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Anti-spam filtering company Brightmail is warning users about an increase in malicious spam following the introduction of antispam legislation in a number of jurisdictions.
Brightmail provides filters for around 25 percent of the world's e-mail addresses.
Stealing Data
With the introduction of anti-spam legislation in numerous jurisdictions, spammers have developed a "damn the torpedoes" approach, says Garry Sexton, Brightmail vice president for Asia-Pacific.
"They seem to be saying 'if it's not legal at all, then let's go hell for leather' and so the kinds of e-mail we're seeing are moving from the business spam to the fraudulent and malicious," Sexton says. He says most of the spam caught by Brightmail filters is of a business orientation, but that's changing.
"It's spam about products like mortgages or whatever and people are seeing it as just another form of advertising. I hear about cheap mortgages on the radio, I get an e-mail about them. It's seen as the same thing," Sexton says. But Brightmail is seeing an increase in another, fraudulent kind of spam that is truly dangerous.
"They're after your PIN or your credit card numbers. They're cunning so they don't nail your account straight away, they direct you to a Web site and let you do whatever it is you're supposed to be doing and then a month later they take the money from your account," he says. In addition to credit card theft, Sexton says Brightmail is seeing a lot of identity theft in South East Asia.
"They're after social security numbers or, like we've seen here in New Zealand, government information from users." Sexton says.
Such schemes that involve fraudulent Web pages or e-mail masquerading as legitimate business are often referred to as phishing.
Targeting Business
Since Brightmail is now covering so many individual users' addresses, the next big target for spammers is the corporation, he adds. Most ISPs that filter for spam don't provide the service for business customers, Sexton says. Brightmail is talking with corporations about filtering at their gateways.
"We see a huge potential for spam filtering at that level as well as at the ISP," he says. Sexton came to New Zealand recently to talk with customers, prospective clients, and the government about its proposed anti-spam legislation.
