First letter of your email address defines how much spam you get

A study at the University of Cambridge by Dr Richard Clayton has shown that email addresses which begin with different letters get drastically different quantities of spam delivered.

More than 550 million junk emails were analysed and it turns out that addresses starting with A, M and S get by far the most spam. In fact, 40% of messages going to those addresses were spam, contrasting with just 20% emails going to addresses starting with a Q or a Z. If you really want to cut spam, the study says, then start your email address with a number or symbol.

56% of the emails tracked by the study were spam, though I’d be interested to hear what criteria they used to define spam. Is a mailing list message from a band considered spam? Spam is different things to different people. I’d be annoyed if I got forwarded chain emails from my friends, but many people love them.

Of course the best way to avoid spam is not to sign up for dodgy-looking sites. As part of my last job, I had to sign up for a bunch of questionable-looking video sharing sites with my main email address, and now I get about 500 spam messages a day. I worship Gmail’s spam filter for that very reason.

(via BBC)

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