Spoiler alert: It is 50% of the world population
According to the latest Radicati report, the total number of business and consumer emails daily sent and received in 2017 is likely to reach 269 billion. And that number is expected to jump to 319.6 billion by 2021.
That’s the number of email sent each day. But how many email users are there in the world? There are 3,147 million email users. In 2015 there were 7,347 million people. So just about 50% of the world’s people are sending all that email. And last Monday, it all came to your inbox!
Two final bits of startling email information: On average all those email users have 1.70 email accounts. You know how you must sign up for any online resource. Well that is driving the number of email accounts we all have.
I tested software from Intel that promised to provide one email account to manage all my other accounts. Great! But wait. How much did it cost? Well it was free for the first 15 accounts and then it cost a monthly fee. A fee I didn’t want to pay. So I figured I could do with just 15 accounts protected. But little did I realize just how many accounts I had! I finally gave it up.
Final bit of info: with all those users, all those accounts, and all that email, the chance for antivirus, SPAM, phishing, and Ransomware has skyrocketed. People are concerned. People like Microsoft. And Google. And your bank. Not to mention your hospital. And your government.
It’s great to be able to keep in touch with friends around the world. It’s not so great that cyber-criminals from around the world can attempt to gain access to my email, my accounts, my bank, my identity. At this stage of development in computer security, the best defense is to have a backup of all your valuable information stored offline. Unavailable.
