Image spam levels tumble

Antony Savvas, Computer Weekly

Image spam has dropped to its lowest level in ten months. For the week ending 20 May 2007, image spam accounted for only 15.6% of all spam, said e-mail security provider Marshal.

Marshal's Threat Research and Content Engineering (TRACE) Team monitors spam and other internet threats.

"This is the lowest level we have seen image spam at since mid-July 2006," said Marshal's director of product management Bradley Anstis.

Marshal said image spam rose to become the dominant form of spam in the first quarter of this year, often exceeding 40% of all spam. It recorded a peak level of 56.1% in January. However, image spam has been on the decline for the past two months and is now back to mid-2006 levels.

"The anti-spam community has caught up with image spam to a large extent. We think this downturn in image spam may mark a return by spammers to the more traditional forms of text-based spam," said Anstis. 

This article first appeared on the web-site of Computer Weekly, at http://www.computerweekly.com//Articles/2007/05/31/224446/image-spam-levels-tumble.htm. © Reed Business Information 2007.