COMMENT: There was a time–2004 to be precise–when spam “only” consumed 70 percent of all e-mail. Those were the good old days. Today, as Barracuda Networks’ annual spam report shows, upwards of 95 percent of all e-mail is spam. In 2001, the number was 5 percent.We’ve come a long way, baby.Ironically (or not), the United States’ Can-Spam Act has done absolutely nothing (zip!) to stop the spam onslaught. It has come to the point that, as a separate Barracuda survey of 261 business professionals shows, we increasingly prefer telemarketing to e-mail spam. (I find that I’m much more willing to give my home address and phone number than my e-mail address these days. You?)
http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13505_1-9831556-16.htmlAlso see:
Spam Levels Rise to Unprecedented Heights
Spam continues to plague the average computer user, with up to 95 percent of all e-mail traffic consisting of unsolicited e-mails, according to a study from Web security vendor Barracuda Networks.Barracuda analyzed more than one billion e-mail messages sent to its 50,000 customers, and found that 90 to 95 percent of all e-mail sent in 2007 was spam, up from 85 to 90 percent last year.That number has been on the rise since 2001, when spam accounted for only 5 percent of e-mail traffic. In 2004, the year that Congress passed the CAN-SPAM Act, spam was 70 percent of all e-mail, Barracuda said.
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2232381,00.asp