Security Firm Finds Spammers Thriving in U.S.

Americans love their celebrities, and spammers have gotten wise. Security software vendor McAfee has a new report warning of the activities of U.S. spam purveyors operating under the radar, and eSecurityPlanet’s got the story.

McAfee’s December spam report suggests that while antivirus and antispyware vendors continue to improve their security software offerings on a daily basis, hackers are still taking advantage of America’s technology and fascination with pop culture to spread their spam.

Jan. 1 will mark the sixth anniversary of the Federal Trade Commission’s Can-Spam Act, a piece of legislation that was supposed to help curb the geometric explosion in spamming and phishing attacks in the U.S. by virtue of a $16,000 fine per incident.

But according to McAfee, the Can-Spam Act as well as other technological and legal instruments designed to rein in spammers have failed to slow the flow of unsolicited e-mails into Americans’ inboxes.

“We have seen the amount of spam sent to the average e-mail address rocket upward to peaks as high as 92 percent of all traffic only a few months ago,” McAfee researchers said in their report (available here in PDF format).

Read the full story at eSecurityPlanet.com