Risk: Informational
An astonishing 95% of emails are junk and only 1% of net emails can be regarded as legitimate.
Research carried out by Return Path, an email security company, has revealed that 99% of the computers it monitors that send mail have been taken over by spammers or virus writers. Statistics for one of Return Path's customers showed that between 20 June and 20 July, only 4% of emails received were legitimate. Of the rest, he said, 70% were spam, 11% were bounces or error messages and 9% was viruses.
According to Sophos, 23.2% of spam originates in the US, 20% from China, 7.5% from South Korea, 5.2% from France and 4.8% from Spain. The UK was tenth on Sophos' list with 1.8%.