More servings of spam

MOUNTAIN VIEW
November 10, 2005 10:20am

You’re getting more servings of spam – unwanted e-mail – than ever, both in your personal and company e-mail, according to a new report released Thursday by Commtouch Software Ltd. (NASDAQ: CTCH), a Mountain View seller of anti-spam software.

During October spam accounted for a whopping 74 percent of the e-mail traffic among Commtouch's global user base, which includes over 35 million mailboxes in 130 countries.

In private mailboxes, spam accounts for 82 percent of all incoming messages. In the average corporate mailbox, 62 percent of emails are spam, but corporate spam levels vary significantly across geographic regions, the company says.

U.S. corporate mailboxes are the hardest hit, with spam constituting 86 percent of all incoming mail. Holland follows with spam levels of 78 percent.

Relatively low spam volumes are enjoyed by enterprises in Austria (29 percent) and Hungary (36 percent).

With the holiday season around the corner, spammers are focusing on gift merchandise more than on any other product category, according to Commtouch. Offerings of cut-rate gift merchandise -- Rolex and Louis Vuitton replicas and the like -- accounted for 21.08 percent of all spam. For the first time in over two years, pharmaceuticals were not the leading spam category.