Good news has emerged for computer users with e-mail accounts as it was revealed this week that the volume of spam has fallen in recent months. The drop in junk e-mail was quite steady between August and December before a dramatic decline was seen over the Christmas period.

One security firm noted that there were about 200 billion spam messages being sent each day in August last year. However, this had fallen quite substantially to around 50 billion by December, yet nobody really knows why.

Paul Wood, a senior analyst at Symantec told the BBC that three of the largest producers of spam curtailed their activity over the festive period. For example one of the biggest spam producers is known as Rustock, which according to Mr Wood is responsible for 47 to 48 percent of all spam sent globally. In December Rustock was responsible for a paltry half a percent of global spam.

Some experts claim that the reduction in junk e-mail being sent is just a temporary lull and that producers may have something nasty up their sleeves. Carl Leonard, a researcher at security firm Websense believes this could the case. He said: “If a campaign is not getting the returns they want, they can stop, regroup and try something else.”

Spammers are driven by profit and it may be that anti-spam campaigns have enjoyed some success in stopping them. There are warnings though that some spammers may be turning their attentions away from e-mail and looking at utilising popular social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

E-mail and social network users will need to keep on guard as history suggests that new campaigns do emerge after a lull. Whilst there is a profit to be made spammers will continue and experts believe there is no evidence yet to suggest that this is a bad business to be in.