The report's findings show that the majority of business professionals view spam email as the worst form of junk advertising (worse than postal junk mail and telemarketing calls). The study, based on an analysis of more than one billion daily email messages sent to its more than 50,000 customers worldwide, found that 90 to 95 percent of all email sent in 2007 was spam, increasing from an estimated 85 to 90 percent of email in 2006.

This growing proportion is even more significant when compared to 2004, when the federal CAN-SPAM Act, which set parameters for sending unsolicited email and defined penalties for spammers, went into effect. At that time spam was 70 percent of all email. In 2001, spam accounted for only five percent of email messages. 

"The spam war is a continuous battle between spammers and security vendors," says Dean Drako, president and CEO of Barracuda Networks. "Security vendors now require 24-by-7 defense operations to continuously monitor the Internet for new spam trends and distribute new defensive solutions immediately. This combination can block a new spam attack within minutes of its start -- virtually at zero hour."

Barracuda Networks also conducted a separate poll of business professionals and found that of the 261 respondents, 57 percent view spam email as the worst form of junk advertising, close to double the 31 percent that cited postal junk mail. Only 12 percent chose telemarketing.
Barracuda Networks’ poll also showed that 50 percent of users received five or fewer spam emails in their inbox each day. Almost two-thirds (65 percent) received less than 10 spam messages each day, while 13 percent were inundated with 50 or more spam emails daily.