Spam-bam

Okay! Cash Cab is at commercial so listen up. After chatting in recent weeks with bloggers H and P about web-related junk and issues we decided that we get way, way too much spam. You know spam. It's the junk emails we all get.

But what we wondered was, "how much junk email do we really get?"

This is going to be highly scientific because as you know the milkshake is all about science. I began to analyze my email to see what sort of spam I'm getting and from whom.

Here's what I'm seeing:

Borders, Apple, several credit card companies, Sierra Club, Yahoo, Media Bistro, Dick's Sporting Goods and Amazon seem to lead my list of "constant spammers". These are my self-titled Star Trekkers. Called because they can 'beam aboard' my email anytime they want.

There are other culprits as well however most of those (I'l spare the names) are because I have stayed at a hotel chain, subscribed to a publication, joined a club, bought something at a store or simply failed to unclick a box that had one of those pre-checked "send me your literature" lines at the bottom of something.

How much spam are we getting as a percent of email.

To quantify you simply do the math. But to qualify it you have to subtract the stuff you've probably brought on yourself (such as the catalogues and magazines ala list rentals that get your name because you made a purchase). I don't think we can include this stuff because you want to eyeball them even if you toss them most of the time. You want to 'stay in the loop' on these babies since you might need a coupon or want to jump on a seasonal sale or‚ especially in the case of snail-mail you might just be fed up with getting bill after bill and want a diversion in your pile of mail and welcome an occasional circular (Hello Victoria's Secret!) .... insert sly little snicker here...

Let's say I get 20 emails over a weekend. It looks like 15 are junk, but wait, 6 of those I actually open and read because of the above-mentioned reasons. So really 9 of the 20 are totally flushable: I don't want to invest in gold mines; I don't want to host a Nigerian prince who needs to dump his fortune; I don't want to 'stay hard' for four hours (christ! I ain't superman!); I don't want to join a book club anytime soon; I'm not needing to fly one-way to Topeka, Toledo or Tuscanny on the fourth Thursday of never; and I don't want a free supply of a year's worth of sugar pills laced with a derivative from the root of the magical Ginsing plant.

During the week I probably get 15 emails per day. I'd say I'm running at about 6 out-and-out junkers per day.

To keep the math easy, if I receive, on average, around 100 emails per week, I'm probably seeing, truly, about 40 percent junk emails of the type you'd just delete without bothering to open.

These results are probably not too unusual for most of us. What do you think?

Have you received some unusual spam? Do you have some names of companies in heavy rotation you'd like to add to the list? Blog and let us know. Click on the word 'Comments' below and tell us.