Beware! you’ve got spam

Today, India might have reached 100 million internet users, but the country also tops the list when it comes to spam emails and phishing crimes. More than 35% of the cyber crime cases in our country are related to spams and there have been only three convictions till date.

The situation is going from bad to worse when one talks about spam victims in India. Last week, authorities arrested six foreign nationals suspected of defrauding hundreds of people using text message and email scams. Last month, Nasscom revealed that 50% of the 6,00,000 fresh engineers every year are soft targets for fake job letters. “At least five tech companies amongst the top ten have showed concerns that fresh candidates are being conned through fake emails offering job letters to them,” says Sangeeta Gupta, senior vice-president, Nasscom.

According to Symantec, phishing on non-Indian brands with Indian geo-location saw a huge increase of around 61.47% in November last year on a monthly basis. Between October 2010 and October 2011, all Indian brands targeted in phishing attacks were in the banking sector. 37 non-Indian brands were attacked that were hosted in India. Bangalore tops the list of cities that hosted phishing sites in India followed by New Delhi. Mumbai and Hyderabad are on the 3rd and 4th place respectively.

Symantec India managing director Shantanu Ghosh says, “Over 70% of all the emails that go around the world

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