Symantec Reports Lowest Spam Rates Since 2008

According to its "Symantec Intelligence Report of November 2011," Symantec Corp shows that worldwide spam fell to the maximum in the month during the last three years.

Specifically, the report states that during November 2011, spam rates within worldwide e-mail dropped 3.7% to 70.5% from October 2011. These rates were the minimum which Symantec found starting November 2008 ever-since the ISP McColo was shutdown that reportedly contributed a huge 75% of the entire world e-mail junk.

Also in 2008, spam was responsible for 60.8% of the total e-mail traffic. Lately, there's been a slower decline in spam; however, spam mailers have been as well utilizing greater personalized strategies while relying on social media abuses instead of e-mail attacks.

Amazingly, Symantec reports that during March 2011, spam amounts fell when companies, including Microsoft, along with law enforcement in collaboration shutdown Rustock, an enormous botnet that distributed a maximum of 30bn spam mails daily. Since then, the gap remained, with nothing that actually closed it, stated Senior Software Engineer Andy Watson at Symantec. Pcworld.com published this on December 6, 2011.

Further over time, law enforcement has been increasingly scrutinizing botnets. During 2011, more botnets, two being Kelihos and Coreflood were shutdown, while two prominent -Bredolab and Waledac botnets were dismembered during 2010. In 2010, Spamit, one massive affiliate spam distributing network-of-bots, too was shutdown.

Watson stated that the present biggest spam-distributing botnet was "Grum" that was dispatching approximately 25% of the global e-mail junk. Grum that had been around since sometime, and which Symantec put on No.2 among the most functional spam networks during 2010, consists of a maximum of 470,000 contaminated PCs.

Additionally, alongside the above stated discoveries, the new Symantec study observes that spam captions that were most popular during November 2011 related to Adobe CS5 and Windows 7 software programs, penis enlargement drugs, and Facebook. Moreover, the list of subjects also included "replica watches."

In general, however, pharmaceutical-associated e-mail junk was the lowest at 35% from the time Symantec started tracing.

Finally, Russia represented the nation, which encountered the maximum spam, while automotive represented that sector with the highest spam, the report added.

Related article: Sentence for American Contractor for Sabotaging Government Navy Computers

» SPAMfighter News - 12/14/2011