Spam: share of global email traffic 2014-2020

Spam messages accounted for 47.3 percent of e-mail traffic in September 2020. During the most recently measured period, Russia generated the largest share of unsolicited spam e-mails with 23.52 percent of global spam volume. Despite its ubiquity, the global e-mail spam rate has actually been decreasing: the global annual spam e-mail rate in 2018 was 55 percent, down from 69 percent in 2012.

Spam e-mail

It is almost impossible to think about e-mail without considering the issue of spam. In 2019, 293.6 billion e-mails were sent and received on a daily basis. This includes billions of promotional e-mails sent by marketers every day. Whilst many e-mail users believe such content belongs in their spam folder, marketing e-mails are generally harmless, if annoying to the user. In 2018, the spam placement rate of commercial e-mails had declined to nine percent, down from 14 percent in 2017.

Malicious spam

Not all spam are benign promotional e-mails though. A significant portion of spam messages are of a more malicious nature, aiming to damage or hijack user systems. The most common variants of malicious spam worldwide include trojans, spyware, and ransomware.