But it’s not a losing battle. New technology can filter out more than 97 percent of spam — without axing legitimate messages.

SoftScan, a European managed-security services provider focused on messaging, reported that spam levels dipped slightly in January to 96.8 percent of all email scanned, compared with 97.02 percent in December 2007.

While SoftScan’s reported drop isn’t much of a break in unsolicited email (the company describes it as a “lull before the next surge”), other observers failed to detect even a limited respite.

“While logic would dictate that spam levels would subside after the holidays, they’ve continued to soar and reached 78.5 percent of all email traffic during January,” Symantec Corp. noted in its recent spam report.