I was reading the technology newswire at SuicideGirls (proof that I read the articles there), and saw that MessageLabs has announced that 80% of all U.S. email is now spam.

Bob Sullivan

[from MSNBC]

The firm tracks virus and spam volume by filtering every e-mail destined for its 8,500 customers, and checking it for spam or viruses.

"Twelve months ago we were just about to pass that 50 percent mark [internationally]. No one thought it could keep up that pace of increase, but it has," said Brian Czarny, vice president of marketing at Message Labs.

He made an even more sober prediction: "In terms of what we could in a year, we could see percentages in the upper 90s," he said.

Postini Inc. uses similar technology, scanning some 200 million e-mails each day, and announced similar results at a Congressional hearing on spam held yesterday. According to the firm, 83 percent of the e-mails it filtered last month for its mostly U.S.-based clients was spam. That was up from 78 percent in January, when the new anti-spam federal law, the CAN-SPAM Act, took effect.

I was supposed to speak at the INBOX conference later this week (I have been trapped by jury duty, so I can't go) on the "Is Email Dead?" panel. Well, duh.

I really would like to completely switch over to IM, and treat email like I do postal mail, where I already expect 90% crap.