BBC hypes 'more than 95% spam rate'
Shock figure drawn from dubious source.
The BBC online news website has published an article under the headline
'More than 95% of e-mail is "junk"'.
The report, which was linked to from the BBC News front page on 27 July, draws
together various statistics from Return Path, IronPort and Sophos,
concentrating on the origins of spam and the number of compromised
machines. The shock figure included in the headline, however, is later
revealed to apply to a single IronPort customer's experience - they found
only 4% of mails over a month-long period were legitimate (the remainder
being 70% spam, 9% viruses, 11% 'bounces and error messages', and 6%
unaccounted for in the statement).
IronPort's spokesman is quoted as saying that around 80% of email is coming from
compromised sources - a figure that is more in line with standard industry estimates.
Read the full piece here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5219554.stm.
Check MessageLabs' latest stats here:
http://www.messagelabs.com/Threat_Watch/Threat_Statistics.
02 August 2006
Tags:
spam
del.icio.us 
digg this
