The Deadly Duo: Spam and Viruses, January 2004

Making a 2 percentage point leap into the new year, spam accounted for 60 percent – or 51 billion messages – of the 85 billion emails filtered by Brightmail’s Probe Network. The spam volume has consistently risen 2 percentage points every month for the last three, according to Brightmail’s measurements, and at this rate, spam can potentially rise to nearly 80 percent of email by the end of the year.

Percentages of Total Internet E-mail Identified as Spam
January 2004	60%
December 2003	58%
November 2003	56%
October 2003	52%
September 2003	54%
August 2003	50%
July 2003	50%
June 2003	49%
May 2003	48%
April 2003	46%
March 2003	45%
February 2003	42%
Source: Brightmail Logistics and Operations Center (BLOC)

Francois Lavaste, vice president of marketing for Brightmail, comments on the battle against unsolicited messages: “We definitely expect spam to continue to grow in 2004, which is why we recommend businesses take the necessary steps to protect their employees. CAN SPAM is only part of the solution.”

Lavaste notes that anti-spam technology coupled with direct marketing best practices and end user education are also critical components of the solution. “Until there are some big wins against some of the biggest spammers under CAN SPAM, we don’t expect that it will impact email users’ inboxes.”

Lavaste’s multi-pronged approach may be the most effective, as a Jupiter Research (a unit of this site’s corporate parent) report revealed that mistakenly blocked email is expected to cost legitimate e-marketers $419 million in 2008.

Additionally, a collaborative report by the CMO Council, BtoB Magazine, USA Today, and Responsys, found that spam and other email filters pose the biggest challenge to digital marketers, followed by email inbox clutter.

What are the top challenges your company faces in delivering email marketing today?
Spam and other email filters	63.7%
E-mail inbox clutter	60.5%
Development of qualified email lists	53.1%
Not well integrated with other forms of customer communications	20.4%
Ineffective customer segmentation	18.9%
Lack of personalization	17.1%
Too few customers choose to opt-in	16.6%
Low clickthrough rates	13.9%
Low content appeal and relevancy	11.6%
Hard to handle campaign response	7.1%
Other	6.5%
Source: the CMO Council, BtoB Magazine, USA Today, and Responsys

Spam category levels remain virtually unchanged, with financially related emails registering the biggest increase to 20 percent of the unwanted message volume. Brightmail’s newest category, “fraud,” measured a 1 percentage point increase in a month, comprising 4 percent of all email during January 2004.

January 2004 Spam Category Data
Type of Spam	Dec. Volume	Jan. Volume	Change
Products	21%	22%	+1
Financial	18%	20%	+2
Adult	18%	17%	-2
Scams	9%	8%	-1
Other	8%	7%	-1
Health	6%	7%	-1
Leisure	6%	6%	0
Internet	6%	5%	-1
Fraud	3%	4%	+1
Political	2%	2%	0
Spiritual	3%	2%	-1
Source: Brightmail Logistics and Operations Center (BLOC)

January was a big month for pests as MyDoom and its variants snaked their way across the Internet, wreaking $39 billion in economic damage thus far, according to mi2g. This estimate marks the highest financial damage from any malware, impacting overtime payments, contingency outsourcing, loss of business, bandwidth clogging, productivity erosion, management time reallocation, cost of recovery, and software upgrades.

Even though MyDoom made its first appearance late in the month, it quickly topped Central Command, Inc.’s list of the most prevalent viruses for January.

January 2004 Dirty Dozen
Rank	Virus	Percentage
1.	Worm/MyDoom.A	77.4%
2.	Worm/Sober.C	5.9%
3.	Worm/Bagle.A	2.0%
4.	Worm/MiMail.I	1.7%
5.	Worm/Gibe.C	1.5%
6.	Worm/Klez.E (including G)	1.3%
7.	Worm/MiMail.J	1.1%
8.	Worm/BugBear.B	0.7%
9.	Worm/MiMail.A	0.5%
10.	Worm/Dumaru.A	0.5%
11.	Worm/Hawawi.G	0.4%
12.	W32/Nimda	0.3%
	Others	6.8%
Note: The table above represents the most prevalent viruses for January 2004, number one being the most frequent.
Source: Central Command, Inc.