Symantec says that a blank email subject line is now the most popular tactic used by spammers, marking a period when "spammers are now perhaps becoming more desperate and less creative in their attempts to trick email users into opening their messages."
The Symantec report shows that EMEA continues to expand its spam market share with almost half of all spam (48.1%) sent from this region, whilst spam originating from .ru (Russia) domains rocketed to 34.1% of all messages in May (up from 22.1% in April).
The report which can be downloaded for free, reveals that spam made up an astonishing 89% of all messages in May.
The study says that with social networks continuing to add millions of users to its overall user base, crafty spammers are taking advantage of the popularity of these networks to design new spamming techniques week after week.
On the phishing front, Symantec says it observed a 9% decrease in overall phishing attacks from the previous month. Phishing websites generated from automated phishing toolkits comprised 12% of all phishing, a decrease of 3% from the previous month.
Interestingly, unique URLs decreased by 10% from the previous month, with around 93 web hosting services being used that comprised 11% of all phishing – an increase of 6% from the previous month.
An interesting trend identified in the report is a focus on phishing pre-paid debit card accounts, as well as a trend toward phishing US service men and women - plus veterans.