Geographical and vertical spam trends for the past three months

The new data from MessageLabs Intelligence Report for September and 3rd quarter of 2007 reveals that virus and phishing levels have significantly increased, reaching levels not seen since early 2006.

Geographical Trends:

• Israel continued to have the highest spam rate this month with 73.8 percent. Hong Kong was the second most highly spammed country registering a 6.6 percent increase in spam since August.
• Japan had the lowest spam rate with 27.1 percent. Germany also saw a sharp decrease of 10.2 percent in spam rates in the last month, marking a quarterly decline of 6.63 percent
• India still remains the region most affected by viruses with 1 in 53 emails containing a virus. The largest rise in virus activity was observed in the Netherlands where levels rose by 0.2 percent, from 1 in 750.1 emails in August to 1 in 303.3 emails in September.

Vertical Trends:

• The Agriculture sector is still ranked the most spammed sector with 67.8 percent, marking a slight increase of 0.9 percent from the previous month. Over the previous quarter this marks a continued increase of 7.36 percent.
• Despite an increase of 3.3 percent, Finance remains the least spammed sector; this is reflected in a large quarterly decrease of 11.13 percent.
• Since rising to the top of the virus chart in August, the education sector continues to retain its position, with an increase of 0.25 percent in September.
• In contrast to being the most spammed, Agriculture is the sector least affected by viruses with a further drop of 0.2 percent in September contributing to a quarterly drop of 0.28 percent.