Trends Spam Volume Drops Over The Holidays, And Then Restarts By Ken Simpson | 1 minute read As shown above, since August 2010, global spam volume had been “enjoying” a gradual but steady fall from a peak of approximately 300 – 350 billion messages per day. Industry insiders speculated on the cause of the slowdown in spam traffic, attributing the fall to anything from more aggressive law enforcement actions (i.e. arrests of spammers), to shutdowns of spamming command and control operations, to spammers figuring out how to beat the spam traps used by anti-spam firms. Well, unfortunately for the world, the spam seems to have surged back with a vengeance. As the following graphs from the Composite Blocking List (CBL – source) shows, while the month-to-month trend has been downward, in the past 12 hours or so, spam volume has suddenly resurged in a major way: I unfortunately I am not at liberty to disclose the source of the new surge in spam, but I am sure those responsible for the CBL and other botnet tracking systems will get the news out soon enough.