Where Did All the Spam Go?

Tuesday, 11 January 2011 | by Pat's Picks

There’s a really interesting graph on the front page of USA Today this morning. According to experts, there has been a huge decrease in the amount of email spam intercepted in the past two weeks. Systems that filter emails for large corporations say the rates have gone from 131 billion per day in 2010 to just 47 billion a day. The problem? No one is exactly sure what caused the drop.

Some speculate that criminal spammers are gathering their energy for a new, sneakier plot to make money. The paper says the “world’s largest criminal spamming operation” completely shut down on Christmas day, along with two other, smaller operations. The “Rustock Botnet” has resumed its spamming activities but is operating on a much, much smaller scale.