Microsoft Says We've Been Good - No Spam Flood These Holidays

'Tis the season of a spam flood? Well, not really. At least not according to Microsoft. The Redmond company has really went out on a limb and issued a prediction, based on the spam statistics of 2006, pointing to a spam free holiday this year. But, by no means, will the entire month of December be a break from the usual flood of unsolicited emails. In fact, according to the Redmond company, the first half of December will see its fair share of spam. As you will be able to see from the adjacent images courtesy of Microsoft, the actual volume of spam varies from week to week, but at the same time, the variations associated with the holiday season are to the benefit of the end users.

"Last year, we saw a very large run up of spam heading into December, but in the month of December itself I saw nothing out of the ordinary. While the total traffic went up in December (other than Christmas, where everyone clearly took the week off, including spammers), traffic was going up for each week before that. In other words, December was spammy, but so was October. Furthermore, the weeks in January and February (excluding the first week of the year), total email traffic was about the same as it was in November and December", revealed a member of the Microsoft Forefront Team.

When I say that Microsoft went out on a limb with this forecasting, I am referring to the fact that the conclusions have been drawn from just late 2006. Such a scenario offers, by no means, any guarantees that 2007 will be the same. Still, there is an incongruence between the high volume of traffic, around the holiday season, and the decrease in the mass of spam. Not that there is anything wrong with that. This is nothing short of a holiday tradition (and trend if you like) that should happen all year around.

"However, the two week period of Dec 11 - Dec 25 did contain the highest traffic totals, so perhaps there is some truth to the theory that there is a spam blitz in that period. If the December/spam theory were valid, we would expect to see a large spike in December and then see the numbers subside afterwards. In fact, we don't see that except in December 11-25. Afterwards, the numbers are wildly erratic, but Jan 26-Feb 1 is nearly as high as the supposedly high spam period. There's nothing particularly holiday-like about that period of time", added the Microsoft Forefront Team.