Spam Levels Declined by 30 Percent During Q4 2010

Recently, on December 30, 2010, Messaging and Web security firm Commtouch highlighted that, as per its recent study, spam levels considerably reduced during Q4- 2010. Regular spam levels reduced by nearly 30% during Q4-2010 in comparison to the past three quarters.

As per the firm's latest study, the amount of spam has been following a decline trend for the past two months i.e. October 2010. This decline is due to the fact that the malicious ISP (Internet Service Protocol) Spamit was shut down during the same period. This supposedly resulted from cybercook charges being brought against the Russian man, who supposed to have executed the entire operation.

Spamit lead to most of the Pharma spam on the internet, even the infamous Canadian pharmacy campaigns. Further, as per the Commtouch report, Spamit was also involved with few of the world's biggest spam botnets.

Interestingly, the study also revealed that a decline of around 18% was also observed in the global spam levels during October 2010 in comparison to September 2010. The average spam level during Q4- 2010 stood at 83% of the complete e-mail traffic. This figure was 5% less than the 88% recorded during Q3- 2010.

December's 2010 daily average spam traffic was considerably lower than September's 2010, which was quite strange for December 2010 considering the festive season. Moreover, the lowest spam level during Q4-2010 i.e. nearly 74% was registered during the starting of December 2010.

Commenting on these dramatic findings, Commtouch researchers stated that the, nature and technique of the spam attacks has also been drastically changed. Generally, Q4-2010 witnesses lesser fluctuations, with the exemption of two great outbreaks during mid October 2010 - mid December 2010. The researchers further added that, conventionally, there have been great amounts of spam levels registered during pre-Christmas period. However, this time, the outbreak was quite lower than majority of the large outbreaks during 2010, as reported by TheWhir on December 30, 2010.

Commtouch highlights on the point that, these outcomes are alerting netizens about the long-term implications. As per the researchers, spam levels have reduced during the past quarter only to reach to even higher levels within short time span, so the netizens have to be really watchful in the near future.

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