How Many Spam Emails Are Sent Per Day in 2023?

Spam emails are far more than just an annoying nuisance – they’re a serious issue for pretty much every Internet user.

And although there are ways to combat the problem, they still somehow infiltrate your inbox.

It’s a problem that’s been around since the Internet became a thing, and is the key issue for mailbox providers.

The worrying issue, however, is that the problem isn’t going away. In fact, with greater adoption of the Internet, the problem continues to grow.

How many spam emails are sent per day varies each month, but the common theme is that it is here to stay.

How Many Spam Emails Are Sent per Day in 2023?

Whether it’s from a Nigerian Prince or a company angling for your attention, spam emails violate your privacy.

And whether it’s a money scam or a company angling for your attention, it’s an annoyance and danger we could do without.

According to data from 2020-21, spam emails peaked in July 2021 at over 282.93 billion per day globally from a total of over 336.41 billion sent emails.

The following month, the amount of spam emails dropped to 65.5 billion, but the total also dropped to 77.5 billion.

The main concern is that in both months, close to 85% of all emails sent were spam emails.

That’s a worrying figure, but as you can see in the image above: about 85% of all sent emails were spam was standard throughout the whole year. 

The problem isn’t going away, but there are mail service providers that provide better protection for their users with powerful anti-spam measures.

In fact, Google’s Gmail Protection Service is said to block over 100 million phishing emails per day, whereas MSN blocks some 2.4 billion spam emails on a daily basis.

What Are the Different Types of Spam Emails?

Spam emails come in different forms and from different supposed industries.

These include advertisements, hoaxes, money scams, and phishing attempts to try and infiltrate your network.

Then there’s adult content, which includes links to porn and the promise of a beautiful Asian or Eastern European wife.

Unsolicited marketing emails are the most pervasive nuisance, making up nearly 36% of all spam received by users.

This is closely followed by adult content which is almost a third of all spam emails.

Financial spam emails are another common way spammers target your inbox, making up around one-quarter of all unwelcome mail. 

However, it might come as a surprise that only 2.5% of all spam emails are fraudulent links aiming to scam you out of your hard earned money.

Spam emails may have a clickable link offering some kind of reward, such as a discount or free gift, but oftentimes these are malicious attempts to gain access to your personal information.

Some also come with an attachment. The most prevalent attachment for spam emails include .doc and .dot which make up over a third of all spam emails.

Another frequently used spam attachment format is .exe, making up 19.5% of emails.

Are Spammers Really Nigerian Princes?

Spam email is big business, costing businesses over $20 billion a year. So, if spammers are really “Nigerian Princes”, there must be a lot of rich ones out there.

Of course, they’re not all Nigerian Princes, and spammers aren’t mostly from Nigeria, either.

In fact, the country with the most spam emails is the US, sending roughly 8.61 billion spam emails.

China, Russia, Brazil and India follow closely. European countries, including Germany, the U.K. and few Eastern European countries make up a large proportion of spammers even though they have much smaller populations.

Nigeria isn’t even in the top 10 countries of spammers.

Businesses Are Spammers Biggest Target

It’s not only you that spammers are targeting, of course. Businesses are the most commonly sought victims and lose over $20 billion a year in spam and phishing attempts.

In fact, the spam business is so lucrative the number of phishing websites has risen by an alarming 130.5% over the past three years.

Businesses are typically targets for the most malicious of spam and cyber-attacks.

A small business is attacked by a hacker or a phishing scam every 11 seconds, which can involve a major loss of revenue.

But it’s not just money lost through malicious spam emails where businesses lose out.

Productivity, bandwidth, anti-spam software, and general morale among employees affects companies, too.

Why Should I Care?

If you’re still unperturbed about spam emails, and confident that you’ll never fall for them, be careful.

As with everything, spam and cyber-attacks are evolving and getting more sophisticated.

The good news is that opening a suspicious email is relatively harmless. They’re more of a nuisance than anything, but that’s not a reason to be indifferent to them.

Spam emails only become a serious cyber threat if you download any malicious files or email attachments.

Therefore, it’s always a good idea to be alert whenever you open any email.

Not only that, but your spam filter isn’t perfect and it sometimes throws genuine emails into your spam folder.

This is particularly annoying when you discover an email you were sincerely hoping for but thought it had never come.

And you should care if you’re concerned about global warming.

Every spam email’s carbon footprint is nearly 0.03g of CO2e, meaning the total spam emails sent each year could have released about 4.5 tonnes of CO2e.

Conclusion

How many spam emails are sent per day is a worrying figure. It’s a recurrent and expensive nuisance, but it’s not going away anytime soon. 

Whether it’s just a spam advertisement or a malicious phishing attempt, you should always be vigilant when opening any email.

Thankfully, there are measures you can take to help stop spam putting you in any danger.

This includes having an up-to-date spam filter, firewalls, and avoiding clicking on suspicious looking links. 

You should also report all spam emails, block them, and change your email privacy settings. Unsubscribing from mailing lists is always a good idea.

By doing so, you’ll have a better chance of avoiding being bombarded by potentially malicious emails.

Sources