Johannesburg - Technology experts say that online activity relating to the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa eclipsed that of Germany in 2006. Increases were seen in cellphone usage, social networking, and online fraud leveraging the popularity of the event.

IT security and management company Symantec reported that nine times more spam email was sent relating to the 2010 World Cup than its 2006 predecessor.

In Symantec's monthly State of Spam & Phishing report for July 2010, it noted that eight of the top 10 most common subject lines on spam email sent in June referred to the event.

Said the report: "Symantec researchers have found a large disparity between the 2006 and 2010 World Cup: the volume of messages with World Cup keywords in the subject line is more than nine times higher now than compared to that of 2006."

The top three most popular subject lines for spam emails sent during June 2010 included FIFA World Cup South Africa... bad news, World Cup: Uruguay beats South Korea 2-1 and Germany beats England 4-1 in World Cup.

Another popular subject was Ongoing FIFA World Cup lottery South Africa 2010.

Symantec also identified phishing websites claiming to offer online soccer games that were designed to capture people's banking details. "Several phishing websites were observed to be spoofing online gaming brands," said the report.

"The popularity of the FIFA World Cup has encouraged users to visit legitimate gaming sites to play online football.

"The phishing sites were created with the hope of luring users to give up their credentials if they fell for fake offers celebrating the FIFA World Cup 2010," it said.

Cellphone traffic soars

South African cellular networks MTN and Vodacom reported huge growth in network traffic during the event.

Vodacom said 600 million SMS text messages were sent from the start of the tournament until the semi-finals - an increase of more than 40% on normal network traffic.

It added that in some cases the traffic on a single base station increased by more than 500%, compared to just prior to the start of the tournament.

Andries Delport, executive director of network and information technology for Vodacom, said his company established a dedicated Network Operations Centre for the World Cup to focus on stadiums, fan parks, airports, and other key sites.  

"The quality of service experienced by international subscribers using Vodacom's network was monitored in real time and a team of specialists were in attendance on site during all matches. More than 15 000 man hours were dedicated to operational support during the event," he said.

"We conducted detailed analysis post each match and where needed made adjustments or installed new equipment before the next match took place," said Delport.

"The increase in GSM data traffic, for example, was so dramatic that immediate configuration changes had to be made. This approach resulted in a high quality and stable network during the complete period."

Said Delport: "We can't relax just yet, but once we wave off the last of the fans we'll be spending quite a bit of time reviewing the information and experience gleaned during the whole event. We've already learnt some valuable lessons, but I'm sure there will be more that we can apply to future occasions."

Rival network MTN, an official sponsor of the 2010 World Cup, reported similar network usage statistics to Vodacom and said that 25 million SMS messages were sent on its network in the first four days of the event alone.

Chief technology officer for MTN Sameer Dave said that his company spent R450m on infrastructure specific to the World Cup to ensure that connectivity at stadiums, fan parks and other relevant venues would be ready for the event.

This will not go to waste either, and Dave promised that the additional infrastructure would be redeployed nationally now that the event is over.

"The additional capacity will be spread out through South Africa as part of our 'plug and play' stadium infrastructure," he said.

First World Cup to be tweeted

Social networking and messaging service Twitter set up a dedicated World Cup portal at www.twitter.com/worldcup and it is estimated that hundreds of millions of messages, called "tweets", were sent using the service during the event.

Twitter had only a few thousand members during the 2006 World Cup but has since grown to over 120 million users. Analysts estimate that 65 million tweets are sent every day and during June a large portion of these related to the event in South Africa.

During the World Cup, Twitter also added country flags when users mentioned country codes - such as RSA for South Africa and ESP for Spain - in their messages, and a little soccer ball in messages containing '#worldcup'.

The website for The Guardian newspaper in the UK has set up a section where users can replay World Cup matches in Twitter and see activity on the service during specific games. It can be accessed using <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/world-cup-match-replay">this link.</a>

 - Fin24.com