SPAM seems to be one of the forces that we can’t bring ourselves to eliminate. Despite our pure scorn for it, the negative consequences of implementing true SPAM protection seem quite unreasonable for most of us. It’s hard to tell, and for the most part I don’t hold much faith in the trend, but malicious attachments, virus-infected messages, and SPAM seem to be down in some contexts.

For every 4,756 business e-mails sent from March to August, just one contained an offending or nonwork-related attachment, such as pornography, cartoons, jokes and greeting cards. That’s compared with a 1,357-1 ratio in the same period last year, according to a study from e-mail security firm MessageLabs.

The company could not say for certain what caused the drop but speculated that stricter enforcement of corporate policies could be helping.

Source: news.com, “Less junk in your in-box?”

The article seems to list a number of reasons that the SPAM count might be down, including summertime inactivity, improved corporate protocols, and legal action taken against spammers. Hmm.