Global spam e-mail levels suddenly fall

by Gareth Morgan,  BBC News, Technology

The amount of junk e-mail being sent across the globe has seen a dramatic fall in recent months. The volume of spam has dropped steadily since August, but the Christmas period saw a precipitous decline.

One security firm detected around 200 billion spam messages being sent each day in August, but just 50 billion in December.

While the reasons for the decline are not fully understood, spam watchers warn the lull may not last. Around the Christmas holidays, three of the largest spam producers curtailed their activity, Paul Wood, a senior analyst at Symantec Hosted Services told BBC News.  “But it’s hard to say why,” he added.

The vast majority of spam is sent by networks of infected computers known as botnets. One of these botnets, known as Rustock, was at its peak responsible for between 47% to 48% of all spam sent globally, said Mr Wood.

In December, Rustock was responsible for just 0.5% of global spam, he said

At the same time, two other prominent spamming botnets, Lethic and Xarvester, also went quiet.

There have been huge drops in spam levels before, said Mr Wood. “Usually they have been associated with the botnets being disrupted. As far as we can tell Rustock is still intact,” he added.  ……

Spammers are driven entirely by profit, said Carl Leonard, a researcher at security firm Websense.  There have, however, been signs that spammers are turning to alternative methods to e-mail for distributing their messages – such as Facebook and Twitter, said Mr Leonard.  ….  Read the BBC report.