Spam development is sending out mixed signals

Hannover, Germany, 27th February 2009. Increasing spam levels have become common phenomena. Even the closing down of provider McColo in November last year only brought a temporary reduction in the large amounts of undesired e-mails, or so it seems. Based on reports from various IT service providers, spam is back to the old levels again.

But not at antispameurope. Administrators at the e-mail security specialists have been observing a reverse trend for weeks now. The number of spam mails addressed to antispameurope customers is clearly on the decline, and with only 31 occurrences of spam per desired mail, reached the lowest level in almost two years mid-February (Fig.1). 

Fig. 1: Progression of spam level: The number of incoming spam mails on the gateways of antispameurope has decreased dramatically in the last few weeks.

Fig.2 sheds light on the cause of this decrease. Wherever e-mails are received directly by antispameurope gateways, the amount of spam drops clearly (green curve). On the other hand, in the case of customers whose e-mails are first received from the network through another gateway and then filtered, the spam levels are already almost at the record levels of June 2008 again (red curve). 

Fig. 2: Differing spam development with direct acceptance by antispameurope gateways (green) and filtering by other gateways (red)

Daniel Hofmann, Manager of antispameurope: „ We blocked widespread address tests by spammers in December. For botnets it looks as if there weren’t any corresponding e-mail addresses. This has obviously led to less spam being sent to the addresses concerned. Ultimately, even spammers are not interested in wasting bandwidth by sending e-mails to non-existing recipients. “

This development is particularly positive for ISPs and hosting providers that secure their mail servers through antispameurope’s Managed Gateway Service. The number of mails arriving at providers’ e-mail systems decreases for even those e-mail addresses only making use of antispameurope’s basic service. The advantage for end customers is a clearly smaller quarantine. The differences will not be noticed in the inboxes of users though since antispameurope also achieves the same rate of more than 99.99% spam recognition behind the gateway.

About antispameurope

antispameurope is leading provider of managed e-mail security services. The premium services can be used with all common e-mail systems (also by mobile users) and do not require additional software, hardware or maintenance. The portfolio of services includes spam and virus filters, automatic e-mail signatures and encryption, and archiving solutions. All services are provided via multiple and secure computing centers and are available around the clock and throughout the year. Apart from corporate clients, the security specialist also offers its services to internet service and hosting providers as well as other sales partners for use and further marketing.

Press Contact:

Oliver Dehning
antispameurope GmbH
Phone: +49 – 511 – 260 905 0

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