Research companies estimate that spam email accounts for about 73% of global emails. This is equivalent to 23.5 billion emails of the estimated minimum 32.5 billion emails sent per day.

The most common type of spam is advertising-related accounting for roughly 36% of  all spam messages. This is followed by adult-related in subject (31.7%) and  finance-related (26.5%) of spam emails.

Scams and fraud-related emails comprise make up 2.5% of unwanted emails. Of this, identity theft, also known as phishing, makes up 73% of the figure.

Anti spam measures such as spam blockers provide some hope in the fight against unwanted email. In fact, MSN alone blocks some 2.4 billion spam emails every day. Similar technologies are employed by other companies like Yahoo and Google to block spam emails from entering their members inboxes.

How many emails are sent per day?

It is nearly impossible to know exactly how many emails are sent daily.

Quoting a CNN article which referred to an International Data Corporation (IDC) projection for 2005 of emails sent in excess of 36 billion per day, a Yahoo.com columnist wrote:

“But in 2003, the IDC reported that 31 billion emails were already being sent daily, and they expected the number to double by 2006…. As best as we can figure then, the number of emails sent each day… may be approaching 62 billion.”  #