Worldwide Spam Levels Mysteriously Drop Over Christmas

Worldwide spam levels dropped a surprising 30%  between September and December. Experts aren’t sure why, but some say the recent events that hit the giant Rustock botnet and several others may be to blame.

Rustock was decimated when the affiliate network that powered it was shut down, its mastermind arrested, and its command and control servers infiltrated and turned off.  A few of the botnet’s nodes survived however, and it’s very possible they will be used to rebuild.

Another theory is that the high profile nature of the Rustock events has spooked other bot herders and cybercriminals enough to make them forgo the lucrative holiday shopping season in an effort to slip below the radar for a while. If this is the case it means we will eventually see them return and most likely work to make up for lost time.

Finally, some experts say it’s simply a case of spammers deciding that the traditional method of email spam just isn’t worth it anymore and moving on to other methods such as social media. It’s no secret that spammers are extremely attracted to the huge audiences that sites like Facebook now draw. Not only is ‘Like’ spam huge, but now the private message system is being infiltrated by the old Nigerian spam scam. Web based discussion boards are also being hit hard. On the one I administrate, I have to delete and ban over 50 new spammer registrations every day. Judging from the gibberish user names, they are being auto-generated by some kind of software. Curiously, all the email addresses are yahoo.uk ones.

In any case, don’t expect the drop in spam levels to last long.