At the moment, researchers are unsure what to make of the former email filter-bypassing technique of the moment.

Most agree that it’s too early to write off this image-based menace of inboxes for good, but some image-spammers seem to have taken a spring holiday – or dismissed the technique all together.

A report on April’s email-borne threats from Symantec (reported here on SCMagazine.com) showed a 10-percent drop in image spam from March to April, when it accounted for 27 percent of all captured spam.

Three weeks ago, Doug Bowers, senior director of anti-abuse engineering at Symantec, told us that he wasn’t “convinced we’re seeing a significant decline just yet. I don’t think we have enough data to see if it’s a trend.”

Meanwhile, Nick Kelly, posting on the McAfee Avert Labs blog on Friday, said that in recent weeks, “there has been a significant reduction in spam that contains embedded images dropping from 59 percent at the start of April to 12 percent earlier this week.”

But again, don’t pop the champagne just yet. Reports of the death of image spam may have been premature.

“During the last 24 hours, embedded image spam has again increased to 31 percent of spam, so whether the pump-and-dump spammers were having a holiday during April and are now back at work, or if this is a temporary increase, remains to be seen,” he said.