Making a 2 percentage point leap into the new year, spam accounted for 60 percent — or 51 billion messages — of the 85 billion e-mails filtered by Brightmail’s Probe Network. The spam volume has consistently risen 2 percentage points every month for the last three, according to Brightmail’s measurements, and at this rate, spam can potentially rise to nearly 80 percent of e-mail by the end of the year.
| Percentages of Total Internet E-mail Identified as Spam | |
|---|---|
| January 2004 | 60% |
| December 2003 | 58% |
| November 2003 | 56% |
| October 2003 | 52% |
| September 2003 |
54% |
| August 2003 | 50% |
| July 2003 | 50% |
| June 2003 | 49% |
| May 2003 | 48% |
| April 2003 | 46% |
| March 2003 | 45% |
| February 2003 | 42% |
| Source: Brightmail Logistics and Operations Center (BLOC) |
|
Francois Lavaste, vice president of marketing for Brightmail, comments on the battle against unsolicited messages: “We definitely expect spam to continue to grow in 2004, which is why we recommend businesses take the necessary steps to protect their employees. CAN SPAM is only part of the solution.”
Lavaste notes that anti-spam technology coupled with direct marketing best practices and end user education are also critical components of the solution. “Until there are some big wins against some of the biggest spammers under CAN SPAM, we don’t expect that it will impact e-mail users’ inboxes.”
Lavaste’s multi-pronged approach may be the most effective, as a Jupiter Research (a unit of this site’s corporate parent) report revealed that mistakenly blocked e-mail is expected to cost legitimate e-marketers $419 million in 2008.
Additionally, a collaborative report by the CMO Council, BtoB Magazine, USA Today, and Responsys, found that spam and other e-mail filters pose the biggest challenge to digital marketers, followed by e-mail inbox clutter.
| What are the top challenges your company faces in delivering e-mail marketing today? |
|
|---|---|
| Spam and other e-mail filters | 63.7% |
| E-mail inbox clutter | 60.5% |
| Development of qualified e-mail lists | 53.1% |
| Not well integrated with other forms of customer communications |
20.4% |
| Ineffective customer segmentation | 18.9% |
| Lack of personalization | 17.1% |
| Too few customers choose to opt-in | 16.6% |
| Low clickthrough rates | 13.9% |
| Low content appeal and relevancy | 11.6% |
| Hard to handle campaign response | 7.1% |
| Other | 6.5% |
| Source: the CMO Council, BtoB Magazine, USA Today, and Responsys |
|
Spam category levels remain virtually unchanged, with financially related e-mails registering the biggest increase to 20 percent of the unwanted message volume. Brightmail’s newest category, “fraud,” measured a 1 percentage point increase in a month, comprising 4 percent of all e-mail during January 2004.
| January 2004 Spam Category Data | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Type of Spam | Dec. Volume | Jan. Volume | Change |
| Products | 21% | 22% | +1 |
| Financial | 18% | 20% | +2 |
| Adult | 18% | 17% | -2 |
| Scams | 9% | 8% | -1 |
| Other | 8% | 7% | -1 |
| Health | 6% | 7% | -1 |
| Leisure | 6% | 6% | 0 |
| Internet | 6% | 5% | -1 |
| Fraud | 3% | 4% | +1 |
| Political | 2% | 2% | 0 |
| Spiritual | 3% | 2% | -1 |
| Source: Brightmail Logistics and Operations Center (BLOC) |
|||
January was a big month for pests as MyDoom and its variants snaked their way across the Internet, wreaking $39 billion in economic damage thus far, according to mi2g. This estimate marks the highest financial damage from any malware, impacting overtime payments, contingency outsourcing, loss of business, bandwidth clogging, productivity erosion, management time reallocation, cost of recovery, and software upgrades.
Even though MyDoom made its first appearance late in the month, it quickly topped Central Command, Inc.’s list of the most prevalent viruses for January.
| January 2004 Dirty Dozen | ||
|---|---|---|
| Rank | Virus | Percentage |
| 1. | Worm/MyDoom.A | 77.4% |
| 2. | Worm/Sober.C | 5.9% |
| 3. | Worm/Bagle.A | 2.0% |
| 4. | Worm/MiMail.I | 1.7% |
| 5. | Worm/Gibe.C | 1.5% |
| 6. | Worm/Klez.E (including G) | 1.3% |
| 7. | Worm/MiMail.J | 1.1% |
| 8. | Worm/BugBear.B | 0.7% |
| 9. | Worm/MiMail.A | 0.5% |
| 10. | Worm/Dumaru.A | 0.5% |
| 11. | Worm/Hawawi.G | 0.4% |
| 12. | W32/Nimda | 0.3% |
| Others | 6.8% | |
| Note: The table above represents the most prevalent viruses for January 2004, number one being the most frequent. |
||
| Source: Central Command, Inc. | ||
