Spam Makes Up 96.5% of Business E-Mail: Report

Only one in every 28 e-mail messages sent to business addresses was legitimate; the rest were unsolicited, according to a new report.

The report did not detail how many of these e-mails were caught by existing e-mail filters, and how many were actually seen by mailbox owners.

According to Sophos, an IT security firm which undertook the research, during the second quarter of 2008 96.5% of all e-mail sent to business mailboxes was spam, up from 92.3% during the year’s first three months.

Much of this e-mail is sent from third-party computers, which have unknowingly been hijacked by outside spam broadcast software. According to Sophos, many of these computers are home users who lag in installing security precautions.

The study also found that the United States and Russia maintained their positions as the number one and two spam countries of origin, with the U.S. accounting for 14.9% and Russia generating 7.5%. The top five nations were rounded out by Turkey (6.8%); China – including Hong Kong (5.6%); and Brazil (4.5%).

Sophos also reported that spammers are increasingly using social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn to send their solicitations.