimates an average of 65 percent of all email is spam.

Spam Horizon

The newest spam trend to watch out for, according to the report, is invoice spam. Symantec says invoice spam is when spammers create fake invoices associated with "legitimate" companies. Next scammers try to pass the invoices off as real and attempt to collect on the fake bills.

Also morphing is 419 scam spam. This spam has evolved from the traditional offers of oil and gas reserves or large sums of money to offers of prospective careers, Symantec reports.

Global Spam Categories

Here is Symantec's spam category data collected over the past 90 days.

For spam category definitions check out the report which can be read in its entirety here.