Despite some chatter about the amount of spam leveling off, one analyst Friday noted that the math being used is misleading.

"When you plot spam as a percentage of incoming mail, it does look like the volume is starting to level off, as some vendors have recently implied," said Richi Jennings, an analyst with Ferris Research, a San Francisco-based firm that specializes in messaging issues.

The most common numbers used by the media, as well as anti-spam researchers and vendors, are those percentages. The problem is that spam can never reach 100 percent of all mail, "not unless everyone stops sending legitimate e-mail," added Jennings.

A more accurate way to look at spam, he said, is to plot the number of spam messages, not its percentage of all mail. "Plot the actual number of messages and it's a straight line going up," Jennings added. "Far from slowing down, the volume of spam continues to grow at a fairly consistent rate.

"So, you tell me, is spam leveling off?" asked Jennings. "No, it's not."