Why Do You Get More Email Spam Than Your Cousin?

Here’s a little-known but very interesting fact about email spam. The first letter of your email address often determines the amount of spam that is hitting your inbox daily.

Dr Richard Clayton at University of Cambridge analyzed (PDF report) over half a billion spam email messages and made this conclusion:

Email addresses starting with popular alphabets like ‘A’, ‘M’, ‘S’, ‘R’ or ‘P’ are much more likely to receive spam than addresses that begin with uncommon letters like ‘Y’, ‘Q’ or ‘Z’.

So if your name is Maria and you’re getting more email spam that your cousin Yaro, you now know the reason why – blame your name. Thanks Pratham.

Related: How to Manage Email Overload

You may also like:

1. MP3 Attachments in Email Can Be Spam
2. Email Overload – Dealing with Colleague Spam
3. Blocking Email Spam That Comes As Image Attachments, PDF or Excel
4. This ‘Free Money’ Email Was Real, Not Spam
5. When It Comes to Sending Spam, India Ranks at #7