The latest figure comes from security firm Symantec’s June 2015 Intelligence Report, which notes this is the first time in over a decade that the rate has fallen below 50 percent. The last time the company recorded a similar spam rate was back in September 2003, or almost 12 years ago.
More specifically, Symantec saw 704 billion email messages sent in June, of which 353 billion were classified as spam. At one of the peaks of the spam epidemic, in June 2009, 5.7 trillion of the 6.3 trillion messages sent were spam, according to past data from Symantec.
The decline of spam is usually attributed to legal prosecution against botnets (including by major tech companies like Microsoft), faster reaction times by network providers, improved blocking, and better filtering. The main goal is to make the business less lucrative: If you can slash profit margins for a spammer, you can slash spam itself.
Emil Protalinski
It’s slow progress, but with concerted effort from email providers and security companies, it can be done. I think the similarities with online advertising are striking: an entire industry making money by annoying users, tricking them into clicking, clogging the Internet with information nobody wants to see – except the people sending it.
Now, can we start curbing intrusive online ads and tracking as well?
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