Google reporting spam recovering from McColo

Google is reporting that data from its Postini subsidiary shows annual spam levels are rebounding from the shutdown of McColo.

Although overall spam levels are still from the Novemeber figures just before McColo was shut down the figures are somewhat misleading, since spam levels were much higher at the start of 2008.

“As seen from the roller-coast ride of spam and viruses in 2008, spam has again demonstrated its resiliency,” said Amanda Kleha, Google Message Security Team.

“Despite eliminating a major source, spam keeps coming back. Spammers are re-investing with increasing speed to evolve their systems into decentralized, harder-to-detect ecosystems.”

While spam levels have yet to fully recover levels are still up 156 per cent since the McColo bust.

When Google looked at the cumulative number of spasm blocked per user it found that the average user had 45,000 spam messages in 2008 (up from 36,000 in 2007).