14 DAY TRIAL // A sudden drop of as much as forty percent in spam levels this month could be connected to the closure of one of the largest spam affiliate programs.
Last month, the administrators of Spamit.com, the affiliate program through which the owners of the world's biggest botnets were paid to push fake pharmacy spam, announced that it will close due to increased attention from the authorities.
Spammers were informed at the time that they have until 1st of October to transfer their traffic to other programs, as it will no longer be accepted after that date.
"As we announced we turned off all shops and stoped to recieve traffic. Last week we payed more than 95% of all commissions.
"Stats will works till 10.10.2010. After that stats will be unavailable. Please take your money from us before this time!" a new announcement posted on the website reads.
Brian Krebs reports that Spamit's move coincided with a decline in spam traffic. Web and email security solutions provider M86 Security reports a drop of as much as 40%.
In particular, the company observed a significant reduction of the spam volume generated by the Rustock botnet, which is usually responsible for around half of the world's junk mail traffic.
There is no hard evidence to definitely link the decrease to the Spamit closure, but M86 representatives admit that its a very likely scenario.
Meanwhile, McAfee is more conservative in its estimation. The company said its systems registered an overall spam decline of 27%, but attributed it to a 45% drop in spam from the Pushdo botnet and not Rustock.
Regardless of who is right, the change is still significant and is a good news for email users everywhere, even though it's not likely to last.
Sooner or later the Rustock or Pushdo operators will move to other affiliate programs and the botnets will resume their usual spamming activities.