Kaspersky telemetry shows that in 2025, nearly half of global email traffic (44.99%) was spam, much of it carrying scams, phishing links, or malware. Users faced over 144 million malicious or potentially unwanted email attachments, a 15% rise year over year. APAC recorded the highest share of email antivirus detections (30%), followed by Europe (21%), Latin America (16%), the Middle East (15%), Russia and CIS (12%), and Africa (6%). China led country-level detections (14%), followed by Russia (11%), Mexico and Spain (8% each), and Turkey (5%). Detection activity peaked in June, July, and November. Key trends include multi-channel scam tactics, sophisticated phishing evasion using QR codes and disguised links, abuse of legitimate platforms for spam delivery, and more convincing business email compromise techniques, including fake forwarded messages designed to appear authentic, a press release said.
“Email phishing shouldn’t be underestimated. Our report reveals that one in ten business attacks starts with phishing, with a significant proportion being Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs). In 2025, we saw an increase in the sophistication of targeted email attacks. Even the smallest details are meticulously crafted in these malicious campaigns, including the composition of sender addresses and the tailoring of content to real corporate events and processes. The commodification of generative AI has significantly amplified this threat, enabling attackers to craft convincing, personalized phishing messages at scale with minimal effort, automatically adapting tone, language and context to specific targets,” comments Roman Dedenok, anti-spam expert at Kaspersky.
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To learn more about spam and phishing threat landscape, visit securelist.com.
