War-Related Spam Skyrocketed Following Americas Entry Into Iraq

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Spam Exploiting War Grows to 10 Percent of E-mails Added to SurfControl’s Anti-Spam Database in March

With the onset of war with Iraq, e-mail from people marketing war-related merchandise has become the fastest growing new type of spam, according to SurfControl, the world’s number one Web and e-mail filtering company.

The company’s global research team reported at the end of March that war- related spam rose, in less than a month, from an insignificant number to nearly 10 percent of all spam collected and monitored for SurfControl’s anti- spam database. Most of the war-related spam began to appear in mid-March, using patriotism and fear to sell everything from lapel pins to gas masks.

“The extremely rapid growth in this new form of spam points to the need for a comprehensive spam filter that incorporates a spam signature database to allow network administrators to quickly screen the sudden influx of any new variety of spam,” said Paris Trudeau, product marketing manager. “SurfControl’s technology relies on multiple layers of spam-detection, including artificial intelligence technology, Boolean logic, and a vast spam signature database. So, we could help identify and classify spam immediately and filter out war spam for most companies before it ever reached end users.”

  Among the most frequent war-related spam e-mails were:

  * American Car Flags to Support our Troops

  * Celebrate American Courage: Take 4 History Books for $1 Each!

  * Defenders of Freedom U.S. Coin

  * Discover Platinum American Flag Card

  * Honor our Military with Exclusive Collectibles

  * Show Your Pride (T-shirts)

  * Show your support with a US Lapel Pin!

  * Support our Troops (T-shirts)

  * Terrorist Threat, Please Read! (Water filtration system)

  * Israeli Gas Masks in Stock for a Limited Time!

The spam e-mails selling gas masks, while not as frequent as many of the others, illustrates the rapid growth in war spam. Gas mask spam rose from zero in early February to 216 variations of gas mask spam by March. The list of most common spam did not include unsolicited e-mail related to the war that was not designed to sell merchandise, such as “Join President Bush in Thanking our Troops,” a request for letters and care packages to be sent to U.S. troops that claimed it had been paid for by the Republican National Committee. Such junk e-mail was as ubiquitous in March as spam.

“Spam is already a huge problem, but companies worldwide are coming to realize it is only part of the problem,” Trudeau says. “Junk mail can be just as much of a nuisance to an enterprise as spam. And all Internet content you read, send and receive carries a risk. Companies need to be vigilant in managing e-mail to stop spam, junk, e-mail borne viruses and other risks that plague businesses.”

Organizations should consider layering protection. SurfControl E-mail Filter 4.5, for example, combines strong anti-spam defense, anti-virus technology and advanced e-mail auditing and risk assessment to protect against the ever-increasing variety of e-mail security risks.

Web site: http://www.surfcontrol.com/

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