Less Spam Being Read, More Being Sent
The latest figures from a mail-filtering firm say less spam is making it to our inboxes, but more is being sent.
A mail filtering company says the amount of e-mail spam reaching inboxes, while high, has decreased since last year, though the overall volume of spam continues to increase.
MX Logic released its latest data on email security, noting that while spam accounted for an average of 67 percent of all e-mail it monitored, that number was down from 76 percent for the same eight-month period in 2004. The company also said an average of 48 percent of all spam it filtered in August was sent from broadband-connected PCs infected with spam malware of some sort.
"The drop in spam volume could indicate that improved email defense technology and high-profile prosecutions of spammers might be having some effect," said Scott Chasin, chief technology officer, MX Logic. "However, I would caution that these numbers only indicate that less junk may be reaching inboxes. The overall volume of spam carried on the Internet continues to increase. Until we get rid of spam zombies — which are responsible for sending nearly half of all spam — we won't see any meaningful decline in transported spam or other Internet pollution."
As it has in recent months, the company also noted that Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and Sender ID email authentication protocols aren't widely adopted, with spam-sending domains continuing to represent their biggest adopters.
In a sample of more than 15.8 million unique email messages, the company found that 8.7 percent were from domains with SPF records, 83 percent of which were spam-sending domains; and that 0.12 percent were from domains with Sender ID records, 85 percent of which were spam-sending domains.
