Here's some news you might not be expecting: spam has taken a sudden nose-dive in the past week. Spam levels suddenly dropped 30 percent last week, reports are saying.

We wish we could say that the let-up was brought on by vigilance in the struggle to keep the junk out of our inboxes.

Initial explanations considered that the use of new computers purchased during the holidays affected the number of compromised machines, or that the recent earthquake in Asia disrupted spammers in the region.

But the most likely cause of the drop, researchers say, is a "broken botnet." Cyber criminals may have temporarily lost control of a major botnet network.

Despite the recent drop, spam is still going strong. Even at its lowest point in December, spam accounted for almost 85 percent of all e-mails. Be sure to check out our January Lavasoft News newsletter for an in-depth look at spam and what is being done to slow it down.