MIT spam conference focuses on phishing
BOSTON – At the fourth annual MIT Spam Conference held in Boston Tuesday, speakers said that while the volume of spam ebbs and flows, the nature of unwanted e-mail is steadily becoming more dangerous.
“The spam problem will get worse, and the reason is phishing,” says Bill Yerazunis, senior research scientist with Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, and chairman of the conference. Yerazunis estimates between 20% and 30% of all spam messages are phishing attacks that attempt to trick recipients into giving away personal or financial information. “For people who aren’t ‘Net savvy, they could lose their retirement money,” he says.
