Spam Rate Falls for First Time in a Decade

According to Symantec, phishing and email-based malware fell in June, which is evidence that "attackers are simply moving to other areas of the threat landscape."

In June, spam fell to 50% of all mail, the lowest in a decade. There are multiple reasons behind the drop.

For one, network providers are more tuned into the problem and take action faster when there are issues on their services.

Secondly, sending billions of messages per day from massive botnets isn't as feasible anymore. Companies such as Microsoft and law enforcement agencies have shut down many botnets recently which makes it more difficult for them to work.

Improved filtering and blocking also means that fewer unsolicited marketing messages reach inboxes which mean the cybercriminals have to send out more phishing emails to try to establish responses that may bring in cash.

As to the numbers, in June, Symantec saw a total of 704 billion email messages sent. Of those, 353 billion were classified as spam. The height of the spam epidemic was June 2009 when 5.7 trillion of the 6.3 trillion messages sent were spam.

Source: CSOOnline