AOL Reports Blocked Spam Down

According to a Reuters story, AOL has seen a 50 percent reduction in spam detected over the past year. At the same time subscriber complaints due to spam are down 75 percent.

The article (which reads like a press release for AOLs new security initiative) does not speculate about the cause of this decline. One obvious possible cause is a reluctance on the part of spammers to become a test case for tough spam laws in the Commonwealth of Virginia (where AOLs servers are located).

Where I work spam blocks routinely account for 80 percent of all incoming email so I wouldn't make a global generalization about spam based on what AOL is reporting.