Recent studies have showed great increase in global spam volumes over the last year, pointing to a switch from selling products towards spreading malware.

The 2008 Internet Security Trends Report from IronPort Systems gives a rather alarming estimation that 98 per cent of all email traffic is now spam.

In a recent PCadvisor article a rather interesting question popped up about whether antispyware is a mere waste of time and money.If, at first, the customary antivirus programs could not keep pace with infatigable annoying adware pop-ups and devious spyware, nowadays, virtually any antivirus program will attempt to block data-stealing spyware, and most of them succeed — or at least inform you about — adware and other questionable program.

Some of the newest anti-spam strategy might require computers to solve math problems in order to get an email accepted by the recipient’s email server. Sudoku vs. Spam.

Paul Gardner-Stephen from Flinders University in Adelaide is looking for ways to improve existing spam filters, which try to prevent unwanted email from getting to your inbox."The trouble is that they're not entirely accurate, so you still get some spam in your inbox and some real mail gets bounced," he says.

Check Point® Software Technologies Ltd.  announced a special 24-hour promotion whereby consumers can download ZoneAlarm Anti-Spyware, a $29.95 value, for free at www.zonealarm.com/patchtuesday.

For the next 24-hours, Check Point will give away ZoneAlarm Anti-Spyware free of charge. Users must provide a valid email address (one product per email address). The offer expires at 5 p.m. PST on Wednesday, Nov. 14. The company also is currently offering a free download of its brand-new ZoneAlarm ForceField virtual browser, another layer of protection available to consumers.

Commtouch announced the launch of a new online tool that publicizes data about global virus outbreaks. The Commtouch Malware Outbreak Center – available on Commtouch’s public web site – provides ongoing updates on the latest virus variants and how quickly anti-virus solutions can defend against them.

No PC security product can possibly protect you from every new spyware and malware threat. Every single day we see more than 5,000 new unique spyware and malware programs. The majority of these new threats would be undetected by most of the popular security programs, including the ones we all use.

Symantec's Mobile Security Suite 5.0 provides a good mix of security features for devices based on Microsoft's Windows Mobile 5.0, but the product ultimately misses the mark due to clumsy management tools and a complete lack of integrated cross-platform support that would certainly be compelling in an increasingly crowded but compartmentalized marketplace.

It comes as no surprise that hackers have taken advantage of the Halloween spirit and launched a new Storm Trojan spam attack in disguise.  One of the most common spam email invited users to visit a website and download a funny application which creates a dancing skeleton on the user’s desktop.

The   'halloween.exe' is a copy of the Storm Trojan which compromises the user's PC and merges it into a network of computers that can be commandeered remotely by a controlling server.

Although it seems that considerable progress has been made regarding the fight against spyware, the legal representatives in such a battle say a major change of the outcome depends now on the approval of the SpyAct by the US Congress. This would lead to civil fines on companies that distribute spyware to consumers' computersFTC (U.S. Federal Trade Commission) gets the authority to impose such fines. The bill is currently stalled in the Senate.

Spyware horror is the marketing message released by PCLive.com for this year's Halloween and it consists in a video called "Fatal Error" which shows the catastrophic adventure of an evil home user computer which picks up viruses, keyloggers, spyware, pop-ups and other malware from Internet.