Email Spam Rates Decline To Levels Below 50 Percent For The First Time Since 2003!

Web users can now leave behind their worry about receiving spam emails, though not completely but to a considerable extent as overall spam rates have dropped below 50 percent for the first time in 12 years.

Last month the rate of unwanted emails reportedly reached 49.7 percent, 1.8 percent less than the month before, which feel 0.6 percent from the month before that, according to records on PC Mag.

Symantec's monthly intelligence report that analyze cyber security threats, trends, and insights claim that the last time Symantec recorded a similarly low spam rat e was back in Sept. 2003.

That said, the Nigerian prince messages may still creep into Web users' daily mail, some users are likely to find emails pushing online nursing degrees, auto insurances etc. The mining industry took home the award for highest spam rate with 56 percent during May, topping its previous performance of 55 percent.

Manufacturing took the second spot with 54 percent, while construction took third place at 53 percent. Retail (53 percent), public administration (52 percent), and finance/insurance/real estate (52 percent) also made the top 10 list.

The security firm noted that the decline was a result of action against botnets, networks of hijacked computers that have actually been the route via which spam has been sent.

The security firm also reported spam rates by organization size, and quite surprisingly smaller companies (1 to 500 employees) are the ones most likely to shower Web users with spam emails.

Symantec noted that enterprises of all sizes count 52 to 53 percent spam rates. The company noted that other formerly popular scams including phishing for passwords and email with malware attached also saw a decline last month, BBC noted.

However the security firm stated that it had seen a considerable rise in the amount of malware variants being produced. Symantec caught about 57.6 million individual pieces of malware in June, almost double what it saw in April.

Apparently, the more people a company hires, the fewer unwanted messages it sends. Companies with 501 to more than 2,500 workers sent spam rates of less than 52.5 percent.

The news comes on the heels of Google introducing Gmail Postmaster Tools, which allows qualified high-volume senders to analyze their email, including data on delivery errors, spam reports and reputation.