Email is one of the most effective communication mediums worldwide, with billions of messages sent daily. Unfortunately, email spam has become more prevalent and more perplexing than ever. In 2025, almost half of all worldwide email messages are still considered spam (unwanted), generating untold numbers of unwanted spam messages in email inboxes and exposing potential fraud from ask email because the implications to individuals and organizations are dramatic!
Thus, to protect your information and confirm that legitimate and important work emails are delivered, it is imperative to understand the latest email spam statistics. After consideration of those statistics, you can prevent spam emails and make your digital environment safer!
This article traces the current state of email spam by identifying how much spam is sent in the world, which countries send the most, the type of spam that floods inboxes, and the financial and environmental effects of unwanted spam. Whether you are a marketer, business owner, or a regular email user, these insights will provide detailed recognition of spam in 2025 and provide insight to tackle spam.
What Do You Mean by Email Spam Statistics?
Email spam statistics refer to the statistics and data on unwanted, unsolicited, or malicious emails sent over the Internet. They measure the amount, types, sources, and impact of email spam around the world. Understanding how email spam statistics work can help businesses and cybersecurity professionals, and even Internet users understand the extent and nature of the email spam problem, which better informs how they can build more effective prevention and detection measures.
The latest email spam statistics suggest that such emails typically contain advertising, phishing attempts, scams, malware, or fraudulent content. Email spam statistics are relevant, in part, because it is possible to measure the number of spam emails over the total emails sent on a given day. For instance, over half of emails can often be spam. Other email spam statistics can illustrate where spam can originate from, which sectors spam targets, and potentially how much spam costs both in financial and environmental outcomes.
Email spam statistics are important because they raise awareness about risks in online activity, such as phishing scams which can lead to identity theft and lost funds, and track general trends in the types of spam methods being used to help users and organizations build stronger email security, improve spam filters, and comply with regulations preventing the detrimental effects of spam.
The Industries Most Targeted by Phishing Scams
Phishing scams are phishing attacks? Cybercriminals are trying to fool you or your organization into transferring confidential information such as passwords, financial information, or other confidential information. Cybercriminals utilize phishing scams to obtain sensitive information in a transactional manner. The best email spam statistics of 2025 indicate that most phishing scams are delivered by email.
Because email is the most used form of communication in some organizations, phishing attacks can easily be meshed into the cybercriminal’s plan to make more money by scamming! Once the cybercriminal initiates a successful phishing attempt, they either intentionally prompt or deceive the victim to voluntarily provide them with sensitive information.
Phishing attacks typically use impersonation software to trick victims into believing they are the victimized services, protocols, or occupations. Information based on a successful phishing scam can lead to any number of security risk issues, data breaches, and financial loss.
Some industries are at a higher risk of phishing attacks than others due to various factors like legal data and trust with all viable stakeholders within their communities regarding sensitive information they have to protect and ensure all are per ethical practices. The table below has been listed to display the industries most victimized by phishing scams and the percentage of phishing messages and attempts they received.
| Industry | Share of Phishing Messages Received |
| Financial Institution | 27.7% |
| SaaS/Webmail | 17.7% |
| Social Media | 10.4% |
| Logistics/Shipping | 9% |
| Payment | 6% |
| E-commerce/Retail | 5.6% |
| Telecom | 3.1% |
| Cryptocurrency | 2.3% |
| Other | 18.2% |
Worldwide Email Traffic Overview
Before we can better understand spam, let’s first consider how many emails are sent around the world each day. Email volume is continuously growing due to increased internet penetration, companies utilizing email, and increased personal email use. Globally, almost 333 billion emails were sent and received every day in 2022.
According to projections, the number will have grown to around 361.6 billion by 2024, a 4.1% increase from the year before. According to projections, more than 375 billion emails will be sent and received daily by 2025. That’s a lot of digital communication happening around the clock!
But what percentage of these emails are spam? According to estimates, 45.6% of all emails sent daily worldwide in 2023 were spam. The forecasts for 2025 predict that spam will be almost 47% of total email volume.
This means that almost half of the emails inserted into inboxes today are unsolicited spam. Spam volumes are uneven day-to-day and seasonally, but the volume of email traffic remaining is incredible to consider.
Types of Spam Emails You Should Know
Spam messages can be different from one another. Spammers try random plans like advertising and phishing their targets to deceive others.
With the help of the latest email spam statistics, let’s look at what are believed to be the main types of spam emails for 2025.
| Spam Type | Percentage of Total Spam Emails |
| Marketing/Advertising Emails | 36% |
| Adult Content Emails | 31.7% |
| Financial-Related Emails | 26.5% |
| Scams and Fraudulent Emails | 2.5% |
Marketing and Advertising Emails: The majority of spam is marketing emails that are normally bulk messages trying to sell or promote products, services, or special offers. Some marketers are following marketing regulations; however, there are still a vast number of unsolicited promotional emails sent without explicit permission, causing annoyance and stealing email space and attention.
Adult Content Emails: Often, adult content spam emails account for a relatively large portion of spam. Most times, the adult content spam emails contain explicit material or links to adult websites, and while most are accepted by filters, they slip through in many cases.
Financial-Related Spam: Bank notifications, payment requests, or investment opportunities emails are normally classified into the financial spam category. These emails can be benign marketing or, even worse, phishing attempts to obtain financial information.
Scams and Fraud: Scam emails are a smaller percentage overall, but they are very harmful. Scam emails include phishing, identity theft, fake lottery winnings, etc. According to IBM’s research, 15% of data breaches are caused by phishing. Phishing attacks cost enterprises an average of USD 4.88 million.
The Rising Threat of Phishing and Spoofing
Phishing continues to be one of the most common email spam threats with far-reaching impacts. Modern cybercriminals have become increasingly sophisticated and can impersonate organizations that victims trust, leading to victims giving up sensitive information, such as passwords, financial, or personal identification.
Here are some statistics demonstrating the magnitude of the problem in 2024-25:
- Almost 96% of phishing attacks originate from email.
- In 2024, 70% of organizations stated they had experienced Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks, which are emails that target the finances of a company.
- The average reported cost of a BEC attack is $6.2 million, up from $5.96 million in 2021.
- Tech companies become attractive places for cyber criminals to attack. According to reports, a huge 80% of all cyber crimes in this area are caused by phishing.
- Now, about 50% of all phishing emails add PDFs or QR codes as attachments, which are much harder to spot.
- After the switch to remote work in 2020, reports of whaling and executive fraud increased significantly. The number of documented whaling attacks increased by 131% over that time.
Top Spam-Sending Countries in 2025
Spam originates worldwide, but some countries are responsible for more spam emails than others.
As of early 2025, the top ten countries that send spam:
| Rank | Country | Estimated Daily Spam Emails (billions) |
| 1 | United States | 9.1 |
| 2 | China | 8.7 |
| 3 | Russia | 8.3 |
| 4 | Brazil | 8.1 |
| 5 | India | 8.0 |
| 6 | Germany | 7.9 |
| 7 | Czech Republic | 7.8 |
| 8 | Poland | 7.75 |
| 9 | Bulgaria | 7.7 |
| 10 | United Kingdom | 7.7 |
Reasons behind high spam volumes include:
- Large populations and internet user bases (US, India, China).
- Presence of cybercrime hubs or poorly regulated networks.
- High levels of botnet activity are sending spam on behalf of criminals.
The Psychological and Financial Impact of Spam
Spam emails are dangerous in addition to being annoying.
Mental Effects: The onslaught of spam can lead to email fatigue, anxiety, and distrust of digital communication. Individuals who are victims of phishing or scams report having feelings of stress, embarrassment, and less confidence in trusting online information and safety.
Monetary Costs: Globally, financial losses from email scams and phishing attacks were over USD 30 billion in 2024. Average individual losses usually range from hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on the scam.
Loss in productivity: Businesses lose money also, even just from lost productivity; however, they also face the loss due to fraud, potential legal liabilities, and remediation costs.
User Behavior: Many companies encounter spear phishing every year, since it is estimated that 88% of organizations have come across these threats.
Inadequate differentiation: Many users admitted that they could not easily distinguish between a valid message and a fake, some of which are becoming too sophisticated to detect. Also, 1 out of every 10 individuals might end up providing their password to a fake phishing page.
Spam Beyond Email: Multi-Channel Spam Statistics
- Growth in SMS spam deviance: Compared to 2014, the number of persons losing money as a result of scam calls has significantly increased, rising from 18 million to $8.6 billion. These spam messages often contain scams, offers that are too good to be true, and links to phishing pages, which could put users at risk.
- Voice spam and robocalls: According to the Truecaller U.S. Spam & Scam Report, in January 2024, more than 2,000 adults were asked about scams and surveyed about spam. Previous reports showed that in 2022, 26% of people in the United States suffered a loss of $39.5 billion in telephone fraud cases.
- Social media spam surge: Spam continues to gain traction on social media sites, such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. According to FTC statistics, online retail fraud accounted for 44% of social media scams in the first half of 2023, while investment-related fraud, or “affinity scams,” contributed for 20%. However, these numbers do not include the 6 percent share of the scam market from romance-related fraud reports.
- Cross-channel spam approach: Cybercriminals are frequently taking a multi-channel approach, sending spam messages in an orchestrated manner across email, SMS, calls, and social media channels to maximize reach and minimize deception.
The Environmental Cost of Spam Emails
- Spam emails use energy: Each spam email requires energy to be transmitted on networks, to be stored on servers, and to be cooled in data centers. According to McAfee’s (2021) report, a single spam email (when sent) produces about 0.3 grams of CO₂ equivalent.
- Escalation from rising email volumes: An additional Guardian analysis has determined that actual emissions from the in-house data centers of large tech organizations provide a likely emissions figure that is about 662% higher than the reported metric.
- Increased emissions: An analysis by Reuters illustrates some of the challenges presented when measuring and reporting emissions accurately, as it would further underpin the challenges of reducing the environmental impact of data centers.
- The inevitability of green IT infrastructure: Companies can lessen this environmental impact by using energy-efficient servers, renewable energy, and by implementing better email filtering to reduce volume from spam. Although Google’s improvements to energy efficiency with their data centers have saved millions of kWh, we still can do better.
Why Your Emails Might End Up in the Spam Folder
- Bad sender reputation: If your email address or IP address has a history of spamming or you are on the blacklist, you’re more likely to end up in spam. Cisco Talos Intelligence stated that 20% of blacklisted IP addresses are repeat offenders and the IPs have a significant impact on email deliverability.
- Suspicious content: Emails with a large number of links, spammy keywords (e.g., “free,” “urgent,” “buy now”), or misleading subject lines are often filtered as spam. You might not know this, but around 60% of emails with more than five links are often marked as spam.
- No Authentication protocols: Emails can be blocked or rejected by not deploying SPF, DKIM, and DMARC protocols, which authenticate email and protect against spoofing. A 2023 study by Valimail found that 70% of domains without DMARC enforcement had a spoof.
- High complaint rate: You result in damaging your sender’s reputation whenever a recipient marks your email as spam. Over time, ISPs began to treat your emails as suspicious and filter them more heavily than before.
- Sending to invalid addresses: Sending emails to stale or invalid addresses produces hard bounces, which negatively impact your sender score and increase your likelihood of being filtered to spam.
Tips to Control Email Spam
Managing spam email is vital for both organizations and individuals to secure sensitive information and optimize the functionality of an inbox. Here are some great tips to lessen your spam email load and to be more efficient: Prioritize the few spam emails you do receive.
- Use Strong Email Authentication: Use email authentication protocols such as SPF, DKIM, and DMARC solutions to verify that your emails are legitimate and reduce the chances of your email being flagged as spam.
- Clean Email List: Ensure your organization is regularly cleaning and removing inactive or invalid email addresses to reduce bounce rates and build a positive sender reputation.
- Avoid Spammy Content: Stay away from including as many links as possible, weird subject lines, and spam-triggering buzzwords like “free”, “urgent”, and “guaranteed”.
- AI-Based Spam Filters: Utilize a robust spam detection tool that uses artificial intelligence. AI can reduce the amount of suspicious emails that land in your inbox, and it can identify them through machine learning.
- Educate Yourself and Your Employees: Learn about phishing tactics, and simple, safe email practices will help protect you against scams.
- Mark as Spam: Continue to mark spam emails, and report them to your email provider. This ultimately helps identify spam emails for future users.
- Use Multi-Factor Authentication: This will enable you to secure your email account with an additional level of security.
Conclusion
Spam emails continue to be a formidable issue in 2025, accounting for almost half of the total email traffic worldwide! The costs are enormous, with wasted time, mental anguish, and enormous financial losses, not to mention potential damage to the environment. The constant threat of phishing and scams is a particular challenge that requires the vigilance of both businesses and individuals.
By becoming acquainted with the best email spam statistics, you can protect yourself and your organization. This might mean adopting better email security practices, or just being aware of the emails you open; no matter what, every little bit helps keep your inbox free from spam. Stay up-to-date, stay aware, and keep your digital communications safe in this new reality.
FAQs
1. What percentage of emails sent worldwide in 2025 is expected to make up?
Almost 47% of all emails sent worldwide in 2025 are expected to be spam, meaning that nearly half of the emails people will receive in this world are unsolicited or wanted.
2. Which countries produce the most spam emails globally?
To be blunt, the United States is first on the list of sending spam emails, followed by China, Russia, India, and Brazil. These are the top five countries producing spam, and they produce billions of spam emails on a daily basis to the massive user bases and cybercriminals using those servers.
3. What kinds of spam emails are most prevalent?
Two of the most common types of spam are marketing/advertising (36%) email, or adult content (31.7%) email, then financial-related (26.5%), then scams/fraud email (2.5%), with phishing being around 73% of the scams.
4. How does spam email impact the environment?
Each spam email produces roughly 0.03 grams of CO₂ emissions. It is traced to the total energy used in sending, storing, and processing spam emails – total CO₂ equivalent spam email emissions are about 4,700 tonnes annually across the globe, which is equivalent to hundreds of cars on the road.
5. What should individuals and corporations do to reduce spam and protect themselves?
Businesses should enforce strong email authentication processes, use AI spam filters, and train employees about phishing threats. Individuals should avoid clicking on suspicious links, utilize anti-virus tools, report spam and phishing, and keep their security programs up-to-date.
