Spam Mutates and moves to blogs, instant messages, and cell phones

[regic]

Peter Shinbach recently threw in the towel and shut down Bach Door, his online-communications blog.

The public relations executive from Birmingham, Michigan, was fed up with so-called comment spam...

Shinbach is one of many who are starting to fret more about spam on blogs, instant messages, and cell phones than about traditional unsolicited e-mail--at least in part because old-style spam appears to be losing some momentum. While the volume of junk e-mail continues to mount, it stopped growing at double-digit rates last year. Many ISPs and e-mail providers claim that they blocked more than 90 percent of unsolicited commercial e-mail...

In contrast, other forms of spam--prompted by the rise of new messaging media--are just gathering steam.

"Many spammers are reinventing themselves," says Paul Judge, chief technical officer for messaging security firm CipherTrust. "Whatever messaging paradigm that consumers are using, spammers will be right there."

full article: http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,124822,00.asp