Spam now accounts for 50% of all e-mail, Brightmail reports

After lots of sound and fury earlier this year over the spam crisis, the relative quiet recently may lead some to believe that spam is abating. In fact, just the opposite is occurring, says e-mail filtering company Brightmail Inc. Brightmail says spam accounted for at least 50% of all e-mail volume in July.

"Earlier this year, Brightmail predicted that the volume of spam would reach 50% of Internet e-mail by the end of 2003, and it did this July," said Enrique Salem, president and CEO of Brightmail. "In less than two years, spam messages have increased from 8% of all e-mail traffic to more than half.”

In July, Brightmail identified more than half of the 61 billion e-mail messages it filtered as spam. Brightmail reports that it filters nearly 10% of worldwide e-mail traffic, trough agreements with more than 1,000 enterprises and ISPs.

“The opportunity to generate profit through spam e-mails is relatively easy, attracting new spammers at an alarming rate,” Brightmail reported. “The barrier to entry is extremely low with minimal hardware and experience needed. Individual spammers are capable of sending hundreds of millions of e-mail messages each day at essentially the same cost as sending out a single message. Therefore, it takes very few recipients to respond to those messages to make a spammer profitable.”