sudden low spam levels?

Mon Jan 3 19:39:44 UTC 2011

On Jan 3, 2011, at 2:04 PM, Scott Howard wrote:

> On Mon, Jan 3, 2011 at 10:04 AM, Ken Chase <ken at sizone.org> wrote:
> 
>> I have two independent mailservers, and two other customers that run their
>> own
>> servers, all largely unrelated infrastructures and target domains, suddenly
>> experiencing low levels of spam.
>> 
> 
> There's definitely been a drop-off in spam levels over the past week, which
> comes on top of a general drop over the past few months.
> 

According the to Symantec  "December 2010 State of Spam & Phishing Report", spam is reducing 

http://www.spamfighter.com/News-15570-Spam-Volume-Continues-to-Decrease-Symantec.htm

I have seen various reports relating this to the taking down of 
this or that botnet (see, e.g., 

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Botnet-Holiday-Spam-Levels-Drop-for-Christmas-566115/ )

but I would take that with a big grain of salt. 

Regards
Marshall

> Although far from a great indicator of global levels, the following two
> graphs give a good idea on what's happening on a relative basis :
> Past Month - http://www.spamcop.net/spamgraph.shtml?spammonth
> Past Year - http://www.spamcop.net/spamgraph.shtml?spamyear
> 
> The numbers for December are especially unusual, as with Christmas coming
> it's normally one of the higher months for spam.
> 
> The drop-off since September is mainly due to the closure of
> spamit.com(Pharma spam referal company), although I haven't seen any
> reports of what's
> caused the drop-off in the past week or so.
> 
>  Scott.
> 