14 DAY TRIAL // According to a report from Symantec, the spam output continued to decline for the fourth month in a row, reaching its lowest level since January 2009.
"The drop in overall spam volume also brought down the overall spam percentage. Spam made up 84.31 percent of all messages in November, compared with 86.61 percent in October," the company wrote in its report. [pdf]
This steady decline is even more unusual as it comes during a period of the year when spam traffic is usually at its peak, with spammers trying to profit from the holiday shopping season.
However, even if overall spam levels have dropped, the output of junk emails falling in the "products" category has increased by 30%.
RU remains the only country code TLD in the top of five most abused domain extensions, where it currently holds the second place after COM with 23.3%.
As far as spam origin is concerned, the top ten spammiest countries has suffered little changes and currently reads: United States (27%), Netherlands (5%), India (5%), Brazil (4%), Russian (4%), United Kindom (4%), Germany (3%), France (3%), Vietnam (3%) and Australia (3%).
Symantec explains the spam downtrend through several legal actions taken in recent months. For example, in early October, authorities from UK, US and Ukraine dismantled an international cyber criminal network connected to the ZeuS trojan.
Also, from October 1, Spamit, the largest rogue online pharmacy affiliate program has closed down. This was followed by the severe crippling of the Bredolab botnet and the arrest of the suspected Mega-D botnet herder.
"Symantec expects the volume to return more slowly than when spam dropped post-McColo shutdown. Users are more aware of online threats than they were two years ago, and authorities are certainly taking more action to stop spammers," the company says.