While spam emails hit 12-year low, malware and ransomware are on the rise

Security firm Symantec has released a study that details fewer than 50% of emails scanned during the month of June were identified as junk — the lowest percentage seen at any time in the past 12 years. 

Spam has been declining for some time now, but recording that 49.7% of the billions of emails Symantec monitors were considered “junk” is the first time the company has been below the 50% mark in 12 years. And it’s not stopping there — the company’s middle of the month report indicated just 46.4% of emails were junk. 

Also on the decline: scams such as phishing for passwords and emails outfitted with malware. 

Symantec pointed to legal action being taken against criminal networks responsible for spam as a reason why junk emails have reduced. Believable, sure, but the reality the company suggests is the decline in spam is tied to the fact that cyber-criminals are now looking for other ways to make money from people going online. 

And they’re not simply hypothesizing about this — the company noticed a recordable uptick in in the amount of malware variants being produced. Specifically, Symantec caught roughly 57.6 million individual pieces of malware in June, nearly double that which it saw in April.

Also worth noting: ransomware has proven more popular of late. That’s the act of capturing personal data and holding it hostage until payment is made for its safe release. In June, Symantec’s monitoring systems caught about half-a-million instances of this type of attack. 

“This increase in activity lends more evidence to the idea that, with the continued drops in email-based malicious activity, attackers are simply moving to other areas of the threat landscape,” wrote Symantec’s Ben Nahorney in the report. 

Read the full intelligence report from Symantec