IPXO Marketplace's 2022 IP address abuse data has revealed a link between spikes in spam and significant announcements made by Elon Musk.

LONDON, UK, February 24, 2023 /EINPresswire.com/ -- According to 2022 IPXO Marketplace IP address abuse data, several distinguished spam spikes were observed throughout 2022. Interestingly, all these spikes coincided with the most significant announcements from Elon Musk.

On November 3, when Musk began laying off Twitter’s employees, IPXO received 2,002 spam reports – ten times above the average. Another spam spike occurred on October 25, when the business magnate borrowed 13 billion USD to acquire Twitter (631 spam reports). The same happened on December 21, when Musk announced he would step down as Twitter CEO (554 reports).

According to Vincentas Grinius, CEO at IPXO, the correlation between viral announcements and an increase in spam indicates that spammers use the attention surrounding public figures to their advantage.

“Cybercriminals use relevant keywords or topics to trick people into clicking on links or downloading attachments in their emails. Therefore, it is important to be cautious with unsolicited messages and be critical of content that seems to exploit current events or news for malicious purposes,” said Grinius.

Unfortunately, spam poses a significant threat, and not just to individual internet users. E-commerce businesses, for example, bear the brunt as spam holds power to deteriorate IP address reputation.

The damaging effect of spam

According to IPXO’s data, during the first quarter of the year, IP address abuse was primarily related to malware (65.10%), followed by spam (15.35%). During Q2, spam became the primary cause of IP address abuse, representing 49.30% of cases, while malware accounted for 31.73%. Q3 continued the trend, with spam (66.22%) being linked to most IP address abuse cases, followed by malware (13.58%).

In Q4, spam remained the most common type of IP address abuse, representing 57.96% of cases, followed by malware (14.04%). Safe to say, spam was the most persistent form of IP address abuse, accounting for the highest percentage of cases throughout 2022. While the percentage of malware and other types of abuse may have fluctuated, spam consistently remained the top threat. Spam appears to remain the top threat in 2023 as well.

Spam is sent in large volumes with the goal of profiting from unsuspecting recipients who may interact with the message, most often sent via email. A specific form of spam – phishing – can be used to deceive the addressee into sharing personal information such as credit card numbers or login data.

“Spam can create long-lasting damage to any e-commerce business. As an IPv4 lease provider, we cannot stress the importance of good IP address reputation enough. It is especially relevant to those who inadvertently share IPs with spammers due to common internet service providers,” explained Grinius.

Why does IP reputation matter?

If a certain number of email recipients mark an email message as spam, the IP address the message was sent from is blocklisted, which negatively affects email deliverability. Unfortunately, once the damage is done, it can take weeks or months to clean the offending address so that it can be used again.

“IP blocklisting can be linked to the prevalent use of shared IP addresses, which are the most common type of IP address. This is because when multiple websites share the same server environment, they also share the same IPs,” said Grinius.

If IPs are leased, IP address abuse is handled automatically; thus, the risk of ruining IP address reputation is minimized. IPXO has optimized IP address abuse handling, and now the company can handle nearly all cases (96-99%) automatically.

Today, viral news stories and the actions of public figures can directly correlate with the increased volume of spam that highlights the exploitation of relevant topics by cybercriminals. Spam poses a significant threat to individual internet users and e-commerce businesses, deteriorating IP address reputation. Fortunately, the more information we have about IP address abuse, the easier it is to further decrease the number of abuse cases.

To sum up, IPXO's 2022 IP address abuse statistics show that spam is consistently the most persistent threat to IP address reputation, which is crucial for good email deliverability. IPXO has optimized IP address abuse handling at the Marketplace to minimize the risk of ruining IP address reputation, and the company continues to provide proactive solutions to its clients to address growing concerns.

About IPXO
IPXO is an all-in-one Internet Protocol platform designed to address the global IPv4 exhaustion by enabling companies in over 75 industries to lease and monetize IPv4 resources. The company aims to create a more secure and sustainable Internet protocol ecosystem and set a new standard for efficient IP management with business-grade solutions for organizations in any industry. For more information about IP lease and monetization, visit www.ipxo.com.

Agne Srebaliute
IPXO
press@ipxo.com
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