Expect more spam. Lots more. It's a recurring theme seemingly as inevitable as Christmas carols and fruitcake, as internetnews.com has reported in 2002, 2003 and 2004.

Security experts at anti-spam and anti-virus vendor AppRiver expect the volume of spam to double during the holidays. The irritating messages accounted for 81 percent of all e-mails its customers saw in August. But spammers pull out all the stops for the holiday deluge, with good reason.

One of the trends AppRiver officials see with spam is that while many of the offers feature the generic replica watches, weight loss pills and the like, spammers are including name brand items to give the e-mails a hint of legitimacy.

The expected spam surge also likely coincides with the recent rash of viruses spreading throughout the Internet.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released an advisory Tuesday warning consumers of e-mail purportedly coming from the agency but are in fact spoofed e-mails (define)containing a variant of the Sober virus.

The spoof claims the FBI has tracked the user's IP address to a number of illegal Web sites and tells them to open an attachment containing what the e-mail states are a list of questions to answer.