Spam turns 30, India high on spammer target

MUMBAI: In May 1978, Gary Thuerk sent the first junk e-mail. None knew this trivial event three decades ago would emerge in the 21st century as the most dreaded Internet security threat called 'spam', which is giving sleepless nights to all those who surf the worldwide web.

Spam is defined as junk or unsolicited email sent by a third party. While it is certainly annoying to users and administrators, it is also a serious security concern as it can be used to deliver Trojans, viruses, and phishing attempts which could have critical financial or operational repercussions.

"While there was not much activity on the spam front until the 90s, the complexity levels in the last one decade has increased greatly," director of the Symantec Internet Security Response Lab Pune, Prabhat Singh, told PTI today.

The Symantec lab monitors the complete threat spectrum and malware activity all across the world. It provides support in 14 languages against phishers and spammers. In India alone, average 72 per cent of the emails are spam infested. Symantec, in its latest edition of the Internet Security Threat Report, found India ranks high on the global virus and worm prevalence charts.

Malicious activity in the form of worms, viruses and Trojans is on the rise and more than 65 per cent of such attacks in India were through worms as compared to the global average of 22 per cent.