Philipp Haselwarter put forth on 1/15/2011 8:32 PM: > ,---- > | More than 97% of all e-mails sent over the net are unwanted, according > | to a Microsoft security report.[39] > | > | MAAWG estimates that 85% of incoming mail is "abusive email", as of the > | second half of 2007. The sample size for the MAAWG's study was over 100 > | million mailboxes.[40][41][42] > | > | Spamhaus estimates that 90% of incoming e-mail traffic is spam in North > | America, Europe or Australasia.[43] By June 2008 96.5% of e-mail > | received by businesses was spam.[18][unreliable source?] > `----
> I just have a tiny set of 4k spam mails, but they have an avg size of > 39KB, ie well above 4KB. This discussion has been in the context of _storing_ user email. The assumption is that an OP is smart/talented enough to get his spam filters/appliances killing 99% before it reaches intermediate storage or mailboxes. Thus, in the context of this discussion, the average size of a spam message is irrelevant, because we're talking about what goes into the mail store. If you're storing significantly more than 1% of spam you need to get that under control before doing any kind of meaningful analysis of mail storage needs. -- Stan