Ipswitch, the leading developer of network management, messaging and file transfer solutions, today announced that 81% of email received in a special survey conducted for Ipswitch between Christmas and New Year was unwanted spam. The survey demonstrates that despite business's efforts to control the flood of unwanted messages, the intelligence of modern spammers means spam is on the rise.

The majority (47%) of the spam surveyed was selling medication, lead by emails offering painkillers and performance enhancing pharmaceuticals. The emerging trend for spam derived from Eastern European territories made up 15%. An additional 13% of spam offered mortgage and loan 'deals'. Yet, a perhaps surprisingly low 8% of spam was of a pornographic nature. (would be good if we could say why)The remaining 17% included counterfeit watches (5%), pirated software (3%), and illegal movie downloads (1%).

"It is a constant battle to keep ahead of spammers as they become better at overcoming the existing techniques to filter out spam. This is highlighted by the fact that the type of 'offers' in the spam we tracked weren't't seen 12 months ago," commented Ipswitch's Senior Product Marketing Manager David Karp. "However, the IT industry is now offering increasingly sophisticated filters for unwanted emails, such as Bayesian statistical filters that can actually learn what kind of email is more likely to be spam."

In October Ipswitch launched the Ipswitch Collaboration Suite, in response to increasing customer demand for integrated e-mail and instant messaging. The product offers a number of security features that are easy to activate, such as built-in Spam filtering and anti-virus capabilities.

"Ipswitch Collaboration Suite empowers users with the core functionality associated with enterprise messaging products, minus the complexity," explained Ipswitch Chief Operating Officer Bill Pollack. "With Ipswitch Collaboration Suite, users have the advanced e-mail, instant messaging and collaborative technology they need, plus the anti-spam and anti-virus features that are needed to collaborate safely and effectively."

For a full breakdown of results please contact MCC International ().

About Ipswitch
Ipswitch develops and markets software that works for small and medium businesses worldwide. More than 100 million people use Ipswitch software every day to collaborate via Ipswitch Collaboration Suite, monitor their networks with Ipswitch WhatsUp®, and transfer files over the Internet using the market leading Ipswitch WS_FTP® Professional client and Ipswitch WS_FTP Server. To view the recently created Ipswitch blog visit http://blogs.ipswitch.com. Ipswitch values community involvement, visit icare.ipswitch.com to find out how to become involved. For product and sales information, write to or visit http://www.ipswitch.com.