Email spam is determined by name letter lottery

If you’re plagued by lots of spam in your email inbox, it could just be that you have an unfortunate first name. That is, at least, if you use your name in your email address. It seem that where spammers are concerned, Adams are much more popular than Quentins.

I, as everyone, am plagued by spam on a daily basis. I actually may suffer more than some due to working on the Internet and having my email address plastered across various websites. But there may be a solution – I just need to change my name to Zachary.

BBC News is reporting on research undertaken at the University of Cambridge by computer scientist Dr Richard Clayton. His aim was to understand why there seems to be such high discrepancies between the amount of spam some people receive compared to others.

Dr Clayon used the 550 million emails sent to the customers of Demon, just one British ISP, between 1st February and 27th March 2008. He then looked at the percentage of junk sent to these people in that timeframe. The results show that more than anything else, the first letter of the first part of your email address (before the @ symbol) determines the level of spam you’re likely to be a victim of.

If your name is Adam, Michael, Stephen, Rachel, or Paula, you’re out of luck, as A, S, M, R, and P are the most spammed, with more than 40% of their inbox likely to be made up of spam. Quinns, Zadies, and Yasmins can feel smug in the knowledge that their inboxes are only likely to contain around 20% spam though, with Q, Z, and Y the least spammed of all the first letters.

The analysis found that the main reason for this discrepancy is the way in which spammers generate potential email addresses. Spammers will often carry out dictionary attacks where they take the first part of an email address that they know is live and couple it with all the different variations after the @ symbol.

So the letters with the most first names attached to them are highly likely to be bombarded with spam while those rarer letters used for first names will get off lightly.

While kids at school may be bullied over having an odd name, it seems they’ll have the last laugh when they get a lot less spam than their more commonly named peers. After reading the full academic report (pdf), I’m just off to change my name from Dave to Ziggy.

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