# Email Spam Decreases to Less than 50% of all Email



## drmike (Jul 23, 2015)

Source: http://www.symantec.com/content/en/us/enterprise/other_resources/intelligence-report-06-2015.en-us.pdf

The good news... (maybe the CC spam crackdown is working  )

Page 3:

There is good news this month on the email-based front of the threat landscape. According
to our metrics,* the overall spam rate has dropped to 49.7 percent. This is the first time this
rate has fallen below 50 percent of email for over a decade. The last time Symantec recorded
a similar spam rate was clear back in September of 2003*.

Phishing rates and email-based malware were also down this month. 
The bad news...


```
However, there were 57.6 million new malware variants created in June, up from 44.5 million pieces of malware
created in May and 29.2 million in April. This increase in activity lends more evidence to the
idea that, with the continued drops in email-based malicious activity, attackers are simply
moving to other areas of the threat landscape
```


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## DomainBop (Jul 23, 2015)

Quote said:


> Email Spam Decreases to Less than 50% of all Email


Symantec and Cisco's SenderBase seem to have a difference of opinion.  SenderBase puts Spam at 86.53% (160.63 billion daily spam emails), legitimate email at 13.46% (24.99 billion daily), Malware 00.0069% for the past week.  12 month average is 85.94% spam so a slight uptick according to SenderBase this week. https://www.senderbase.org/static/spam/#tab=0.  

Barracuda's latest numbers for this week were in the same range as SenderBase, 84.44% blocked as SPAM, 14.4% legit emails. http://www.barracudacentral.org/data/spam


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## drmike (Jul 23, 2015)

Always going to be conflicting numbers but < 50% to ahh 84-86% is huge difference.

I stopped using email years ago at this point.  I check it when I am waiting for something that must come via email.   Kind of how I wait for the postman daily to bring parcels.

I welcome the new email 2.0 replacement.


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## HN-Matt (Jul 23, 2015)

Quote said:


> Barracuda's latest numbers for this week were in the same range as SenderBase, 84.44% blocked as SPAM, 14.4% legit emails. http://www.barracudacentral.org/data/spam


Yeah, 84.44% and 14.4%. Very astute research, highly believable. Nothing blatantly manipulated and falsified about those numbers. I'm not one to discriminate against clowns, but I think you should at least let readers know that your Source is a clown proving ground.


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## Flapadar (Jul 23, 2015)

I wonder if the decrease in spam has anything to do with darkode being shut down - though I suspect its residents will have simply moved elsewhere...


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## souen (Jul 23, 2015)

@drmike: what's the email 2.0 replacement?

Stupid question: how is the data for the reports typically sampled? Based on RBL reports or ... ?

Slightly OT, has legitimate mail also decreased (in total rather than percentage)? Probably an illusion, but I feel like sending mail has gotten more annoying in recent years due to over-zealous blocklists at large email providers in the endeavour to fight spam. e.g. listserv-style mailing lists getting flagged as spam/blocked causing headaches for list admins.


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## drmike (Jul 23, 2015)

> @drmike: what's the email 2.0 replacement?



Well email has stagnated as a festering office heap of random WTFeverness for eons.  Hasn't been much / any real innovation.  Maybe some new GUI dressing on top, but same busted up thing.

Tying email into serverless or serverself with  permission lists much like IM / Skype / etc. does. 

P2P model instead of public shit superco highway.  Self server model so  everyone gets their own island.

Toss native all crypto on top. 

That's the 2.0 for email, that some day will get delivered.


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