Hospitals Get Spammed Hard

According to anti-spam email software specialists, Messagelabs -about 75% of messages received last year were spam. 1 in 16 messages contained a virus.

According to the report - non-profits and hospitals get more viruses than others do. The rate was about 1 in 6 emails. This may be due to the amount of communications they do with third parties. It may also be related to having their email addresses published online.

Many spam lists are generated by automated crawlers that search web pages for valid email addresses. Some viruses employ similar techniques - although they are more likely to search their victim's hard drives for such data.

The study is based on around 10 thousand different companies that the anti-spam provider provides services for. Since the info presumably relies on the accuracies of their own filters, interpreting studies like this one can sometimes prove tough.

A recent similar study by AOL indicated that spam was on the decline. Many writers expressed skepticism that what this really meant was its spam fighting systems weren't doing as good a job figuring out how to block email that wasn't wanted.. It's possible that in reality as much, or more was making it into user's inboxes.

SpamButcher's 21-day trial version can be obtained as a free anti-spam download from www.spambutcher.com.

Of significant concern is the amount of confidential data hospitals store on people. Some viruses expose private data from people hard drives by emailing it other people at random.

SpamButcher can be used to filter spam in Outlook or used with most other popular email programs such as Outlook Express or Eudora.

Back