45% of email sent all over the world is spam, which equates to about 14.5 billion spam emails being sent every day! It’s clearly a lucrative business for the senders of these spam emails, analysis shows that ‘spam email earns spam gang members about $7,000 a day or $3.5 billion a year.’ But is there a particular time you should be more wary of spam email? Read on to discover when your business might be most likely to be hit by a malicious spam attack.
Research from IBM X-Force Kassel found that ‘over 83% of all spam was sent during weekdays with significant drops on weekends across the different geographies where spam messages originated.’ It appears that cybercriminals plan their attacks around business hours. The research also found that the day with the largest volume of spam was Tuesday, followed by Wednesday and Thursday. This might seem random but actually it appears the spammers have done their research – Tuesday is reportedly the best day to send emails to get a high open rate.
It appears that spam attackers also pay close attention to office hours all over the world. Researchers saw a significant hike around 5am Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) during weekdays. This is because cybercriminals start off by targeting Europe with their spam before they start to spam US recipients.
Although the most spam will be sent on weekdays during business hours, the X- Force research did find that there is a steady ‘undercurrent of spam activity that persists 24 hours a day. They also found that over the weekend perpetrators appear to fire off spam emails at all hours of the day and night. This means that your business needs to be protected from spam at all times. Once MailCleaner’s anti spam gateway has been installed between your mail infrastructure and the internet it will offer professional protection against viruses and eliminate up to 99% of spam around the clock. Get in touch today to find out more.