• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, August 30, 2024

Former President Donald Trump's name is being used the most by spammers — by far. Of the emails mentioning Trump's name starting July 21, 34% were spam and 3% were malicious, Cloudflare reports in a blog post. 

In the meantime, 0.8 of those mentioning Vice President Kamala Harris were spam and 0.2% were malicious, while 1.1% of those mentioning President Joe Biden were spam and 0.1% were malicious. 

It is not clear why Trump’s name should be so spam-heavy, but it could have to do with general email volume. Cloudflare’s Cloud Email Security service processed 14 million emails that included the names of Trump, Biden or Harris in the subject line, and 7.4 million referenced Trump. 

“After July 15, “there was a significant rise in all emails mentioning Trump in the subject…and that also included a higher percentage of emails classified as spam,” Cloudflare writes. 

Focusing on the period since July 21, over 3.2 million emails mentioned “Donald Trump” in the subject, 1.2 million mentioned “Joe Biden” and over 2 million mentioned “Kamala Harris.”

As for the vice presidential race, the name of Minnesota Governor “Tim Walz” was mentioned in the subject lines of 530,000 mails, versus 241,000 for Senator JD Vance. Of those using Vance's name, 1% were spam and 0.1% were malicious. Of those featuring Walz, 0.7% were spam and 0.03% were malicious.

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