The downward trend in the share of spam in total mail traffic is continuing.
This is according to Kaspersky Lab's Spam Report for Q3 2012. The report states that, compared to the previous quarter, the volume of spam traffic in Q3 2012 decreased by 2.8 percentage points and averaged 71.5%. At the same time, the security solutions vendor recorded a significant increase in the share of malicious mailings - from 3% to 3.9% - continuing yet another trend for the year.
To some extent, Kaspersky Lab notes, the decline in the share of spam in the third quarter can be attributed to the traditional business slowdown in summer. However, it believes the downward trend is also due to the gradual shift of advertising messages from e-mail to other venues, such as banner ads, social media, coupon services and contextual advertising.
Therefore, the vendor says, despite a slight burst in post-vacation activity in September, the overall trend of falling spam levels remained.
According to Kaspersky Lab, the migration of advertisers offering perfectly legitimate products and services away from spam has inevitably led to an increase in the share of criminal spam containing malicious attachments and adverts for prohibited goods or fraudulent techniques.
The quarter once again saw cyber criminals demonstrate their ingenuity, disguising their spam messages as official notifications. Among the fake e-mails Kaspersky Lab experts came across were messages allegedly sent from hosting providers, banking systems, social networks, online stores and various other services.
"Particular attention was paid to coupon services in Q3, with spammers taking advantage of their popularity to distribute malicious links and attachments. The prominent coupon service Groupon appeared to bear the brunt: e-mails designed to look like official notifications and new offers redirected unwitting recipients to a malicious online resource with exploits," the vendor states.
It also points out that there were a number of changes in the regional breakdown of spam sources in the third quarter of 2012. Among those countries with the dubious distinction of sending out the most spam, the US showed unenviable growth, pushing the North American region's share up to just over 27%.
This was sufficient to claim second place, behind traditional leader Asia, which was responsible for almost half of all spam mailings throughout the world (49.50%). Western Europe (6.86%) pushed past Eastern Europe (3.64%) and took fourth place, catching up with Latin America (7.34%) in third, the report claims.
"The migration of advertisers from spam to other venues is due in part to the increasing criminalisation of spam," says Darya Gudkova, head of content analysis and research at Kaspersky Lab.
"Over the past year, Kaspersky Lab experts have observed two trends in parallel: a decrease in the percentage of spam, and a slight rise in the percentage of malicious mailings. More likely than not, both trends will continue, as the percentage of spam is on the decline due to the migration of advertisers of legitimate goods and services to other venues."
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