Email is definitely not dead as a means of communication and a marketing channel, as web surfers keep on subscribing to newsletters, reading them and buying from them.

Why are email newsletters still so popular? The answer is simple: they sound personal and cause emotional attachment. According to the Email Newsletter Usability Report issued by the Nielsen Norman Group, users have more emotional reactions to the email newsletters rather than to website content. As stated in the report, newsletters feel personal because they arrive in users’ inboxes and users have an ongoing relationship with them. Sixty-nine percent of users said that they look forward to receiving at least one newsletter and most users said a newsletter had become part of their routine.

Reasons for Poor Email Delivery

An email message normally makes a lengthy trip before it reaches its final destination – the recipient’s Inbox.

After the “Send” button is hit in the sender’s email client or after an automatic script starts sending bulk mail, the message is routed to the sender’s mail server. This mail server might block the email due to a lengthy email attachment (e.g. most Webmail providers have a restriction of no more than 25 MB per message), or because a sender has reached a daily limit of sending emails (e.g. some email providers would limit you to no more than 100 emails sent per day).

The next pit-stop is the recipient’s mail server, which might bounce an email because of a lengthy email attachment, because the sender IP or domain is blacklisted or viruses and spam-like content are found in a message.

Even if the message goes through the sender’s mail server and the recipient’s mail server without any problem, it might be blocked on the last step of its trip to the recipient – the recipient’s email client. Most email clients have built-in spam filters, and these filters may block email because of viruses and spam-like content found, or use any other filtering methods.

Tips to Retain Subscribers and Improve Your Email Delivery Rates

Take care of the contents of each message and your writing style

1. Address to the recipient personally
At the beginning of a message, use a proper salutation and address the recipient with their real name, not a generic noun. People love to read and hear their name – this makes them feel comfortable. At the end of the message, make sure to use your real first and last name, not just a company title or a fancy nickname.

2. Make your newsletter interesting and exciting
Step aside and think if you would ever subscribe to your newsletter if you were interested in your topic. Would you have benefited from this newsletter much? Be sure to add value and meet the expectations of your subscribers; do not use email for a sales pitch only.

3. Make it emotionally appealing
People are reached through their emotions. In newsletters, this rule works especially well, so do not pass by the opportunity to appeal to your newsletter subscribers.

4. Build a relationship
Do not think of email as a one-time blast campaign. Do think of it as if you were in a long-term relationship with your customer. Retain your customer, send follow-ups, remind them who you are and why they are subscribed, ask for feedback and communicate. In other words, maintain your relationship.

5. Send newsletters on a regular basis
Sending a newsletter 1-2 times per month is perfect. You may set your own newsletter frequency – from a weekly to a daily newsletter. Everything depends on the industry and the way you position your newsletter: hot news, useful tips, product updates, etc. Also, let your subscribers know what the frequency of your emails will be.

“Dress up” your email well

6. Use quality design
Avoid using third-party templates or email template generating software. Hire a good web designer or outsource this work to have it done for you decently. Do not copy-cat someone’s email templates even if you find them pretty. Make your newsletter look and feel professional and credible.

7. Avoid complex HTML-elements and too much graphics
Some HTML elements and excessive graphics might trigger email spam filters, so you’d better keep away from complicated designs for the sake of successful email delivery. A simpler email is definitely better than undelivered email, right? Avoid using too many closed tags, tables, colorful backgrounds, JavaScript and web forms.

8. Test before you send
Before sending your message, make sure to test it under different circumstances. See how it looks in different email clients and the most popular Webmail interfaces. Make sure all links work OK and that all images render. Test the unsubscribe links and, to be sure, check your spelling.

9. Use an email address with the domain of your website
Do not use your “@yahoo” or “@aol” personal email address. You have a website, so you should already have email accounts set up under that domain. Do use these email addresses to sound credible.

10. Make it easy to unsubscribe
At first glance, this piece of advice sounds contradictory… Of course your aim is to increase your subscription rate, not increase your unsubscribe rate, right? However people get most irritated with those newsletters that are: non-legitimate, boring and… hard to unsubscribe from.

Take care of the technical details

11. Configure reverse DNS entries
Many email servers are configured to reject incoming emails from any IP address which does not have reverse DNS. If you host multiple domains on one email server, just setup reverse DNS to point to whichever domain name you consider primary.

12. Create a proper SPF record in your DNS
SPF allows the owner of an Internet domain to specify which computers are authorized to send mail with sender addresses in that domain. If you publish an SPF record for your domain, spammers and phishers will be less likely to forge emails pretending to be from your domain.

13. Sign your mail with DKIM
Digital signatures ensure your emails’ authenticity. Make sure to sign your mail with DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) to take responsibility for the messages you send.

14. Review feedback loop emails on a regular basis
Feedback loops are one of the ways for reporting spam. Feedback loop emails will let you know if there are unhappy users who hit the “This is spam” button and resolve the issues.

15. Monitor blacklists and request removal if you’ve been listed
You can set up alerts on blacklist updates to track if you’ve been listed. Don’t panic if you do get listed one day. If you haven’t abused the rules, it normally takes a few emails to the ISP abuse address to get the things resolved.

General after-sending tips

16. Track your sender score
Most popular ISP providers and spam filter developers calculate a sender score for each volume email sender. In case any violations are detected, they decrease the score. To have no problems with email delivery, do all you can do to improve your sender score.

17. Ask readers to add your email address to whitelists
To keep your sender score and delivery rate at a high level, kindly ask your readers to add your email address to their whitelists. Explain to them why it’s important and let them know how easy it is to do.

18. Cleanup your subscriber list on a regular basis
One of the quickest ways to get on blacklists is to keep sending email to dead addresses. So it makes sense to look at the bounced emails you get, and remove them from your list ASAP.

19. Track your email delivery
Watch newsletter bounce activity and delivery receipts. Analyze the reasons why some emails haven’t been delivered. Work with the ISPs to get yourself off blacklists.

20. Never purchase email lists
Untargeted. Unsolicited. Uninterested. Do you really like these attributes? With purchased email lists, these attributes may end up describing your email campaigns. Earn new subscribers using effective and time-proven methods – share content, build a community and gain each reader’s interest.

To ensure that your recipients do not get your mail mistakenly trapped by spam filters, recommend that they install EmailTray – a smart email client for Windows and Android smartphones. EmailTray tracks mail from all accounts and sorts messages using a smart proprietary algorithm. Even if a legitimate message gets trapped by mistake EmailTray will rescue it from the Spam folder and notify a user about it.

The world of the future, as described in the good old science fiction books, movies and magazines, has already arrived. This brave new world is rapidly changing. In order to succeed you need to be like Julius Caesar and simultaneously do as much as possible. A device that you carry in your pocket and use to read new magazines with your morning coffee, watch movies in the evening and send emails during your lunch, is a usual thing today. An example would be the Kindle Fire from Amazon.

Today we talk about Kindle Fire, because the EmailTray development division of Web CEO Limited has been testing the EmailTray mail app for Android on this device. Join us and get all the benefits of the EmailTray mail app for Android on your ereader/tablet from Amazon.

EmailTray for Android is a mobile extension of the Windows-based EmailTray for desktops, so there is a smart technology behind it. Unlike other email clients, EmailTray is based on an intelligent algorithm that identifies email priorities and sorts messages into folders according to those priorities. It will also notify you about the number of top priority messages you have via sound, vibration or light and also by means of a screen widget. The EmailTray email client remembers your emailing activity via a server hashtag technology, so you can use the EmailTray email client on all your devices (both Windows- and Android-based) and make your email management the most effective.

You should try the EmailTray mail app for Android because:

• It estimates email priority based on your past behavior.
• It sorts emails into “Top priority”, “Low priority”, “No priority”, “Spam” and “Revise” (when priority is in question and you need to manually decide how to the program should treat such emails in the future) folders.
• It rescues good email trapped in the Spam folder by mistake.
• A functional widget on the home screen notifies you about the number of priority emails.
• Access to EmailTray can be password-protected.
• It supports multiple email accounts, both POP3 and IMAP (including push notifications).
• It lets you share pictures, music and other content via email easily.
• You can group messages in folders as you need.
• When you use desktop EmailTray both apps synchronize priority assignments.

Feel free to tell us what you think about our EmailTray email client. We are always happy to get your reviews and comments. Your prompt feedback helps us to improve our products.

According to the Global Email Deliverability Benchmark report issued by Return Path in March 2012, worldwide inbox placement rates declined sharply in the second half of 2011 to a record low of 76.5% globally, compared to 81% in the first half of 2011. This means a lot more email has been heading to the spam box.

Nowadays it’s not enough to create a marketing message, embed pictures and blast this to a large email list. Email deliverability is the issue that bothers marketers a lot. ISPs and Webmail providers, both on the sender side and the recipient side, may block your message for many reasons; and one of them is email attachment size and format.

Email Attachment Size Restrictions

In a race to get the most devoted users, four major Webmail providers (Gmail, Windows Live Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail and AOL Mail) currently have the same restriction regarding the total size of a sent or received message. You can send or receive messages of up to 25 MB each for free.

Some Webmail providers and commercial Email Service Providers will allow you to send larger email messages. However there is no guarantee that the recipient who uses a different Email Service Provider will be able to receive your lengthy message. The attachment size limit of the person receiving the file does matter; if your file is over their limit for receiving, the email will be rejected.

Gmail
With Gmail, you can send and receive messages up to 25 MB in size. However it’s not a good idea to send larger attachments to people who might be using the other email services with smaller attachment limits. The good news is that Google offers Google Drive cloud storage service, which adds an extra 5MB of storage to your Gmail account.

Windows Live Hotmail
Windows Live Hotmail has a restriction of 25 MB per email message as well. There is a workaround however. You can take advantage of the Microsoft’s SkyDrive service, an online cloud storage service that is available to everyone with a Windows Live Account. You can upload large files (up to 7 GB for free) to SkyDrive and share them with your contacts.

Yahoo! Mail
With your Yahoo! Mail account, you can send and receive emails up to 25 MB.

AOL Mail
AOL Mail restricts messages to no larger than 25 MB.

Mail.com
With the emailing service offered by Mail.com, you can send attachments of up to 50 MB.

GMX.com
With GMX Mail, you can send attachments of up to 50 MB as well. Besides, GMX File Storage offers you another 2 GB of space for your documents, images and media to share with your friends and family.

As for the Commercial Email Service Providers, the limits that the recipient’s server has on attachment size may vary from email service provider to email service provider.

Note: The total email size includes the message text, headers, embedded images and attachments. That means that you must take into consideration the total size of the message, not the attachments only. If, for example, you are including a high number of embedded images with your email message, then your attachment size is going to be restricted by the size of the message including the embedded images.

Restricted Attachment File Extensions

Sending the following file types is OK with most of the Webmail providers: word processor or spreadsheet documents, audio files, image files (.bmp, .jpg, .gif, etc.), and web pages saved as HTML files.

It is definitely not a good idea to attach executable files to your email messages, as they might be blocked by email providers or the antivirus software installed on your recipients’ computer.

Gmail will not let you send or receive executable files (such as files ending in .exe). In addition, Gmail does not allow you to send or receive files that are corrupted. Gmail won’t accept these types of files even if they are sent in a zipped (.zip, .tar, .tgz, .taz, .z, .gz, .rar) format. If this type of message is sent to your Gmail address, it will be bounced back to the sender automatically.

With Yahoo! Mail, you can send all types of files as attachments, including word processor or spreadsheet documents, audio files, image files (such as .bmp, .jpg, .gif), and more. There is no restriction openly stated by Yahoo!, however they kindly ask you to be particularly cautious about executable files, which end with these extensions: .exe, .com, .vbs, .lnk, .pif, .scr, .bat.

Just like with the Gmail Webmail service provider, Windows Live Hotmail will block any email message including executable files.

AOL Mail is quite liberal with its users as far as it concerns email attachment extensions. If the attachments are of the file types .exe, .scr, .com, .msi, .bat, .pif , .vbs, .cpl, or .cmd, AOL Help advises you to compress them before sending. To do this, you can use a third-party compression program such as WinZip.

Email Etiquette for Attachment Sending

• Delete attachments from forwarded messages when you only want to share the text. Forwarding attachments for no reason is not polite.
• Ask before sending. It is not OK to include a spreadsheet, a document or a presentation file without the recipient’s consent, especially if this is the first email message you ever send to a person. You can only send attachments without preliminary asking when a sender knows you well enough or expects attachments from you.

• Do not send files larger than 25 MB. If the file that you’re trying to transfer exceeds 25 MB, you’ll need to either compress the file or split it into smaller parts. Another option is to share this file using a cloud storage service, e.g. Google Drive, SkyDrive, Dropbox, etc.

• Scan the file you are going to send for viruses. Sending an infected message to a customer or business partner may ruin your relationship once and for all. Always have your Anti-Virus software running, and make it a rule to scan outgoing messages for viruses.

• Do not send attachments after business hours. The chances are that the recipient will be checking mail via a smart phone. Downloading and viewing this attachment might be a pain.

For more tips on safe email sending etiquette, read our post about business email etiquette rules.

Email is still one of the most popular modes of internet communication, but the sphere of its usage has slightly changed. Nowadays we get information about our friends and family mostly through social networks, whilst email is left for business communications. This business orientation has led to the increased use of email on mobile devices, because in the modern highly-competitive business world it’s really important to be always online and take action immediately with important messages.

The comScore research shows that 89.6 million Americans used their mobile phone to access email for work or personal purposes during the three-month average period ending November 2011, growing 28% from the previous year and representing an additional 19.5 million mobile email users.

Over half of “mobile workers” check their email on waking or immediately after getting dressed, – discovered May 2011 iPass survey.

Nielsen research on what mobile users do online showed email to be the most popular activity, accounting for 38.5% of mobile internet time.

Today email on mobile devices is an integral part of doing business. If you manage your email on a mobile device effectively, you may improve your business communications and get constant access to the information you need. When you answer your business emails immediately, you save seconds that create a competitive advantage in our rapidly moving world. Everything changes too quickly so you cannot allow yourself to separate your job from private life nowadays; you will mostly always need to be available via email so as not to lose opportunities. But nobody wants to become a robot that checks its inbox every second like an obsessed maniac. How do you find a balance between your need to read business emails quickly and your desire not to mix business and private life too much?

The EmailTray for Android app is the answer. Its main feature is smart analysis of your email communications that helps to sort your inbox (4 inboxes in this case) according to messages’ importance. With the EmailTray for Android app you read only the highest priority  emails and do not waste time deciding what messages you need to read and answer first. Besides smart sorting of emails, the EmailTray for Android app scans your Spam folder and rescues good emails that may have been trapped there by a spam-filter’s mistake. These features make you confident that all important emails immediately get to your inbox, sorted by sender priority, and ready to be answered.

Install the EmailTray for Android app to stay on top of this brave new, highly competitive business world.

The EmailTray email client for Windows is great in dealing with all email management tasks: it sorts email according to importance and notifies you about important messages only, saves you from spam and phishing, rescues good emails from the Spam folder and synchronizes your contact address book. The EmailTray developer team does its best to implement other ideas to bring you the best email client possible:

1. The EmailTray email client for Windows is easy to set up. You need just click once to install EmailTray. Install the EmailTray email client.
2. Add your email accounts instantly. You just need to add the email address and password in most cases and nor further setup is needed. The EmailTray email client knows all the necessary settings of the popular email providers.
3. Create full and shortened signatures to be added automatically in new emails and replies. Your full signature will be automatically added to all your new emails and the shortened one to your replies and forwards. The automatization saves you seconds, and a second saved is an hour earned.
4. Turn off/on sound notifications quickly. You can find a sound notification icon in the bottom right corner. Just click it to turn all the EmailTray sound notifications off/on; there is no need to go to the settings if you need no sounds.
5. Access the most important emails quickly. Click the EmailTray email client icon in the notification area and you will get to the latest unread important email.
6. Mark spam in different ways. You can mark as spam a message, a sender or all messages from the domain at once. These flexible settings help to fight spam as smoothly as possible.
7. Create specific rules. You may set a sender’s priority before you receive any email, you just need to know the sender’s name or keywords in the subject. Do this to be sure you read important emails even if the sender uses a new email address.
8. Manage your subscriptions in a smart way. The EmailTray email client combines emails from different senders but sent to one subscription email address into one contact card and one thread. Names of the senders in these subscription threads are highlighted so you will easily find a message you need. And there are even more things to make your subscription management easy: you may create rules and mark special senders with different colors.
9. Add all of one sender’s email addresses into one contact card. It doesn’t matter what email address your sender uses, you will see the photo you chose for this sender anyway.

Are there any features you’d like to see in the EmailTray email client or Windows? Feel free to tell us in the comments or discuss your thoughts on our Facebook page.

Back in 2003, most of us faced only two types of email security threats: viruses and spam. Banking institutions, payment processors, online auctions and large e-stores didn’t really have to worry about being compromised by phishing attacks. The phishing industry wasn’t flourishing at that time. Regular email users were not put at risk of identity theft via fraudulent emails or malicious websites. That was a great time…

As noted in the MessageLabs Intelligence Annual Email Security Report, 2004 was “the year the big phish was landed”. In September 2003 the number of phishing emails detected by MessageLabs was 279. By September 2004 the figure had jumped to over two million. The main organizations targeted by phishing scams during 2004 were Citibank, HSBC, eBay, Visa, Natwest, ANZ and Westpac.

Email Phishing Rates 2004-2012: a Timeline of Evolution

According to a Symantec Intelligence Report issued in February 2012, the global phishing rate increased by 0.01 percentage points since January 2012, taking the global average rate to one in 358.1 emails (0.28%). The email phishing activity evolution is quite interesting to observe but is definitely disappointing to accept:

2004
As reported by the tech security company Messagelabs, phishing rates skyrocketed in 2004 due to the widespread use of zombie networks: the annual average of phishing emails reached 0.1%, or 1 in 943 emails. During 2004, MessageLabs intercepted over 18 million phishing emails (emails containing a URL to a fraudulent website).

2005
Phishing continued to be a major threat during 2005, accounting for an annual average of 0.3% or 1 in every 304 of all emails. MessageLabs intercepted around 2-3 targeted attacks per week during 2005; in 2004 this figure was almost negligible.

2006
Phishing continued to be a major threat during 2006, accounting for an annual average of 0.36% or 1 in every 274.2 of all emails.

2007
In 2007, the level of phishing attacks rose to 1 in 156.0 emails (0.64%) from 1 in 274.2 (0.36%) in 2006, an increase of 0.28%. Phishing attacks have widened their targets from defrauding major international banks and financial organizations to also targeting smaller, national and state banks, including credit unions.
Phishing attacks have also become much more targeted, using emails that include the recipients’ correct name and email address on the To: and Subject: lines. Furthermore, in some examples, the link included in the email encodes the email address of the recipient should they click on the link such that it is automatically passed to the phishing website.

2008
In 2008, phishing activity averaged around 1 in 244.9 (0.41%) emails, compared with 1 in 156.0 (0.64%) for 2007. Phishing activity peaked in February 2008 at 1 in 99.1 emails. This increase was due partly to the increased availability of plug-and-play style phishing kits that required very little technical skill to configure. Another factor was the increased use of specialized botnets for phishing activity.

The types of organizations targeted widened in 2008 and included recruitment agencies, online retailers and internet grocery sites.

2009
In 2009, one in 325.2 emails (0.31%) was a phishing attempt.

2010
In 2010, the average ratio of email traffic blocked as phishing attacks was 1 in 444.5 (0.23%), compared with 1 in 325.2 (0.31%) in 2009. Approximately 95.1 billion phishing emails were estimated to be in circulation during 2010. MessageLabs Intelligence tracked phishing attacks impersonating or relating to 1,530 different organizations, compared with 1,079 in 2009.

2011
In 2011, the overall phishing rate was 1 phishing email in 299 messages (0.33%).

2012
In February 2012, one in 358.1 emails was identified as phishing. That made up a rate of 0.27%, an increase of 0.01 percentage points since January 2012.

Most Attacked Countries

The Netherlands remained the country most targeted for phishing attacks in February, with one in 152.8 emails (0.65%) identified as phishing. Phishing levels for the US reached one in 753.5 (0.13%) and one in 427.9 for Canada (0.23%). In Germany phishing levels were one in 700.9 (0.14%), one in 461.9 in Denmark (0.22%). In Australia, phishing activity accounted for one in 499.9 emails (0.20%) and one in 1,045 in Hong Kong (0.10%); for Japan it was one in 4,762 (0.02%) and one in 689.9 for Singapore (0.14%). In Brazil one in 863.9 emails (0.12%) was blocked as phishing.

Most Attacked Industries

The Public Sector remained the most targeted by phishing activity in February, with one in 84.1 emails (1.19%) comprising a phishing attack. Phishing levels for the Chemical & Pharmaceutical sector reached one in 726.2 (0.14%) and one in 670.6 (0.15%) for the IT Services sector, one in 523.7 (0.19%) for Retail, one in 150.0 for Education (0.67%) and one in 328.6 (0.30%)for Finance.

Most Recent Phishing Alerts: May-June 2012

The FraudWatch International Service posts daily updates covering all phishing alerts detected by their system. Listed below are the phishing alerts detected by this service within the last two months:

June 21, 2012 Bank of America – Bank of America: Security Alert
June 21, 2012 Guaranty Trust Bank – Update Your Details
June 21, 2012 HSBC Bank – HSBC: New Security Measures.
June 21, 2012 Commonwealth Bank Australia – CommBank NetBank: Account security Notification!!!
June 21, 2012 HDFC Bank – Important Security Notification :
June 21, 2012 Commonwealth Bank Australia – CommBank NetBank: Account security Notification!!!
June 21, 2012 Lloyds TSB Bank – IMPORTANT-Lloyds TSB Customer Service Alert.
June 21, 2012 Internal Revenue Service (IRS) – Your IRS Tax Refund Status
June 20, 2012 Littlewoods – Increased credit limit
June 20, 2012 CIBC Bank – Please verify your account
June 20, 2012 Littlewoods – Increased credit limit
June 19, 2012 AOL – Your Account Has Been Disabled
June 19, 2012 Australian Taxation Office (ATO) – Australian Taxation Office Update
June 19, 2012 Earthlink – Your EarthLink Account Will Be Deactivated
June 18, 2012 NatWest Bank – NatWest Bank Alert: Unauthorized Access On Your Account.
June 16, 2012 Citizens Bank – Update alert
June 15, 2012 NatWest Bank – ALERT
June 15, 2012 Kiwibank – New Message from Online Banking
June 15, 2012 Kiwibank – ALERT
June 15, 2012 Citizens Bank – Verify Your Citizens Bank Online Account
June 15, 2012 PayPal – Your account PayPal has been limited until we hear from you
June 15, 2012 Kiwibank – New Security Update
June 15, 2012 Chase Bank – Chase Online Service : Changes To Your Online Banking
June 15, 2012 Halifax Bank – Update the Billing Information
June 15, 2012 NatWest Bank – There Is A Deposit Payment On Your Account
June 15, 2012 Halifax Bank – New Message from Halifax Online
June 15, 2012 Bank of America – New Security Update
June 08, 2012 Chase Bank – Important Notice !!!
June 08, 2012 Chase Bank – Dear Chase Customer (JP Morgan)
June 08, 2012 Bank of America – Online Banking Update
June 06, 2012 Kiwibank – Alert! Urgent Security Notice
June 01, 2012 BankWest – New Message from Bankwest

May 21, 2012 HSBC Bank – Access temporarily suspended
May 21, 2012 Santander UK – Santander Online Banking service
May 20, 2012 PayPal – Update required for your account
May 20, 2012 ABSA – Incoming EFT Payment
May 20, 2012 Halifax Bank – Halifax E-mail Verification !
May 18, 2012 RBC Royal Bank – RBC Royal Bank: You Have (1) Unread Security Message
May 17, 2012 Westpac Bank – Westpac Online Alert
May 17, 2012 RBC Royal Bank – Important notice !
May 17, 2012 Capital One Bank – You have one new message at Capital One.
May 17, 2012 West Coast Bank – West Coast Bank ALERT New security update
May 16, 2012 NAB – National Australia Bank – You Have 1 New Secured Message
May 16, 2012 Westpac Bank – Form Number xxxxxxxx
May 15, 2012 ABSA – New security message
May 15, 2012 Capitec Bank – Attention: Online Security Notice
May 15, 2012 Bank of America – Bank of America Alert: Security Update – your action required
May 14, 2012 Citibank – Unauthorized Access Notice
May 14, 2012 Bank of America – Customer Service
May 14, 2012 Commonwealth Bank Australia – account notice
May 14, 2012 Corporation Bank – CORP BANK !!! Update Your Login Information For Your OTP Registration
May 13, 2012 Halifax Bank – Irregular activity on your halifax online Account
May 10, 2012 Kiwibank – Your Account Is Temporarily Limited
May 10, 2012 SNS Bank – SNS Beveiligingsupdate
May 21, 2012 Santander UK – Santander Online Banking service
May 20, 2012 PayPal – Update required for your account
May 20, 2012 ABSA – Incoming EFT Payment
May 20, 2012 Halifax Bank – Halifax E-mail Verification !
May 18, 2012 RBC Royal Bank – RBC Royal Bank: You Have (1) Unread Security Message
May 17, 2012 Westpac Bank – Westpac Online Alert
May 17, 2012 RBC Royal Bank – Important notice !
May 17, 2012 Capital One Bank – You have one new message at Capital One.
May 17, 2012 West Coast Bank – West Coast Bank ALERT New security update
May 16, 2012 NAB – National Australia Bank – You Have 1 New Secured Message
May 16, 2012 Westpac Bank – Form Number xxxxxxxx
May 15, 2012 ABSA – New security message
May 15, 2012 Capitec Bank – Attention: Online Security Notice
May 15, 2012 Bank of America – Bank of America Alert: Security Update – your action required
May 14, 2012 Citibank – Unauthorized Access Notice
May 14, 2012 Bank of America – Customer Service
May 14, 2012 Commonwealth Bank Australia – account notice
May 14, 2012 Corporation Bank – CORP BANK !!! Update Your Login Information For Your OTP Registration
May 13, 2012 Halifax Bank – Irregular activity on your halifax online Account
May 10, 2012 Kiwibank – Your Account Is Temporarily Limited
May 10, 2012 SNS Bank – SNS Beveiligingsupdate

As you see, the most affected brands hit by phishing attacks during May 2012 – June 2012 were Kiwibank, Bank of America, Chase Bank, Halifax Bank, PayPal and NatWest Bank.

Tips for Businesses to Avoid Phishing Threats and Identity Thefts

There is no one universal solution to keep your digital data safe and guard, so your approach to security must be multi-layered:

• Use highly secure Extended Validation SSL Certificates for your websites.
  EV SSL Certificates offer the highest level of authentication and trigger browsers to give users a very visible indicator that the user is on a secured site by turning the address bar green. This is valuable protection against a range of online attacks.
• Use DNSSEC to preserve the integrity of the Company domain name system (DNS).
• Regularly assess Company websites for vulnerabilities.
• Use digital signatures in your outgoing emails.
• Ensure that your employees secure and protect their code signing keys if they hold digital certificates.
  Make it a rule to store keys in secure, tamper-proof, cryptographic hardware devices.
• Ensure passwords are strong; at least 8-10 characters long and include a mixture of letters and numbers. Encourage users to avoid re-using the same passwords on multiple Web sites and sharing of passwords with others should be forbidden.
• Educate your employees about the various ways in which hackers use social engineering as a way to persuade users to click on malicious links.
• Ensure that your employees never disclose any confidential personal or financial information unless and until they can confirm that any request for such information is legitimate.
• Ensure that your employees review their bank, credit card, and credit information frequently for irregular activity.
• Ask your employees to look for the green browser address bar, HTTPS, and recognizable trust marks when they visit websites where they login or share any personal information.

For more tips on how to avoid phishing and identity thefts, read 5 Simple Rules that Can Protect You from Cyber Crimes. You can also learn how the EmailTray email client may protect you from spam and phishing.

Email spam and phishing are serious obstacles on the road to efficient workflow and email productivity. Spam messages clutter your Inbox, distract your attention and absorb your work time while you revise and delete them. Spam emails may contain malware or links to malicious websites, thus putting your computer at risk. Moreover, a large amount of daily spam can make you feel stressed and totally exhausted.

Spam can be deemed less harmful if compared to the fall-outs of phishing. Phishing emails may jeopardize your virtual identity and your financial estate – if you don’t use anti-phishing tools, forget about security and don’t follow the advice on how to avoid scams.

Can you imagine that about 68% of all emails that people receive daily are nothing else than spam? That is a big statistic, especially if you take into account the time that you normally spend on managing your Inbox and sorting emails. The good news is that the spam rate has been decreasing over the last 3 years, and hopefully it will keep on decreasing along with the shutdowns of spam-spreading botnets. The other good news is that you can use intelligent email software to prevent spam and manage your Inbox effectively. Try out the EmailTray email client for Windows or the EmailTray app for Android and see the difference in email productivity before and after using these email programs.

According to a Symantec Intelligence Report issued in February 2012, one of the most spam-affected countries was China. As of February 2012, nearly 74% of all mail received by Chinese users was spam. The Netherlands and the US crowned the list as well by showing the rates of 70% and 68.9% of spam of all incoming mail respectively.

The most popular spam categories are dating, pharmaceutical, jewelry and weight loss; adult-related messages are found in nearly 43% of all spam.

Email phishing is harder to do yet the fall-outs are much more dramatic. Unfortunately one of 298 emails that we receive daily is phishing. Each phishing attack puts your identity at risk and compromises the brand being phished, since the phishing victims constantly lose trust in the brands and service providers which have suffered from the phishing.

See the infographic below to get a bigger picture of spam and phishing trends in 2011 – the beginning of 2012. Click to view the full-size image:

Feel free to post this infographic on your blog using the code below:

<a href="https://www.emailtray.com/blog/email-spam-phishing-trends-2011-2012"><img title="Infographic on Email Spam and Phishing Trends: 2011-2012" src="https://www.emailtray.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/email-spam-phishing-trends-2011-2012-infographic-600.png" alt="Email Spam and Phishing Trends: 2011-2012" width="600" height="5590" /></a>
<a href="http://emailtray.com">EmailTray – a Smart Email Client</a>

In a matter of just the past 10 years, email spam has become a multimillion industry. Despite a significant drop in email spam in 2011 (dropping to an average of 75.1% of all email in 2011 compared with 89.1% in the year of 2010), spam continues to be a serious problem for many companies and individual email users.

Email Spam Rate: Fluctuations Over Time

According to a Symantec Intelligence Report issued in February 2012, global spam levels continued to fall, as it now accounts for 68% of global email traffic. If we compare these figures to the data from the previous years’ reports, we’ll see that the email spam rate has been continuously decreasing within the last three years:

Back in 2001, about 8% of all mail was identified as spam. In 2002 this figure was 9% or 1 in 11.During 2003, MessageLabs Anti-Spam service identified 40% of emails scanned as spam.

The overall spam trend for the first half of 2005 saw a leveling of spam in line with the 2004 yearly figure of 72.3%, with an annual average percentage of 68.6% emails being identified as spam.

One of the key developments in 2006 was a significant increase in spam activity, with levels reaching 86.2%, the highest experienced since 2001.

2007 was the year when botnets came of age. The overall spam trend for 2007 was around 84.6%. Total spam levels averaged 81.2% for the year 2008.

But in 2009 the annual average spam rate was 87.7%, an increase of 6.5 percent on the 2008 statistic. In 2010, the average global spam rate for the year was 89.1%, an increase of 1.4% compared with 2009.

In 2011 the spam rate dropped to an average of 75.1% of all email. The dramatic decline, beginning December 25, 2010 and continuing through January 1, 2011, was the result of both a halt in the spam-sending activities of three botnets – Rustock, Lethic and Xarvester – as well as unrest among pharmaceutical spam-sending gangs.

In the current year of 2012, spam levels have continued to decrease, reaching 68% of all mail in February 2012. Of course things might change by the end of the year and show a totally different picture. However we’ve been observing a descending trend within the last three years so far.

Most Spammed Countries

In February 2012, the highest volume of spam was detected in the electronic mail of Chinese users: 74.7% of all mail. Residents of The Netherlands found a 70% rate of spam messages among their mail. In the US, 68.9% of email was spam; South Africa accounted for 68.8% of spam. UK email users faced 68.6% of spam. Canada and Australia reported slightly lower figures: 68.5% and 68.3% respectively. 67.9% of spam was reported by Hong Kong users as well as users from Germany; Japanese users experienced 65.1% of spam in their mail.

Top Spam Categories

According to a Symantec Intelligence Report issued in February 2012, the most common category of spam was related to the Adult/Dating category, overtaking pharmaceutical related spam for the first time:

There were particular grounds accounting for the shift in email spam categories. Between 2010 and 2011, pharmaceutical spam fell by 34%, in large part owing to the demise of the Rustock botnet, which was mainly used to pump-out pharmaceutical spam. In contrast, messages about watches and jewelry, as well as sex and dating, both increased as a percentage.

Approximately a quarter of all emails doesn’t reach the recipients’ inboxes, – reports IBM Email Deliverability Research.

They are buried forever in the Spam folder just because your spam filter was not smart enough. And what if there were really important ones? That is bad from both angles: to be a sender whose email left without an answer forever and to be a receiver who missed an important message because of a spam-filter’s mistake.

When you use the EmailTray email client there is much, much less danger of having valuable emails killed like spam. That is because the EmailTray email client uses an approach absolutely different from the usual anti-spam filters.

The EmailTray email client uses its smart algorithm to analyze your inbox and pick out the important emails which are then placed in the Top and Low Priority folders. Besides sorting your inbox according to each sender’s priority, EmailTray analyzes your Spam folder and rescues good emails that were trapped there by a spam-filter’s mistake. You simultaneously solve email overload without overdoing it.

So using the EmailTray email client you may forget the statistics from IBM and be absolutely sure that all necessary emails are in your Inbox carefully sorted by importance.

Mobile email usage is growing. 27% of all emails were opened on mobile devices during the second half of 2011, up from 20% during the first half of 2011, – says Mobile Email Opens Report.

Understanding that mobile devices are getting more and more popular for checking email, our developer team does everything possible to make emailing on your Android-based devices as pleasant as on your PC.

The EmailTray email app for Android-based devices should be used with the same EmailTray account as the one on your PC.

With EmailTray for Android, you get an email app that makes sure you are always notified about important emails and never miss anything important. The second thing about EmailTray is that the app checks your Spam folder and rescues all valuable emails. Also the EmailTray for Android email client app is great for sharing photos, ringtones, links and other content by email with one click. Of course, there are more great features you will get with the EmailTray for Android. Try it to make sure that the EmailTray for Android is, for you, the best email app available for the Android-based devices.

Using the EmailTray email client for Windows and the EmailTray for Android app you will create new emailing statistics – the statistics of those who enjoy emailing most of the time.

You may choose whether a Free EmailTray email client for Windows license is enough for you or choose a Premium License for 12 months, 36 months or forever.

You need the EmailTray email client for Windows Premium, if:

• Email is not only one of the communication channels for you, but your business tool. Use the EmailTray email client for Windows to have different signatures for your replies and forwarded emails as well as newly composed emails. EmailTray will add them automatically.
• You care about your personal data. Protect your EmailTray account with a password and be sure that all your email accounts, added to the EmailTray email client for Windows, are safe when you are away from your computer for a certain amount of time or when someone wishes to access the settings.

Note that all EmailTray users receive the following added benefits:

• You want to be safe from cybercrimes. The EmailTray email client marks known senders like PayPal, eBay, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. with the official icons, with these icons your passwords or credit card details will never be stolen.
• You want to know about important emails as soon as possible. EmailTray sorts the emails in your inbox according to the senders’ importance and notifies you about them. These notifications save you time, help you manage email efficiently, let you focus on important tasks and improve your email productivity.

• You want to work efficiently and do not want to waste time checking if any good email was trapped in the Spam folder by a mistake. The EmailTray email client for Windows solves the problem of  lost but good emails: it inspects the contents of the Spam folders of all your accounts for important messages and rescues good emails mistakenly trapped by email spam filters and sends them back to your Inbox.
• You want to manage your contact book easily. The EmailTray email client for Windows adds all contacts that you have correspondence with to your contact book automatically. But the best features of the EmailTray email client for Windows are the ability to merge the duplicate contacts in your contact book and synchronization of your EmailTray and Gmail contact books.

By the way, EmailTray software is available both as a Windows email client and an Android email app, so you can really make your emailing efficient and enjoyable.