McAfee reports that the fear of swine flu has caused an online epidemic with spammers going into overdrive by trying to trick people to open their emails.

Some 5% of email traffic now contains the words swine flu and that means billions of emails each day. McAfee Avert Labs say they have seen between 80 billion and 100 billion spam messages each day over the last month. And whereas the words swine flu rarely featured a week ago, now the words are increasingly occurring. The spam emails are being sent with infected viruses which once opened, infect the user’s computer.

Although the spam is coming from all over the world, the majority is originating from Brazil, Germany and Italy. Much is coming from computers that have already been compromised by malware and act as zombies within a botnet of infected machines.

Furthermore, websites using the words swine and flu are being registered at an increasing rate, worrying McAfee experts that people will be attracted to websites that trick them into downloading such things as a video codec (usually used to view a movie). But rather than a proper viewing device, it turns into a piece of malware that takes control of the computer.

McAfee are advising all those that require information about the swine flu situation, should go to a reputable site such as the World Health Organisation, and avoid emails, instant messages and social network sites that urge you to click a link to find out more.

For anyone who suspects they might have been successfully targeted, they can always get advice from the free McAfee Cybercrime Response Unit.

McAfee have warned against particular emails which might have the following in their subject lines:

Salma Hayek caught swine flu!
Madonna caught swine flu!
First US swine flu victims!
US swine flu statistics
Swine flu worldwide!
Swine flu in Hollywood!
Swine flu in USA.

Guest Article by Neil Camp