On Google’s enterprise blog on Tuesday, Google said they are going to release a report stating that it has seen more spam virus messages in the month of July than any other month. At one point the number had reached more than 10 million infectious messages in one day on July 24th.
That number is 6 to 7 times what is considered normal. This means spam viruses are now finding ways to bypass the majority of spam filters. Not only that, but spam viruses are now taking a new form. Rather than targeting software vulnerabilities to compromise a system, they are simply utilizing a user’s curiosity. Subject lines of false or wild news stories draw a user in and get them to click on a link that will take them to a website containing malware.
With so much spam viruses prevalent today, it is important to inform users to use their common sense when reading emails. If they don’t know where an email came from or the email contains a news story headline subject that sounds ridiculous, then the email is probably a spam virus.