Hi Susan,
Reliable statistics on this subject seem hard to come by. A recent
article in RLG Diginews may be a useful starting place for you:
'There are over 1 billion active email accounts worldwide, generating
over 30 billion daily messages.'
'The 2005 annual report from UK Internet security firm MessageLabs,
found that an annual average of 68.6% of emails were spam, 2.8%
contained a virus or trojan, and phishing accounted for 0.3% of all
email traffic. For users, email has become very much a mixed blessing.
Though a powerful and eminently useful technology, sifting through spam
can be a major annoyance (as well as a significant waste of time), while
viruses and phishing are a threat to security and privacy.'
'Yet as difficult as email has become to handle for users, the challenge
its management presents to information technology (IT) and records
management (RM) personnel has become especially daunting. This may seem
odd given how long email has been around, but the growth in usage has
been extremely nonlinear. More than 20 years after its development, in
1992, only 2% of the US population had access to email and that number
had grown only to 15% in 1997, less than 10 years ago.'
See http://www.rlg.org/en/page.php?Page_ID=20916#article3 for the full
text.
There was also an article in Aslib (March 2006) - 'The average office
worker now handles some 75 emails a day. In many organistaions it is
email, rather than the phone, that is the main means of communication.
[...] now email is used to handle anything from customer orders to
merger and acquisition documents. [...] This has led to bourgeoning
storage demands as companies try to store and archive ever-greater
volumes of messages. Some industry estimates suggest that in an
enterprise, there can be as many as seven copies of each and every mail.
'.
You might be able to get some personal statistics from your IT department.
Best wishes,
Maureen.
--
Maureen Pennock
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DCC Research Officer
UKOLN, University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY, United Kingdom
Telephone: +44 (0)1225 386711 Fax: +44 (0)1225 386838
Digital Curation Centre http://www.dcc.ac.uk
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GRAHAM Susan wrote:
> I am looking for some statistics to demonstrate how the volume of email is increasing. Does anyone know any reliable sources of information or have any statistics I could use?
>
> Susan Graham.
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