Update on Global Spam Volume

In this blog published in January, we followed-up on the spam volume saga as the Rustock botnet returned to action on January 10. At the time, it looked like the holidays were over for spammers. Did the prediction hold up?

Yes, as it turns out. Over the following six weeks, the global spam volume has remained more or less flat. Towards the end of February however, it is showing a bit of a decline.

A similar pattern can be seen for the global spam percentage:

Even though the spam volume has somewhat recovered, it is nowhere near what it was one year ago. This chart shows the global spam volume in the month of February in 2010 and 2011: