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Global Spam Volume on the Decline, Report Shows

by Amar Toor on January 7, 2011 at 06:30 AM

spam in inbox
Hey, here's some good news: it looks like spam is on the decline. According to Symantec's latest State of Spam and Phishing report, the volume of spam and junk mail in circulation around the world has been decreasing steadily since August, and dropped noticeably around Christmas. No one has a concrete explanation for the drop-off, but Symantec's Eric Park suggests that the demise of major botnets may have played a role.

The notorious Rustock botnet, for example, virtually disappeared after December 25th. Once the most powerful botnet in all the land, Rustock now accounts for less than 0.5-percent of all the world's spam. Two other big-time botnets, the Lethic and the Xarvester, have also gone mysteriously quiet in recent weeks. So, why did these botnets suddenly stop spamming? No one knows. But, until they start up again, we should all enjoy our (relatively) clean inboxes while we can.

Tags: botnet, Christmas, inbox, phishing, report, security, spam, statistics, symantec, top, volume, Web

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