spam drop off?

[Temmu]

good morning,

i've noticed a drop off in the qty of spam i get.
anyone heard of a spammer being shut down last week?

rsvp

thanks!

[Corrine]

Hi, Temmu.

I don't recall seeing anything.  Perhaps it is a result of Waledac botnet takedown. 

http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2010/09/08/r-i-p-waledac-undoing-the-damage-of-a-botnet.aspx

[Lena]

Don't want to sound aloof, but honestly, I rarely get spam anymore in my inbox. It all goes to the spam folder and perhaps once every couple of weeks or so I quickly scan the list and hit the "delete all" button rather than just let it expire after 30 days.  So I really can't tell from my gmail account if I'm getting more or less spam.  Just wish the spammers realized how ineffective they were and stop wasting all that energy.

[Corrine]

Found this, Temmu, which may be what you've seen:

There has been a significant observed drop in worldwide SPAM levels during the last month or so.  M86 thinks it's due to Rustock, the world's largest spam botnet, suddenly stopped sending spam for unknown reasons.   McAfee has expressed a different point of view. According to them, the steep drop in spam levels is due to recent attempts to shutdown Pushdo.D, another famous spam botnet.  It's clear that spam levels are dropping, so let's look behind the curtain and try to find the actual reasons for the statistical observations.

I can think of two possible reasons why a major spam botnet would suddenly stop sending spam:

1. There was an attempt to shutdown the botnet by taking down its CnC servers.

2. The bot herders are running out of business i.e no one is paying them to send SPAM.

More at FireEye Malware Intelligence Lab: Silent Rustock

[Eric the Red]

Temmu,

MessageLabs have an article that examines the recent reduction in spam, see The recent drop in global spam volumes – what happened?

[Temmu]

thanks corrine and eric the red,
don't know how i'm just coming to read this. :)