X % of email is Spam

July 6, 2004 7:26 PM

85% of all email is spam. 83% of all email is spam. Between 80 and 90% of all email is spam. 80% of all email is spam. 76% of all email is spam. Between 64 and 78% of all email is spam. 64% of all email is spam. 63% of all email is spam. 60% of all email is spam. 52% of all email in 2004 will be spam. 50% of all email is spam. By 2006 98% of all email will be spam.
posted by Mo Nickels (38 comments total)

But the upside is we'll be happily sitting in our mortgaged homes high on prescription drugs stroking our huge penises.
posted by jonmc at 7:35 PM on July 6, 2004

And dating a lot of "special" people.
posted by blucevalo at 7:37 PM on July 6, 2004

102% of all email is spam.
posted by muppetboy at 7:45 PM on July 6, 2004

47% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
posted by clevershark at 7:55 PM on July 6, 2004

see also
posted by reklaw at 7:58 PM on July 6, 2004

99% of all Spam is pork. The rest is salt, water, sugar and sodium nitrate.
posted by George_Spiggott at 8:01 PM on July 6, 2004

By 2006, you will be 98% spam.
posted by WolfDaddy at 8:01 PM on July 6, 2004

"In 1977 there were 150 Elvis impersonators. By 1999 there were 35,000. If this rate of growth continues, by the year 2019, more than one third of the world's population will be Elvis impersonators."
posted by reklaw at 8:06 PM on July 6, 2004

ha! you gotta love elvis.
posted by mary8nne at 8:19 PM on July 6, 2004

Doesn't the UN have better things to do than to worry about something as simple as an "annoyance"? Well, spam used to be just annoying. In your face pornography in my mailbox offends me, but not near as much spam that isphishing citi/ebay/paypal users.
posted by tomplus2 at 8:28 PM on July 6, 2004

By 2022, Soylent Green is people.
posted by bwg at 8:30 PM on July 6, 2004

When Elvis died he was 76% spam!
posted by jazon at 8:33 PM on July 6, 2004

The spam impersonated email (most of it), which later unleashed a mad army of textual Elvises upon an unsuspecting population. Said Elvises (ranging from 90-90% of all email and, individually, a disappointing 22% of the original King) got doped up on Viagra, had secret crushes, were enlisted for Nigerian scams, and were reminded about mortgage applications they weren't aware of. But that didn't stop their susurrating croons from replacing all known email on the planet by 2006. Nor did it prevent them from sapping up all of the water on the planet (currently two-thirds, by 2006 all oceans drained like Hitler's Mediterranean Sea near the high castle).
posted by ed at 8:47 PM on July 6, 2004

best. thread. ever.
posted by Hackworth at 10:16 PM on July 6, 2004

The UN is an organization of fraud and garbage. If it must be funded, better that it be occupied with the trivial than the important.
posted by ParisParamus at 10:22 PM on July 6, 2004

I'm a partner in a commercial spam/virus/email protection service company. I guess that gives me the right to say that in our experience, most clients are between 60% and 99% spam, with the middle of the bell curve being at about 90%.

Spam sucks, but I hope it doesn't stop anytime soon.
posted by mosch at 11:43 PM on July 6, 2004

mosch: die please. kthx.

just kidding, yah loveably cynical bastard. I certanly hope spam stops soon. And I have to ask, how much slips by your companies grasp?
posted by delmoi at 12:40 AM on July 7, 2004

Spam is not a trivial problem. Email is one of the most important communications tools we have, and spam is rendering it useless.
posted by salmacis at 2:01 AM on July 7, 2004

Will spam ever stop while we have spam protection companies?
posted by biffa at 3:00 AM on July 7, 2004

100% of all spam protection companies suck.
posted by Bones423 at 3:10 AM on July 7, 2004

What always makes my mind boggle is how the spammers convince their clients of the effectiveness of the technique... Who does respond to this stuff? Any stats on that?
posted by klaatu at 3:31 AM on July 7, 2004

12.5% of capitalism is bluster, 24.7% is downright mendacity, 41.3% is outright theft...
posted by klaatu at 3:32 AM on July 7, 2004

reklaw, that elvis-quote makes me have civilisation-game flashbacks.....
posted by dabitch at 3:35 AM on July 7, 2004

More federal funding for penis enlargement and this spam problem will disappear overnight.

Does anyone have a link for position papers for Bush and Kerry on this issue?
posted by fluffycreature at 4:05 AM on July 7, 2004

75% of my phone calls are from phone companies
posted by pyramid termite at 4:24 AM on July 7, 2004

In Soviet Russia, 85% of spam is YOU!
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 5:01 AM on July 7, 2004

Who does respond to this stuff?

Stupid people. It's not like there's a shortage of them, as this Wired article pointed out last year.

"There was a picture on the top of the page that said, 'As Seen on TV,' and I guess that made me think it was legit," said a San Diego salesman who ordered two bottles of Pinacle in early July.
posted by sfenders at 5:14 AM on July 7, 2004

On a more serious note, about 40% of the email that makes it to my personal spam filter is spam. So if you surveyed me, I'd tell you that 40% of email is spam. But my ISP blocks untold thousands of spams every week. If you asked them, the number would probably be closer to 95%. It's not at all unusual that the numbers would be so hard to pin down.

</serious aside>

Every time you masturbate, god kills a spam.
posted by jpoulos at 5:32 AM on July 7, 2004

I think we can all agree that it is "way too much". All this effort wasted trying to nail down the exact percentage could be better spent trying to find solutions.

Whether it is 90%, 80%, 70%, or even 25%, it's still too damn much.
posted by Ynoxas at 6:54 AM on July 7, 2004

And how much of your regular mail is advertising and other sundry crap?
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 7:10 AM on July 7, 2004

C_D: for me, regular mail is about 30% junk rather than 90%, because junk mailers have to pay, whereas spammers consumes resources that they haven't paid for. Because it's paid for, junk mail helps subsidize the post office; we all benefit from that.

By contrast, spammers pay for almost none of the resources they use: only their own connectivity. If junk mailers got the same deal as spammers, we'd all get 400 pounds of junk mail a day and there wouldn't be a tree left standing anywhere.
posted by George_Spiggott at 7:31 AM on July 7, 2004

C-D, I don't get any junk mail. About once every three-four months I get a telemarketeer calling, but my phone# is an office/business line so they shouldn't call at all and hang up when I tell them they've phoned a business.
posted by dabitch at 7:36 AM on July 7, 2004

argh, sorry about messing up your name.

Point being, I wish my emailbox was that harass-free.
posted by dabitch at 7:37 AM on July 7, 2004

The only solution I can think of (besides ISP's blocking open proxy'd systems) is to limit the amount of email you can send a month, and charge them per email that goes over. Put the limit at such a large number that most "normal" people won't care, even with listserve's and the like -- maybe 5000 emails/mo.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 8:00 AM on July 7, 2004

Speaking of spam and armageddon, has anyone here read "Motel of the Mysteries"?

It's David Macaulay, done in 1979. He posits the end of American civilization coming due to a drastic reduction in bulk-class postage, which leaves our cities buried in junk mail. Who knew he'd be right?
posted by condour75 at 8:12 AM on July 7, 2004

By 2006, 97% of breakfasts will be "egg and spam; egg, bacon and spam; egg, bacon, sausage and spam; spam, bacon, sausage and spam; spam, egg, spam, spam, bacon and spam; spam, sausage, spam, spam, spam, bacon, spam, tomato and spam; spam, spam, spam, egg and spam; or Lobster Thermidor a Crevette with a mornay sauce served in a Provencale manner with shallots and aubergines garnished with truffle pate, brandy and with a fried egg on top and spam."

somebody had to do it... no, come to think of it nobody had to do it
posted by wendell at 9:49 AM on July 7, 2004

Bloody Vikings.
posted by jokeefe at 12:21 PM on July 7, 2004

10.2%!
posted by fuq at 12:56 PM on July 7, 2004