Popularity of Webmail continues to decline as there is an overwhelming increase of shift of to social networking as the communication platform of choice for Internet users, accordin to the Blue Coat Web Security Report that examines Web behavior and the malware to which users are most frequently exposed.
The report analysed Web requests from the Blue Coat WebPulse service. The report revealed some of the most surprising Web usage trends.
Personal Pages/Blogs, Chat/Instant Messaging and Email were the second, third and fourth most requested subcategories of Social Networking, respectively.
At the same time, Webmail was the 17th most requested Web category for 2010, falling from ninth in 2009, and fifth in 2008.
According to the report, as users around the world faced high unemployment and ongoing financial challenges, personal lust as a driving force of Web behavior shifted to a more business-oriented focus.
Blue Coat said it saw a significant decline in requests for Web content in the Dating/Personals, Pornography and Adult/Mature Content categories in 2010.
While these categories were fourth, fifth and eighth, on the list of the top 10 most requested categories in 2009, Audio/Video Clips, New/Media, and Reference dominated the top 10 in 2010.
The report also revealed the biggest shifts for 2010.
In 2010, cybercrime successfully exploited trusted relationships between friends to quickly infect and harvest new users in the social network.
Social network phishing and click-jacking attacks were the two most common types of attacks through social networks in 2010.
One of the most noticeable shifts in the threat landscape in 2010 was the migration of attack infrastructures from free domains to known sites with trusted reputations and acceptable use category ratings.
Historically, malware has been hidden in categories that would traditionally be blocked by acceptable use policies. However, Online Storage and Open/Mixed Content, which ranked second and sixth, respectively, on the list of sites hosting malware, saw the fastest growth in 2010.
According to the report the number of new online storage sites hosting malware increased 13%, while the number of new open/mixed content sites hosting malware increased 29%.
