BizSugar.com › Technology › Webmail Spammers?

According to a Commtouch’s latest Internet Threat Report, however, spammers are now moving away from botnets and are using webmail accounts they have compromised.

This report names a number of reasons for this. One major reason is the recent takedown of the Rustock botnet by law enforcement. This takedown of one of the largest botnets resulted in approximately a thirty percent drop in spam emails. Spammers are also trying to beat IP-based spam blocking products which blacklist IP addresses of the compromised botnet computers. The use of webmail accounts makes it much harder for anti-spam products to block IP addresses because the accounts exist within domains or IP ranges that are trusted and belong to the webmail provider.