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Email worm infections declining

by Chris Gilmer on July 5, 2007 at 02:30 PM

Fishermen may love worms, but Email readers sure dread them. Could 2007 be the year that all email viruses just stop? Highly unlikely, but they have dropped off quite a bit this year.

A study just released by a security vendor found that mass emailing worms have been declining by 5% each month since the start of this year. Users have been educated and are more aware of the way to treat un- trusted email attachments which could explain for the steady rate of decline. Companies and customers also have better security implementations that fend off any potential attackers before it even hits the inbox.

Even though there has been such a steady decline in these worms, the infection still has the ability to spike from time to time as malware designers beef up their corruption plans, and security companies scurry to fight off aggressive tactics.

What tactics do you use to fight off malware and Email worm infection?

Tags: email, malware, virus, worm

Comments

Dudu PJul 5th 2007 5:35PM

Neutral

As with viruses and other threats. I think that the cause is not related to users getting smarter, because as more people gain access to internet, more and more newbies arrive, thus keeping it on a balance.

truth is: these days most of those guys who write viruses and worms spend their time trying to cheat and hack google adsense and other advertising networks. it's far more rewarding.

although we'll never know the real truth, because those are private companies who won't disclose how many illegal hacking activity they're blocking. letting this stats go public wouldn't generate them anything good.

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SwanJul 5th 2007 7:22PM

Neutral

New virus software is being created all the time - it's becoming more visible, more efficient and some even stop the threat before it can even install into your system.

I'm pretty much paranoid about internet/email/computer safety and how it can cause you to lose everything on your hard drive - especially if you end up at the mercy of the right one.

I agree that users are becoming more educated - but I also think that more free AV products on the web, than what there used to be and people are taking advantage of that fact.

I use:

McAfee; Comodo Boclean; and Cyber Defender Early Detection Center - which all run real time on my system. They do make your CPU spike at times during the day - but it's worth the additional protection to me.

I also have: Ad-Aware; AVG Anti-Rootkit; Spybot - Search & Destroy; Spyware Detector and Spyware Doctor - which are all scheduled (at staggered times,) to run from 1am on Saturday mornings.

So far, so good!
~ Swan