PARIS - On the sixth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me...
Six emails for penis enlargement... five for cheap credit... four for Viagra... three for a dodgy online pharmacy... two for a get-rich-quick scam in Nigeria... and an electronic greetings card with a hidden virus that turned my computer into a spamming machine.
2003 will be the most spam-filled Christmas in what is already the spammiest year on record, experts say.
This year, hucksters and hackers are teaming up to ensure that your Christmas email inbox will be stuffed with solicitations: some tedious, some offensive, some destructive -- and all of it junk.
From now until the New Year, delete buttons, firewalls and spam filters will have to be in good shape.
"Spam, viruses and malicious code are set to peak in December," says filtering firm Clearswift. "The spammers will attempt to peddle seasonal products to employees full of the Christmas spirit."
Almost a quarter of the spam it stopped for its clients in October was associated with offers of cheap loans for people worried about the cost of Christmas, says Clearswift.
Joining the deluge will be legitimate on-line commerces, which will be emailing known customers to trail Christmas gifts such as books, CDs, household gadgets and DVD players.
And hidden in the overall flood could be some very nasty stuff for your computer.
For no longer do spammers use simple tools, such as "spambots" which crawl like spiders across the Web to garner email addresses, or software that automatically generates names to go with corporate, Yahoo! or Hotmail address.
Mailers are increasingly turning to hacking techniques, using viruses and worms to subvert machines.
A much-feared worm is the next generation of SoBig, which hijacks unprotected computers with an open connection to the Internet, turning these machines into a potential spam factory that can crank out unsolicited email by the bucket-load.
"We are seeing spikes in the level of spam almost week on week," Mark Sunner, chief technology officer of MessageLabs, a US-British spam-filtering firm, told AFP.
"We have seen an almost seven percent increase in the last two weeks, which is very, very dramatic. Sixty percent of the total comes from computers that have been turned into spam stations, a sign that spammers are turning to viral techniques as a delivering mechanism."
The outlook is grim, given that 2003 could already be called the Year of Spam.
Figures given by filter companies vary because they are hired by corporations in different sectors of the economy to snare spam before it reaches employees.
But the consensus is that spam accounts these days for more than half of email traffic on the Internet, and has doubled in 2003.
Sunner said 52 percent of the 29 million emails it screens every day for 7,000 companies is spam. A competitor, Frontbridge, says that more than 70 percent of the mail it filters is spam. Robert Tesdall, who runs the computer network for the US firm Virgo Publishing, says 80 percent of the "250,000-300,000" emails received daily by the company's 250 workers is spam.
The problem has become so bad that the European Union and United States this year approved tough laws to punish individuals and firms which send unwanted mail.
The EU laws, by far the most punitive, will make it illegal to send an individual unsolicited bulk mail.
But the US laws will only make it illegal if the spammer persists in sending the mail after the recipient has asked to to be taken off his emailing list.
Spamhaus says the loophole is enormous, for it effectively legalises spam.
"Ninety percent of Europe's spam problem originates in the United States," it says.
"Europe can expect the levels of incoming spam from the United States to more than double during 2004 as US spammers ramp up their output under America's new YOU-CAN-SPAM law."
Six emails for penis enlargement... five for cheap credit... four for Viagra... three for a dodgy online pharmacy... two for a get-rich-quick scam in Nigeria... and an electronic greetings card with a hidden virus that turned my computer into a spamming machine.
2003 will be the most spam-filled Christmas in what is already the spammiest year on record, experts say.
This year, hucksters and hackers are teaming up to ensure that your Christmas email inbox will be stuffed with solicitations: some tedious, some offensive, some destructive -- and all of it junk.
From now until the New Year, delete buttons, firewalls and spam filters will have to be in good shape.
"Spam, viruses and malicious code are set to peak in December," says filtering firm Clearswift. "The spammers will attempt to peddle seasonal products to employees full of the Christmas spirit."
Almost a quarter of the spam it stopped for its clients in October was associated with offers of cheap loans for people worried about the cost of Christmas, says Clearswift.
Joining the deluge will be legitimate on-line commerces, which will be emailing known customers to trail Christmas gifts such as books, CDs, household gadgets and DVD players.
And hidden in the overall flood could be some very nasty stuff for your computer.
For no longer do spammers use simple tools, such as "spambots" which crawl like spiders across the Web to garner email addresses, or software that automatically generates names to go with corporate, Yahoo! or Hotmail address.
Mailers are increasingly turning to hacking techniques, using viruses and worms to subvert machines.
A much-feared worm is the next generation of SoBig, which hijacks unprotected computers with an open connection to the Internet, turning these machines into a potential spam factory that can crank out unsolicited email by the bucket-load.
"We are seeing spikes in the level of spam almost week on week," Mark Sunner, chief technology officer of MessageLabs, a US-British spam-filtering firm, told AFP.
"We have seen an almost seven percent increase in the last two weeks, which is very, very dramatic. Sixty percent of the total comes from computers that have been turned into spam stations, a sign that spammers are turning to viral techniques as a delivering mechanism."
The outlook is grim, given that 2003 could already be called the Year of Spam.
Figures given by filter companies vary because they are hired by corporations in different sectors of the economy to snare spam before it reaches employees.
But the consensus is that spam accounts these days for more than half of email traffic on the Internet, and has doubled in 2003.
Sunner said 52 percent of the 29 million emails it screens every day for 7,000 companies is spam. A competitor, Frontbridge, says that more than 70 percent of the mail it filters is spam. Robert Tesdall, who runs the computer network for the US firm Virgo Publishing, says 80 percent of the "250,000-300,000" emails received daily by the company's 250 workers is spam.
The problem has become so bad that the European Union and United States this year approved tough laws to punish individuals and firms which send unwanted mail.
The EU laws, by far the most punitive, will make it illegal to send an individual unsolicited bulk mail.
But the US laws will only make it illegal if the spammer persists in sending the mail after the recipient has asked to to be taken off his emailing list.
Spamhaus says the loophole is enormous, for it effectively legalises spam.
"Ninety percent of Europe's spam problem originates in the United States," it says.
"Europe can expect the levels of incoming spam from the United States to more than double during 2004 as US spammers ramp up their output under America's new YOU-CAN-SPAM law."