Spam levels remained relatively unchanged during May at 88.51 per cent of all email, according to new figures from anti-spam firm SoftScan.

Although virus levels dropped slightly to 1.4 per cent, SoftScan does not believe that the arrest of 'Spam King' Robert Soloway will affect spam levels significantly anytime soon.  

"Some people are predicting that spam levels will drop with Soloway's arrest, but it is a mistake to underestimate a spammer as it's a sure fire way of finding yourself ambushed," said Diego d'Ambra, chief technology officer at SoftScan.

"Every business has a contingency plan and there is no reason to suspect that spammers are any different.

"Although it has been relatively quiet on the spam front for the past eight weeks, a sudden spike that caused a 25 per cent increase at the beginning of the week has shown that the spammers are still out there and mean business."

SoftScan also believes that stories of image spam being replaced by links to picture websites is unlikely to work as a spamming tactic, since a link within an email is easier to detect than some of today's more complex and sophisticated image spam.

D'Ambra does believe that it may indicate that image spam is not the success that spammers hoped it would be.

"My guess is that spammers do what they believe is best possible tactic. If image spam was a success they would stick to that," he said.