The networking computer company Cisco estimated that worldwide spam volumes this year could rise by 30 to 40 percent compared with 2009. Spammers already send out up to 100 million junk e-mails a day and, although the vast majority are never opened, enough people click on the links to make spam a multimillion-dollar industry.

Increasingly spammers seek to get people to click on links that download malicious software on to their computers to steal personal information including banking details and passwords. These phishing scams have come mostly in the guise of e-mails from banks and financial institutions, but recently spammers have hooked onto social networks. Users of Facebook, which has 350 million members worldwide, are much more likely to respond to messages that appear to come from friends.

Cyber criminals can access people's online identities by using password hacking software that tries millions of variants of everyday words in a few minutes. Because many people use the same passwords for all sorts of different services, this can help them gain access to social network profiles. "The explosion of applications on Facebook and other services will be an ideal vector for cyber criminals, who will take advantage of friends trusting friends to click links they might otherwise treat cautiously," a report from the internet security firm McAfee said. Most spam is sent out by networks of "zombie" computers or "bots" that have been infected by computer viruses and are effectively controlled by cyber criminals. Their owners usually do not know they are being used to send spam.

While security researchers recently succeeded in shutting down a big botnet, more are being created in developing countries, according to Cisco in its annual internet security report. Brazil this year dethroned the United States as the country producing the most spam, the company reported. The amount of spam coming from Vietnam and India has also soared. Cyber criminals are taking advantage of improved broadband internet and computer access in developing countries where people may still have lessons to learn about internet security.

Spam stats

— Spammers use dozens of tricks to get through e-mail filters that block messages containing frequently used spam words. Project Honey Pot, a voluntary community of web defenders, formed by web administrators as an alliance against online fraud and abuse in 2004, has counted 956 different spellings of the word Viagra including V1AGRA, V1@GR@, V!AGRA, VIA6RA. Other words such as Free, Mortgage and Rolex also have hundreds of different spellings.

— Monday is the busiest day of the week for e-mail spam, and Saturday the quietest. Spam volumes peak around midday (GMT) and reach a low around 11pm (GMT). Spam volumes drop nearly 21 per cent on Christmas Day and 32 per cent on New Year's Day. Junk mailers take time off over the holidays just like everyone else.

— It takes the average spammer around two and a half weeks from harvesting an e-mail address to sending the first spam message to this address, according to Project Honey Pot. Every time a user's e-mail address is harvested from a website, it results in an average of 850 spam messages.

— Spam accounted for 87 per cent of all e-mail messages in 2009, according to the internet security firm Symantec.

— The death of Michael Jackson generated the most celebrity spam in 2009, accounting for just under 2 per cent of all spam messages.

Our best defense is keeping you our subscribers up to date as we become aware of the threats. We remind everyone to choose secure passwords, upgrade existing insecure passwords, and be alert for attempts via email or a web pages to download unknown software, or divulge personal information.

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