I don't know if you've noticed in your spam filter yet, but the spam has actually decreased lately.

Thanks to a fantastic job done by a couple of Internet companies (Google, McAfee and Arbor Networks) the spam has actually decreased by 70-75% after the shutdown of McColo Corp . As a web hosting company, McColo didn't necessarily send out all of the offensive or illegal spam. But it apparently provided the servers that enabled spammers to do their nasty work.

By shutting down McColo Corp not only did email spam decrease, but we also got less malware and child pornography online. The bad thing is that all this is just temporary since spammers will find new companies to host their servers

Recently a research report was released saying that only one email out of 12.5 million spam emails resulted in a response which means that email spam is getting less and less profitable. Many years ago I heard that one spam email of 1 million resulted in a response (I don't have any source for that) which means that people and spam filters are getting smarter. If this development continues spammers may have to stop sending out spam emails. It's good that email spammers are getting harder times , they deserve it.

To make it even harder for the spammers you can help Xavier Media fight email spam by using this tool.

Unfortunately this is just email spam that's having hard times right now but we shouldn't forget about all the other spam types online: blog comment spam, splogs (spam blogs) and forum spam. Just our own blogs and forums have seen a huge increase lately and if you also take into consideration that Akismet isn't working as good as it used to we may see an even bigger increase in this type of spam. In this area we also see smaller "entrepreneurs" freelancing (see New blog spam) and so far they are too small for the big companies to shut down like they've done with McColo Corp

Read more at:

• Spam gets 1 response per 12,500,000 emails
• Botnet Hunters Bypass Cops to Bring Down Spam Host
• Security Alliance Slashes Spam, Closes Malware Host
• E-mail spam dwindles 70% after major server provider shut down

You may also be interested in...
Weird blog spam
The spammers are back online
Internet way back in 2001 – part 4
Help us fight spam!
Why catch-all email is a bad idea
Twitter – Will they really limit the number of people you can follow

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 15th, 2008 at 8:25 pm and is filed under Google, Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.