AOL reports drop in spam messages to its subscribers

AOL, the world's largest Internet service provider, believes spammers are starting to give up _ at least when it comes to sending junk to its subscribers. The number of attempted e-mails to America Online Inc. members averaged 1.6 billion in November, down from 2.1 billion a year earlier, the company said Monday. AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham attributed the drop largely to spammers moving on after realizing that many of their messages won't get through AOL's anti-spam filters or that they might get sued for trying. During the same period, the number of spam complaints from members dropped more than 75 percent, after adjusting for a decline in subscribers. AOL had 22.7 million U.S. subscribers as of September, compared with 24.7 million a year earlier, according to the latest regulatory filings by parent Time Warner Inc. Officials at Yahoo Inc., EarthLink Inc. and Microsoft Corp. did not respond Monday to requests for statistics for their services. Postini Inc., a company that handles e-mail filtering for more than 4,000 companies including smaller Internet service providers, said it has noticed a shift toward spamming smaller networks.