Good news from Symantec for all of us email users: Spam is on the decline! In fact, spam now makes up just 49.7% of all email.
The figure comes from security firm Symantec and its June 2015 Intelligence Report. The company notes that this is the first time in a decade that the percentage has fallen below 50%. The last time the company reported such a spam percentage was in September 2003, or almost 12 years ago.
More specifically, Symantec observed that 704 billion emails were sent in June, of which 353 billion were classified as spam.
At the peak of the spam epidemic, in June 2009, 5.7 trillion of the 6.3 trillion messages sent were spam, according to previous data from the security firm.
The company's report shows that the percentage of spam continues to fall each month: the number of spam emails detected by Symantec was 52.1% in April and 51.5% in May.
The decline in spam messages is usually attributed to crackdowns by authorities and major tech companies against botnets, faster response times from network providers, improved blocking, and better filtering.
The main goal is to make the spam business less profitable: If you can reduce the spammer's profit margins, you can reduce spam itself.
Other findings of the report, which refers not only to spam, but also to security in general, include:
57.6 million new malware variants were created in June, up from 44.5 million in May and 29.2 million in April.
Ransomware attacks have increased, and crypto-ransomware has reached its highest levels since December 2014.
Read the full Symantec report (19 pages)
