According to a feature on BBC News, “40% of emails sent are thought to be spam” and “British workers spend up to an hour a day clearing their inboxes of junk e-mails.”
I’ve been away from my desk for just under 100 hours over Christmas. During which time 596 messages hit my in-box. Of these 575 were filtered out by Spamfire (one incorrectly, a bulk mailing coming from a genuine contact who was using a different email address from usual). Of the 21 that were not filtered, eight were in fact spam. That means 97.7% of my Christmas email was spam. Ho, Ho, Ho! (But I only spent five minutes dealing with it.)