spam levels significantly down?

[cellio]

I've been noticing for a while that my spam traps are identifying less spam but this is not due to any ineffectiveness on their part -- the amount of spam that gets through has not increased. To check my memory I drilled some core samples in my reports from pobox.com. In spring 2008 I was routinely receiving 500-600 pieces of spam a day; over the next year it seems to have averaged closer to 350-400, still high, with a brief rise to 500-600 in April/May 2009. Then, starting in May 2009, the volume started to drop to about 250/day over the course of a month. Over the next year (to May 2010) it dropped to about 150. It has continued to drop slowly and now hovers around 100, but I've gotten several daily reports with two-digit numbers in them in recent days. Last night I was comparing notes with somebody else who has data available, and it's not just me.

This sent me to Google. I couldn't find the motherlode -- a graph of global daily spam levels over a 3-year period (or more; I'd take more :-) ), but I did find some reports from Symantec suggesting that there is something big going on. this announcement from Dec 2010 links to a report (PDF) that suggests a two-thirds drop in spam between August and December of last year, and this report for February-March 2011 shows a big drop just in that time. According to Symantec, in August 2010 the global spam level was about 220 billion messages per day; a month and a half ago it was about 30 billion. (I'm eyeballing charts, so some approximation has occurred. But you get the idea.)

Really? Wow. They attribute this to the shutdown of major botnets, and I saw other articles making that claim too (without citing data). Sure, there have been some big hits that evn made the mainstream news, but I didn't realize the effect of multiple counter-attacks on the spammers had been so strong. I feel kind of bummed that I didn't really notice a 90% drop in spam, but that's because the filters were doing their jobs and the volume was too high to make review practical.

Former email spammers have moved on to other venues, I'm sure. I assume that Facebook and Twitter get a fair bit. (I'm not on either, so have no direct observations.) We've all seen LJ comment-spam; I assume it happens to other blogging sites too. So it's still out there, but less of it is being aimed at our individual inboxes, it appears. Neat.

Comments

[byronhaverford.livejournal.com]

Email? That's so 2008. No one succumbs to email hooks anymore.
Nowadays, you should be spamming online job postings to recruit your mules.

[cellio]

Well, somebody out there still thinks if they send enough pitches I'll buy drugs to enhance my male member (*cough*), so clearly not everybody has gotten the word yet.

(Actually, the fake notices from Twitter, Facebook, et al are on the rise, which is not spam per se but either phishing or malware, probably the latter. I count it all as spam but acknowledge the imprecision.)

[byronhaverford.livejournal.com]

It's hard to tell the zombies about the new world order.

(I use the term "spam" generically, too.)

You know, one time we had a beloved visitor to our home, who brought his 13-year-old son with him. He asked if his son could use our wireless while he was here. I said yes... well, I think you can see where this is going.... I had the zombie police on me like white on rice.