For the first time in 12 years, less than half of emails are spam

The security firm Symantec just released its monthly report for June, and it’s got some good news for spam fighters. For the first time since 2003, legitimate emails outnumbered spam emails, with junk messages accounting for just 49.7 percent of emails received by Symantec clients. The report draws only draws from Symantec clients (roughly 2 percent of the antivirus market at large), so it’s not a perfect sample, but it’s still powerful evidence that spam is on the decline. Symantec’s rate for April was 52.1 percent, suggesting a rapid drop in the volume of junk.

Spam rates have been falling for years, although the reasons for the decline are still subject to debate. Spam prosecutions have become more common in the past 10 years, but they’ve often been hampered by absurdly low penalties or constitutional challenges. At the same time, more aggressive filtering has gradually eaten away at spammers’ profit margins, driving many out of the business entirely. Antispam organizations like Spamhaus have been particularly effective in fighting the business of spam, often triggering serious retaliation from aggrieved spammers.