e-mail

According to the latest study from Nielsen, estimated online activity of 200,000 users, e-mail use on the desktop dropped dramatically, falling from 12% to 8.3% in 2010 from the previous year.

These figures showed desktop e-mail usage to fall into third place behind social gaming like Farmville.

As Webroot Software has found, about 20% of all online threats come from web sites, not email. Moreover, these web threats are increasingly sophisticated - and increasingly used not only for fun, but for financial gain.

Therefore, the company claims that over the last 18 months the volume of malware attacks has increased dramatically.

F-Secure Malaysia, security solutions company, found malware shifted considerably from e-mail to instant communication channels provided by social networking sites, that led to rising vulnerability of the latter.

In the following few weeks Mozilla is introducing the new version of its Thunderbird, lets users keep their inbox clutter-free with a Gmail-like "archive" button for permanently storing older messages, while removing them from day-to-day sight.

Thus, Thunderbird 3 also presents tabbed e-mail – compatible to tabbed browsing available on most Web browsers, including Mozilla's own Firefox. The user will get an ability quickly jump back and forth between e-mail messages by opening them in separate tabs.

Western Union has become the latest firm to have its brand hijacked by phishers, with a flood of trojan-laden e-mails purporting to come from the money transfer outfit hitting inboxes. Sophos, a security firm, says its labs have spotted e-mails claiming to be from support@westernunion.com with subject lines such as "Western Union Transfer MTCN: 2048922446".