No One Has Any Idea How Much Work Email Is Spam
from the different-studies,-different-numbers dept
Can we just say, for the record, that no one actually has a good handle on how much spam is out there? This is absolutely true when it comes to corporate email accounts. In 2001, we had a report that said that only 21% of all emails were work related, with the rest being junk or personal emails... but a year later the story was that office employees don't get much spam at work. Last year, a report came out saying that spam made up 33% of office email, which seems lower than the other studies (which also said another 25% of work emails were personal, and thus 42% -- twice of that earlier study -- were work related). The latest such study claims a flip of that original stat: 21% of corporate emails are spam. So, basically, over the past few years, we've had reports of lots of spam and not very much spam at all when it comes to the office -- suggesting that, frankly, no one really knows how much spam there is in the office. Also, to be honest, the aggregate number is pretty useless, as different companies (and different people within a company) probably face vastly different levels of "spam threat." So, rather than focusing on how much corporate email is spam, why not focus on how effective IT departments are at stopping the spam from those who are most targeted?
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hardly any
I have fewer spam horror stories to tell these days. Maybe the spam business isn't as booming as it used to be? Hard to find ignorant suckers with credit cards to buy the penis pills?
Be nice to actually have some real statistics, to know if spam is on the decline.
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tons
>_
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It depends
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I am not saying Spam is not a big problem, but in this day and age if you are smart about your email address and say ... don't join plaxo you should be ok. Especially at work, since its not the address you keep forever.
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In a work week i prolly receive 200 messages, give or take a handful. Of those, maybe 6-10 are external spam messages with the latest penny stock scam, or something like that.
My Internet account, conversely, gets 5 or 6 real messages from one of my fantasy teams, or friends, a month and about 2000 spams.
My private email account gets about 50 messages a week from family and product watchers and 3 or 4 spams a day.
I've seen some stats about what postini blocks from entering our servers...its really disturbing. One morning, in one hour, there were 1.2million messages out of 1.4 blocked for spam. Course that was for 200k+ customers and not necessarily corporate related.
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Spam Stats
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Spammy
Of those, the one I've had the longest is my Hotmail - about five years. Because I have my other accounts, I generally use my Hotmail account for things that I think my end up giving me a bucket-load of spam, yet I only receive about 15 spam messages a day. From my Gmail, between 5-10, and my two ISP accounts have none (although sometimes I wish I did - that way it would look like somebody was sending me messages!).
I think the trick is to be a bit careful with what you do with your E-Mail account. While I used my Hotmail account as a 'cover account', I was still cautious of what I signed up for, and never replied to spam messages.
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Name
For the record, I actually know someone who had that as their Hotmail address (they don't anymore). That's what I call original!
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I get the occassional complaint from the admin dept about getting a few emails in, so I log into the barracuda and do some more message flagging. Then all is good for another 3 months.
Not to mention the block lists on top of that.
Those using Outlook never complain, and people like me who have Bayesian filter that has been thoroughly trained really don't suffer that much, and I have two domains with catch-all accounts (it really helps train my little filter ;) )
Having a domain really saves me from a lot of spam, because if I sign up for something where I Just need a download, I use websitename@mydomain.com and if they onsell that address, I block it. It also helps having a domain when you change ISPs (I know businesses that use their ISP address as their business address... idiots).
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so roughly, I get 82% spam.
spam these days are hedge stock spam, hgh, and bagle virus ...
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work related spam
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no spam for me
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Re: no spam for me
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80% is about the norm
If they didn't let so many idiots on the information superhighway, you wouldn't have so many traffic jams.
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Don't give out your work e-mail
Then, even if spam does get sent to a work address, many companies have filters on their servers to block the spam. Then, the user may have filters in their e-mail program.
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At the office...
At home it's worse. Fully 75% of my incoming email is truly junk. And that's even allowing for the newsletters and stuff like shipping notifications and watchers.
Boy, I should really install a better filter at home. I'm doing most of that with procmail and lots of manual tuning.
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The other two numbers that suggest spam getting to our users is between 20-33% seems about right.
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Self-inflicted
For example, a few years back, everyone who signed up for Hotmail was automatically added to a public list. It wasn't hard for spammers to generate long mailing lists from that, and hotmail users were plagued with spam for quite some time.
Being an I.T. consultant, PC Support Tech, System Administrator, and Web Site Designer, I have a little bit of experience with techniques to mask your email address from the public.
If you're doing your own list, it's best to create images instead of listing your email address in text. Or, you could link to a form mailer, and not post your email address at all.
Being a regular user, be aware that the more sites you give you address to (whether they say they sell your info or not) will effect how much spam you get. Don't use your typical email address if you're signing up for gambling sites, porn sites, sweepstakes, contests, 'free ipods', any other 'free' offers, personals sites, etc, etc, etc.
There is increasingly less spam generated by spyware programs (that harvest addresses from your own address book), because of the public awareness of such programs - but some will still come from that.
Corporations that have their own websites often have much more spam than the users see. Back when I was working for a school division, it wasn't uncommon for the spam filter (server side) to catch 15,000 spam mails a day. With 4,500 users, this would amount to approximately twice as much as non-spam mail (and many users email accounts were never used/activated by the user).
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EDIT Self-inflicted
Spam: 15,000 / day
Non-Spam: 30,000 / day (approximately 8 emails per user/day)
Which would suggest 33% spam. That seems about right.
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Spam
At home (with a different, bigger, carrier which flags spam as it comes through) only a few a week make it past the filter (of course some legitimate messages may be going straight into the trash).
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Oh the irony...
Periodically, they would include the corporate directory on the list sales. When I started getting spam from our clients, it was apparent what was happening. So every few months I'd go and purge my info.
On the bright side, I've lowered my debt, have a negative interest rate on my mortgage, and my wife has never been more pleased! =)
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spam filter
If not for the filter we would have a lot of lost pruductivty. These results may be high but you can be sure that spam will not go away.
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Spam %
My email address is about 5 years old, and I have never used it for newsgroups. I've been very careful with it, and only used it when absolutely necessary.
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