11 facts about spam that you didn’t know

You can run away from it for a while, but you can not forget about it forever. Even with a huge number of modern tools for blocking spam, it still somehow surprisingly succeeds in seeping into email boxes, social network accounts and, consequently, into mobile phones. If this is a familiar picture for you, then believe me, you are not alone …

If you look deep into the history, then the beginning of spam was laid back in 1797, when the collection of poems “The Young Man’s Valentine Writer” was released for those men who did not possess the talent for writing. By the 19th century, declarations of love began to take shape in the form of valentine cards, and it became so popular among the English people that their mass production was launched. Agree, it is very convenient, when you do not have to puzzle over what to write in a letter, and how to arrange it. Everything is already done for you, you just have to send it to the right address. The same thing happens with email messages nowadays. Thus, the letters sent out in the course of marketing campaigns became completely impersonal and uninteresting for users. And what could be worse than the lack of interest of potential customers?

Today, we’ll look at some overwhelming data regarding spam statistics.

1. According to the National Technology Readiness Survey, spam costs businesses almost $22 billion per year in lost productivity alone.
2. In 2016, the United States accounted for the majority of unsolicited spam e-mails with 12.08 percent of global spam volume.
3. The most common types of spam e-mail are healthcare and dating spam.
4. During the second quarter of 2017, 10.1 percent of global spam volume originated from IPs based in the United States whereas the largest source Vietnam accounted for 12.37 percent of global spam e-mail.
5. Marketing emails are responsible for 70% of SPAM complaints.
6. The Government of Canada approved the world’s toughest anti-spam legislation. The corporations can get fines up to 10 million dollars and individuals up to 1 million dollars for anti-spam law violation.
7. The first person arrested for spam was Anthony Greco, aged 18, on February 2005. He was accused of sending 1.5 million of unsolicited ads for porn and mortgages. He blackmailed MySpacee.com in order to get marketing contract with them. Anthony was invited for a meeting to discuss the contract terms, where he was arrested.
8. Spam (in the electronic sense) became a recognized English word in 1998 when The New Oxford Dictionary of English defined it as “irrelevant or inappropriate messages sent on the Internet to a large number of newsgroups or users.”
9. Bulgaria is the first country to legalize spamm while in USA spam is illegal. This act allowed Yahoo! to successfully sue Eric Head, reportedly one of the biggest spammers in the World.

10. In Q1 2017, China (18.23%) was the country targeted most by malicious spam e-mails.

11. By 2009, the majority of spam sent around the World was in the English language.

Although e-mail as a way of communicating with consumers is becoming cheaper every day, this does not mean that it is necessary to send spam. On the contrary, try to make your e-mail marketing campaign more meaningful.