Internet service providers reported this week that spam and malicious emails dropped slightly in the second quarter, according to MAAWG, the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group. MAAWG, which gathers the only email abuse data based on reports from ISPs, said the abuse dropped slightly from 90.4 percent in the first quarter to 89 percent in the second.

"At times we're doing better, and at times we're holding our own," Jerry Upton, executive director of MAAWG, told DarkReading.com.

ISPs said abusive email has hovered around 90 percent over the past year. It hit one of its highest rates in the fourth quarter of 2008 when ISPs reported seeing that 94.2 percent of all of their email traffic was spam, malware-ridden or from other abusive sources.

Researchers from Symantec, McAfee and Cisco, also reported slight dips in spam and email abuse in the third quarter although the numbers were different. Experts pinpoint spam coming from a number of countries including Vietnam, Brazil and Romania. Spam coming from Russia has dropped significantly, according to experts.

Newcomers on the spam scene are countries in South America: Venezuela, Argentina and Columbia lead the pack.

For more on the dip in spam:
- check out this DarkReading.com article

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