Spam Levels Plummet Worldwide

Along with assorted wildlife, there appears to have been a mass die-off of something else: spam emails. Spam levels, which had been dropping steadily since August, plummeted rapidly in late December, reports the BBC. Some 200 billion spam messages were being sent every day in August, but just 50 billion were being sent daily in December, according to security firm Symantec.

A botnet responsible for sending nearly half the world's spam has gone quiet, though it is believed to still be intact, say experts, who predict that the drop in spam isn't going to last. "As long the spammers can generate profit from their activities, it's not going away," a researcher at security firm Websense says. "We've yet to see any evidence that spam has become a bad business to be in."
(More botnet stories.)