Phishing levels up in September

Global virus and phishing scams significantly increased in September reaching levels not seen since 2006 despite reduced figures in Australia.

In Australia, virus levels were down from 0.54 percent to 0.45 percent of all emails scanned by MessageLabs posing a 0.09 percent decrease.

Whilst, globally MessageLabs reported a 0.8 percent increase since August due to the Storm botnet.

“We have seen the virus rate up months on months [globally], “said Philip Routley, product marketing manager at MessageLabs. ”In Australia there’s been a slight decline. [But] even though Australia hasn’t seen a major spike, realistically it’s not far away.”

Mark Sunner, chief security analyst at MessageLabs said: "Most people are unwittingly receiving more than one virus a day.”

Furthermore, spam levels in Australia incurred a 4.4 percent increase from 39.6 percent to 41.3 percent and the figure is set to increase in the coming months.

“In the lead up to Christmas spam will increase by an estimated two to three percent,” Routley said.

Globally, spam decreased by 0.5 percent on the previous month.

The total number of phishing attacks increased by 0.6 percent globally, the highest to date and the number of phishing emails in proportion to other email-borne threats rose by 9.7 percent to 56.0 percent.