Musings from a small IPP

It’s a very sad milestone.  As of this week we mark over 98% of the messages we are offered as SPAM.  The press has some catching up to do — they report 92% — a figure we were at back in February.

This does include a very small percentage of messages which we later re-classify as ‘ham,’ and the slightly larger set that we have mistakenly believed to be legitimate, but the percentage is scary.  Handling it would require 1 processor per 750 mailboxes running flat out (on average — the peaks and troughs are of course rather fractal), meaning that a large multi-processor system is required in practice.

So less than 1 message in 50 is legitimate.

When I look at this figure, I realise we do something really worthwhile for our customers.