Symantec, a popular Internet security firm, reports that SPAM (junk / marketing mail) accounted for 86.61% of all email messages in October 2010, compared with 89.40% in September. In addition the overall global volume of SPAM dropped by 22.5% month-over-month; compared to August 2010, volume was down over 47%!

Symantec's latest monthly 'State of SPAM and Phishing' (PDF) report for November 2010 notes that the decline can be largely attributed to security firms, which have scored several notable successes against gangs that own and operate botnets (collections of hijacked computers that spew out junk mail). Sadly the UK is still one of the world's biggest contributors to this.


Historically, lower spam volume translates into lower spam percentage. This is primarily due to the volume of legitimate email being fairly constant. However we still find it disturbing to see that so many computers continue to be easily hijacked by commercial hackers.

Sadly anybody hoping that this might represent a turnaround of fortunes and lead to cleaner email should take a lesson from history. SPAM always recovers. Governments change, policies are adjusted, laws are tightened and yet spam never seems to die.

It's easy to see why broadband ISPs in the UK and around the world have become more aggressive with their email filters, albeit often at the cost of too much legitimate personal email. Customers should at least be given some control over their own email addresses.