Are you seeing as much spam as usual?

Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 25 January 2011 14:52

Business IT - Security

Spam levels are down again, according to at least one filtering company.

Spam levels have dropped for the fifth consecutive month, according to security provider Websense.

Websense reckons 73% of incoming emails are spam, and Symantec puts the figure closer to 90%. Either way, filtering at various stages along the chain means it is unlikely that many individuals will see anything like that proportion.

(This writer's experience is that if anything, the amount of spam actually being delivered may be on the rise again. Apart from the ongoing background level of messages concerning 'business proposals', pharmaceuticals and mailing lists, there seems to be a surge in 'work from home' spam - presumably related to the continuing poor state of the US economy.

Websense ascribes the drop in raw levels of spam to low activity by Rustock and some other spambot networks that are responsible for a high proportion of unwanted messages. That said, the Waledac-related bots were thought to be responsible for a chunk of the New Year related spam, according to company officials.

In any case, Symantec reported that Rustock activity resumed its traditional level of activity on January 10, accounting for over a quarter of global spam.

Cisco concurs to some extent, noting that 2010 was the first year that spam volumes declined globally though some nations bucked the trend, notably the UK, where spam volumes rose almost 99%.