According to anti-virus firm Symantec, the number of spam emails has plummeted over the last few weeks, with the number of messages dropping from an average of 200bn a day in August, to a 'mere' 50bn a day in December.

No one seems to be entirely sure what’s caused the lull.  The general consensus seems to be that this is probably just a temporary respite.



Most of the world’s spam is apparently sent by three ‘botnets’ - networks of computers infected with the software that sends out spam. And one of them, ‘Rustock’, which was once behind 48% of the world’s spam, dropped to just 0.5% over the course of December.

The two other largest botnets, Lethic and Xarvester, were also far quieter than usual. 

So what’s going on? Were the spammers just taking an extended Christmas break? One possibility is that anti-spam software, which has got more advanced lately, is now outwitting the pirates to the point where they're finding it harder to operate.

Back in September, spam affiliate programme Spamit, which was responsible for ‘some of the world’s most disruptive, infections and sophisitcated’ botnets, was even forced to shut down, saying that ‘numerous negative events’ meant continuing with the programme was impossible. 



Another possible explanation is that the spammers simply aren’t making the profit they were expecting from their campaigns. Like most businesses, if a campaign isn’t working, spammers will stop using it and move onto something else.