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I feel compelled to point out that almost all of those numbers are completely incorrect overestimates.

_asciiker_ 12y ago
the SPAM percentage does seem overly optimistic...
vacri 12y ago
There’s 2.3 billion email users worldwide, and the average mailbox stores 8,024 messages. versus 150 billion emails each day These numbers do indeed fail the sniff test. This would mean that the average age of a mailbox would only be ~120 days (150B/2.3B daily mails/user = ~65, 8000/65 user account size/dail user mails= ~120 days). That's a mere four months. Of course, this is only if people aren't regularly deleting mail, but it gives an idea of how far out of whack the estimates are. Later on, it's mentioned that 70% of mail is spam. Going from that same 150B number, that would mean that the average user would get ~20 emails per day that weren't spam. This is the average user, whose mailbox is only 4 months old, and probably hasn't signed up to all that many services...
- raindrift 12y ago
  I based my estimates on the best numbers I could find. That said, my spam numbers were in fact incorrect (spam is small and gets deleted). Accounting for that, people save an average of a year's worth of email. If you look at the growth in email users over time (~6%/year), most accounts are probably > 1 year old. I'd assume the disparity comes from people deleting messages.
thrownaway2424 12y ago
Maybe. I feel like the spam number is misleading because OK, maybe the 70% of emails are spam, but spam is smaller than real traffic so it's not 70% of the size of the stored corpus. Also nobody stores spam, they delete it.
- eLobato 12y ago
  Two organizations where I've worked at (1000s of people) managed their own email infrastructure, with their own spam filter.. it ranged from 70% to 75% of incoming emails. Most spam emails are just a few words of plaintext, I'm surprised too the size of the stored corpus is spam in the same percentage. It seems like a few emails with medium-large attachments would outnumber the spam content which should be in the kbs/email at most.
- raindrift 12y ago
  These are both excellent points. I've done a bit more digging, and updated the article to reflect them. Thanks!
dang 12y ago
It would be better if you felt compelled to explain how they are overestimates.

the SPAM percentage does seem overly optimistic...

vacri 12y ago

There’s 2.3 billion email users worldwide, and the average mailbox stores 8,024 messages. versus 150 billion emails each day These numbers do indeed fail the sniff test. This would mean that the average age of a mailbox would only be ~120 days (150B/2.3B daily mails/user = ~65, 8000/65 user account size/dail user mails= ~120 days). That's a mere four months. Of course, this is only if people aren't regularly deleting mail, but it gives an idea of how far out of whack the estimates are. Later on, it's mentioned that 70% of mail is spam. Going from that same 150B number, that would mean that the average user would get ~20 emails per day that weren't spam. This is the average user, whose mailbox is only 4 months old, and probably hasn't signed up to all that many services...

raindrift 12y ago
I based my estimates on the best numbers I could find. That said, my spam numbers were in fact incorrect (spam is small and gets deleted). Accounting for that, people save an average of a year's worth of email. If you look at the growth in email users over time (~6%/year), most accounts are probably > 1 year old. I'd assume the disparity comes from people deleting messages.

thrownaway2424 12y ago

Maybe. I feel like the spam number is misleading because OK, maybe the 70% of emails are spam, but spam is smaller than real traffic so it's not 70% of the size of the stored corpus. Also nobody stores spam, they delete it.

eLobato 12y ago
Two organizations where I've worked at (1000s of people) managed their own email infrastructure, with their own spam filter.. it ranged from 70% to 75% of incoming emails. Most spam emails are just a few words of plaintext, I'm surprised too the size of the stored corpus is spam in the same percentage. It seems like a few emails with medium-large attachments would outnumber the spam content which should be in the kbs/email at most.
raindrift 12y ago
These are both excellent points. I've done a bit more digging, and updated the article to reflect them. Thanks!

dang 12y ago

It would be better if you felt compelled to explain how they are overestimates.