According to 2010 Annual Security Report by Cisco, the year 2010 witnessed a dramatic fall in the levels of spam, despite the fact that the increasingly sophisticated social-engineering scams targeted a number of Internet users.

Noting that global spam volumes dropped substantially in 2010 - even though increases were reported in some of the developed countries like the UK, Spain, Germany, and France -, Cisco's senior security researcher Henry Stern told eWEEK that 2010 will be termed as the "year the tide turned" for spam.

Further adding that it was the first year ever that global volumes of spam witnessed a decline, Stern said that the main factors that contributed to the drop included lesser operations of botnets; thanks largely to the law enforcement agencies' success in shutting down cyber-crime gangs - especially the joint effort of the US and UK authorities in arresting a criminal operation using the Zeus Trojan.

In the opinion of Stern, the October closure of the spam network `Spamit' also played a role in reducing fake pharmaceutical spam. In addition, security vendors also helped block spam effectively, as they have become more upbeat and forceful in terms of auto-updates of their products with the latest spam filters.

However, the Cisco report also highlighted that cyber-criminals are now hacking trusted sites to entice users in to downloading malicious codes; as well as using new kinds of malware to trick users into handing over login and password details.