How many junk emails can 1 person get in 1 week?

Gary Cosden · Post by **Gary Cosden** » 21 Sep 2013 9:52 am

I’ve had an email address at work now for something like 15 years. The address is through the company website and I have no administrative say in that. I get what seems to me like a huge volume of junk email and I was curious enough to get an exact tally for a one week period. I work Monday through Friday and half a day on Saturday so this past Saturday just before I left work I changed the settings on my email client to save junk emails for at least 8 days and then I emptied the junk email file.
So at 2:00pm on Saturday 9/14/2013 I had zero junk emails and at 1:50pm today (Saturday 9/21/2013) I had 3,314.
In one week I got 3,314 junk emails.
I’m not asking for help or advice. I just found enough morbid curiosity in the topic to share it here.

Dave Potter · Post by **Dave Potter** » 21 Sep 2013 10:14 am

This is not intended as advice, but as a comment. Faced with that kind of nuisance, I'd immediately de-activate that email address and do something different. You're averaging over 400 junk emails a day - that's outrageous by any measure.

Sure, filters can catch most of that stuff, but the best filters don't get it right 100% of the time. You still have to look over what they catch to make sure they're not trashing anything legitimate.

I do use filters, but I've also transitioned to using email aliases I can generate at will, and which forward mail to my primary account. They're convenient, in that anytime one of them starts attracting spam, I can simply either block forwarding for that alias, or delete it altogether if it's served it's purpose. It's a free Firefox add-on called "Mask-Me".

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Gary Cosden · Post by **Gary Cosden** » 21 Sep 2013 10:24 am

Not really an option. It's not my business or my call to use another account. I find it impossible to use Outlook since it really doesn't filter much of anything so I use Mozilla Firefox which does a respectable job. I just open it every morning and walk away for 5 minutes or so.

Dave Potter · Post by **Dave Potter** » 21 Sep 2013 10:30 am

Gary Cosden wrote:Not really an option. It's not my business or my call to use another account.

I get that part. But it does seem that the lost productive time culling through all the junk mail would be of interest to management, who would be in a position to consider remedial action, once they became aware of the issue.

Doug Beaumier · Post by **Doug Beaumier** » 21 Sep 2013 10:53 am

When I first set up my web site on my own domain I was getting 400 to 600 junk emails a day. That's 3000 to 4000 a week. My server offers Barracuda spam filtering for a nominal fee... I think it's $2 a month. I signed onto that a few years ago and now I get about 6 junk emails a day. I think your company needs better spam filtering.

Gary Cosden · Post by **Gary Cosden** » 21 Sep 2013 1:50 pm

Dave and Doug - I know you are both right!The people I work for and with are all nice enough but just not willing to do anything until something breaks. It makes little sense I know. My computer is the only one of a half dozen or so that gets updates. Mine - religiously. All the others- pretty much never. It's just the way it is I'm afraid.

Wiz Feinberg · Post by **Wiz Feinberg** » 21 Sep 2013 5:22 pm

This may not interest your employers, but MailWasher Pro, a spam filtering desktop program, is also available for businesses and for mail servers.

Mail can be re-routed to spam filtering companies, then delivered to company recipients. One of my website client companies uses a spam filtering service with their Exchange mail servers and Outlook email clients. Virtually no spam or scams get through.

If the people in charge are interested in a spam solution, there are plenty to look at. Some are more affordable than others, but none that are any good are free.

Gary Cosden · Post by **Gary Cosden** » 21 Sep 2013 5:40 pm

Thanks everyone and Wiz - I will pass that along to the powers that be.