According to the latest intelligence report by the IT security specialist Symantec, the share of spam mail of the total amount of emails sent worldwide fell below 50% in June 2015. This represents the lowest level since September 2003.
Symantec has identified three main reasons for this development. First, Internet providers are now aware of the problem and have shortened their response times.
Second, it has also become much more difficult to send billions of emails in a single day. Law enforcement authorities, working together with the IT companies, have made additional efforts in recent years to identify the operators of botnets and shut down such networks. Although some of the spammers have recently succeeded in regaining control of their networks, the increased attention of authorities and business is making life increasingly difficult for them.
Third, improved filtering and blocking mechanisms have made sure that increasingly fewer spam messages actually reach their addressee. Given that only a small minority ever click on the links contained in spam mail, the spam business is becoming less and less profitable, according to the report.
According to Symantec, 704 billion email messages were sent in June, of which 353 billion were attributable to spam mail. At the peak of the spam wave in June 2009, 5.7 billion of the total 6.3 billion emails sent worldwide were identified as spam mail. (Source: Symantec/rf)