Outblaze Survey on Multiple Mail Accounts, Spam, and Other Issues

Last week Outblaze released an interesting survey of email users that found most people’s concerns about spam and viruses unabated, even as they signed on to more mail accounts, and hoped for easy delivery of pictures from mobile devices.

Outblaze is one of the world’s largest hosted email service providers, managing approximately 40 million active mailboxes worldwide and providing perimeter security for an additional 30 million mailboxes. In its survey of 853 users from around the world, it found:

  • 86% of email users expressed no hope of eliminating viruses within the next three years
  • More than half of email users expect the number of messages they send and receive to increase in 2006.
  • 53% of respondents currently manage two or three email accounts, 13% have five or six accounts and 4% maintain seven or eight accounts.Nearly one quarter (22%) say they’ll add at least one more account to manage their communications needs.

If the survey is accurate, tools to manage multiple identities and email accounts might make an interesting niche.