Canadian Firms' Spam Mail Levels Reaching 90%
Canada’s junk mail surpasses global rate in Sept. 2009
© Yahan Wu
Oct 3, 2009
Spammers are found from coast to coast in Canada, but the most and least spammed provinces can be found in the East. In New Brunswick 90.6 percent of email is spam while in Newfoundland and Labrador 85.3 percent of email is spam. The average number of spam messages received per user per day in Canada is approximately 49. Seven of the nine Canadian provinces receive spam in excess of the current global spam rate of 86.4 percent.
Most and Least Scammed Sectors
In Canada, the most spammed sector is retail, followed by marketing and media, professional services, manufacturing and recreation. On the other hand, the least spammed are healthcare, mineral and fuel, education, engineering and wholesale.
Spammed Provinces in Detail
Below is a breakdown from most to least spammed areas in September 2009 in Canada. New Brunswick received the most junk mail while Newfoundland and Labrador received the least among the nine areas analyzed.
- New Brunswick 90.6%
- Québec 89.6%
- British Columbia 89.0%
- Nova Scotia 88.3%
- Ontario 88.1%
- Alberta 87.0%
- Saskatchewan 86.5%
- Manitoba 85.7%
- Newfoundland and Labrador 85.3%
Top Tips to Stamp Out Spam
- Protect your email address - using your primary email address anywhere on the web puts it at risk of being picked up by spammers so be careful where you use it. Important information may be leaked or used by another person, such as identity theft or banking information.
- Watch out for the checkboxes – when you buy or sign up for something online, opt out of being contacted by third parties, you don’t know where your address will end up. The risks are similar to the ones stated above.
- Don’t use the reply, remove or forward options – acknowledging the spam email using any of these options only validates your email address and can lead to more spam, thus starting a destructive cycle.
- Use an unusual name – if you use an email address with numbers in it for instance, you are less likely to receive spam. Spammers often use directories of common names to guess email addresses, e.g. ajones@company.com, bjones@company.com, etc. Something unique such as handincookiejar@company.com would be harder for spammers to guess.
- Avoid clicking on any links in spam messages – the addresses of links are frequently disguised and often serve only to confirm your existence to spammers (please refer to point three). Same with unsubscribe links.
- Avoid downloading pictures in spam email – these can identify you as a recipient even if you just view the message in the preview pane. You can view your email as text to prevent this, or you can set your email security to block external images.
- Use a spam filtering service. This can help detect junk mail or unnsolicited mail from entering your inbox. For example, the simplest and earliest versions (such as the one available with Microsoft's Hotmail) can be set to watch for particular words in the subject line of messages and to exclude these from the user's inbox.
Source: Symantec Announces September and Q3 2009 MessageLabs Intelligence Report: Latest Investigation of Spam from Botnets Reveals Rapid Growth and New Players, September 29, 2009
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