Web security firm Symantec has reported a sharp rise in the amount of spam being sent from .cn email addresses, or containing links to .cn domains. During July, the amount of Chinese spam rose from being sent from only one or two spam domains, to around 450.

Symantec suggests that one reason for the growing popularity of using Chinese domains for spam is the desire to dodge spam blacklists. Spam is also becoming increasingly localised to target specific markets.

There has been a drop, however, in the amount of spam being sent from .hk domains, which could be as a result of the recent introduction of anti-spam laws in Hong Kong. There has also been a decline in the amount of image spam – only 10% of spam messages are image based now, as opposed to 50% earlier in the year. Spammers are now using new attachments, such as Excel, Zip and PDF files, but the biggest problem at the moment is greetings card spam, which usually features a link that downloads a trojan when clicked.

The ever-growing tide of spam is impossible to ignore, as attachments increase the size of spam messages and therefore eat up the bandwidth of individuals and large businesses alike.