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90% of E-mail Traffic Is Still Spam

by Tim Stevens on May 27, 2009 at 05:44 PM

90 Percent of Email Traffic Still Spam
Is your inbox a little fuller than usual, despite not having received any more genuine e-mails from friends? We know why, but you're not going to like it; according to a recent study, over 90-percent of all e-mail is now spam, a huge spike from the 20- to 30-percent mark just a few months ago.

That relative spam lull was caused by the shutdown of McColo Corporation in San Jose, California late last year. Every day, over a half-billion messages were sent from that company, and, when it was shut down, so too was shut down the majority of the world's spam traffic. But, it's spiked up again in recent months, as shown in the above chart.

The survey, courtesy of Symantec, shows a huge increase that isn't likely to drop off anytime soon. While other companies have stepped up to fill the shoes of McColo, much of this spam comes courtesy of malicious software that corrupts people's computers and turns them into spam hubs. There's not much you can do to stop the onslaught, so just make sure that you're running a spam filter. And, of course, never ever click on e-mails that look suspicious. [From: CNet]

Tags: e-mail, security, spam, symantec, top

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