Beware of Christmas Spam, Users Warned

Christmas is coming but not all the season's greetings will be welcome, according to Symantec.

Computer users have been advised to be on the lookout for spam taking the form of festive online marketing initiatives.

With internet marketing firms across the globe currently stepping-up their efforts to attract consumers during the busiest retail period of the year, a new report from Symantec has listed the top ten types of Christmas spam to steer clear off over the next few days.

In particular, users have been warned off internet marketing initiatives from unknown sources highlighting 'Best Sales of 2008', 'Christmas Specials' and 'Most Affordable Gifts'.

The report also highlighted the prevalence of news-related spam, with experts at Symantec having seen web content relating to the US presidential election and the Mumbai terrorist attacks containing malicious code.

This latest advice backs up a similar report from Cisco, which revealed that as much as 90 per cent of emails being sent across the globe are actually automatically generated spam, with criminals especially likely to use the guise of online marketing to target users.