We’re growing ever-closer to an Internet that’s free of spam

Spam was around well before the Internet, but it’s on the Internet that spammers were able to annoy people on a level that had never been seen before. During the early days of what we now know as the modern Internet, spammers were able to use the power of botnets to send billions of spam messages every day. However, both law enforcement and tech companies have been working to reduce the amount of spam on the Internet these past few years, and the results of those efforts are really starting to show. 

Spam fell to less than 50 percent of all email in June, the lowest in a decade, Symantec said Thursday in its latest Intelligence Report. The levels of spam have been slowly falling since 2010 for multiple reasons. Network providers are more tuned into the problem and take action faster when there are issues on their services. Also, unlike six or seven years ago, sending billions of messages per day from massive botnets isn’t as feasible anymore. Law enforcement, along with companies including Microsoft, have aggressively gone after some of the largest botnets over the last few years and worked to technically shut them down. Although some botnet operators have been able in some instances to regain control, the increased attention makes it more difficult for them to work. Improved filtering and blocking also means that fewer unsolicited marketing messages reach inboxes where people might click on a message to buy a product. Response rates to spam are notoriously low, so it means spammers must reach many inboxes in order to build a business.