From .com to .beauty: The evolving threat landscape of unwanted email

What this post added

This post analyzes email security trends, focusing on the correlation between Top-Level Domains (TLDs) and the prevalence of spam and malicious emails. It details Cloudflare's findings from 2023, highlighting that recently introduced generic TLDs (gTLDs) and those associated with specific industries like beauty are disproportionately used for malicious purposes. The analysis quantifies the percentage of spam and malicious emails for various TLDs and categorizes them by TLD type (ccTLDs, .com/.net, new gTLDs). It also tracks changes in TLD patterns from the first half to the second half of 2023, noting the rise of certain gTLDs in problematic rankings. The post discusses the historical context of email and domain names, the scale of unwanted emails processed by Cloudflare Email Security, and the evolving tactics of cybercriminals leveraging TLDs for phishing and spam.