Nearly 85% of all e-mail is spam. That’s one of the findings in a new report published by Internet security specialist Kaspersky Lab.

According to Kaspersky’s spam report for the second quarter of 2010, 84,4% of the total volume of e-mail traffic online is unsolicited junk mail.

During the quarter, there was an unusually large mass mailing that used HTML-based threats in the form of e-mails disguised as legitimate notifications from social networks.

The e-mails mimicked notifications from social networks, e-mail providers and popular websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Amazon, Windows Live, YouTube, Skype and Wikipedia.

The e-mails were very reminiscent of phishing attempts. However, if a user clicked on the link, they would be taken to a hacked site, from where a malicious script would then be downloaded.

Most often, these links used Trojan-Downloader.JS.Pegel.S, a trojan that was the most common malicious program found in all unwanted correspondence during the second quarter.

Trojan downloaders are designed to redirect users to a cyber criminal’s Web page containing both advertising content and malicious code that will be downloaded onto a user’s computer.

Three Trojan downloaders were present in the top 10 during the second quarter. Prior to the June attack, none of these email threats had ranked among the top 10. This change clearly indicates a planned spam attack, Kaspersky says.

About 15% of all spam during the second quarter originated from the US, with India in second place at 8,5%. Vietnam climbed two places to come in third in the chart. The share of spam coming from SA was no more than 0.35% of the global total. — Staff reporter, TechCentral