Klarinet Archive - Posting 000165.txt from 2002/11

From: b5w@-----.net (William Wright)
Subj: [kl] Thank you, Mark --- Statistics about spam
Date: Sun, 3 Nov 2002 16:22:40 -0500

As part of my sincere 'Thank You' to Mark for his recent actions, I'd
like to pass along some statistics from the Chicago Tribune:

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There were 5.2 million junk mails in September, which was 30% of _all_
email correspondence.

Average number of spams received per user = 6.2 per day (during the last
12 months).

Although the article wasn't explicit in all details, I believe they
meant to say that an unusually large increase has occurred recently, and
the figure of 6.2 per day is "compared to 3.7 a couple of years ago."

Unless the long-term pattern changes (that is, unless there is
legislation or court action of some sort), the average number of spams
received will increase to 11 per day by 2007.

If 100 workers received 5 junk mails per day and spent 5 seconds
deleting or reviewing each one, this would add up to one person out of
the 100 receiving 10.5 extra paid vacation days per year.

It takes a very long time to eliminate the viruses that spammers use to
'harvest' email addresses from individual computers. "W32Bugbear" is
expected to plague networks in a significant way "well into next year".

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