Mortgage Spam Up in Response to Fed Rate Cut, Commtouch
Legitimate Email Traffic May Be Disrupted by Content-Based Email Filtering
SUNNYVALE, CALFORNIA - January 30, 2008 - Spam about mortgage refinancing jumped to 10% of all spam in the past week in conjunction with the recent interest rate cuts by the US Federal Reserve, according to research by Commtouch (Nasdaq:CTCH). Further changes expected to be announced today may spur even more finance-related spam – always a favorite subject among spammers even when interest rates are high.
Millions of US mortgages have become eligible for refinancing as a result of the lowered interest rates announced by the Federal Reserve last week.
The huge increase in mortgage spam also has a flip-side: a potential problem with obstructed legitimate email messages, known as false positives. Email correspondence between banks and their customers may be delayed or blocked by over-zealous anti-spam technologies which have difficulty differentiating between valid mortgage-related mail and the flood of finance-related spam.
“Now that market conditions have created fervor among homeowners wishing to refinance their mortgages, cybercriminals are taking advantage by sending more mortgage-themed spam,” said Amir Lev, Commtouch’s chief technology officer. “Loan officers and their customers need to be particularly cautious since some content-based email filtering tools used by banks and consumers may block legitimate email messages, disrupting the communication chain.”
During the fourth quarter of 2007, finance-related spam was only 2% of all spam subjects.
About Commtouch
Commtouch Software Ltd. (NASDAQ:CTCH) is dedicated to protecting and preserving the integrity of the world’s most important communications tool — e-mail. Commtouch has over 17 years of experience developing messaging software and is a global developer and provider of proprietary anti-spam, Zero-Hour virus protection and Reputation Service solutions. Using core technologies including RPD (Recurrent Pattern Detection™), the Commtouch Detection Center analyzes billions of email messages per week to identify new spam and malware outbreaks within minutes of their introduction into the Internet. Integrated by scores of OEM partners, Commtouch technology protects thousands of organizations, with hundreds of millions of users in over 100 countries. Commtouch is headquartered in Netanya, Israel, and has a subsidiary in Sunnyvale, Calif. For more information, see: http://www.commtouch.com. The site includes the Commtouch online lab detailing spam statistics and charts.
Recurrent Pattern Detection, RPD, Zero-Hour and GlobalView are trademarks, and Commtouch is a registered trademark, of Commtouch Software Ltd. U.S. Patent No. 6,330,590 is owned by Commtouch.