Spam Hits Five-Year Low (but it's still two thirds of all email)

NBC News, By: Devin Coldewey

A new report from Kaspersky Lab indicates that the amount of spam in the world continues to decline, although it's nowhere near disappearing. It's also being replaced with other, more substantial threats.

Spam levels dropped throughout 2012, and by the end of the year it was steadily below 70 percent of all email detected. In the heyday of spam, it consistently made up around 85 percent, according to Kaspersky's numbers.

A number of factors have contributed to this. People and email providers have instituted more effective spam filters, for one thing, and a major security hole that allowed people to spoof an email's sender was closed this year.

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