A piece of good news in the world of spam: unsolicited commercial email has actually declined.

According to MX Logic, in the eight months ending August 2005, spam accounted for 67 percent of all email messages--down from 76 percent for the same eight-month period in 2004. The email defense provider monitors billions of messages per month for more than 6,200 organizations worldwide.

"The drop in spam volume could indicate that improved email defense technology and high-profile prosecutions of spammers might be having some effect," said chief technology officer, Scott Chasin. He cautioned, however, that the numbers only indicate that less junk may be reaching inboxes--the overall volume of spam carried over the Internet continues to increase.

"Until we get rid of spam zombies--which are responsible for sending nearly half of all spam--we won't see any meaningful decline in transported spam or other Internet pollution," he said.

For more details and other interesting email statistics, check out MX Logic's news release.