THE STATE

OF CLUTTER

SPAM, DATA BREACHES,
AND SUBSCRIPTION TRENDS

INTRODUCTION

We live in an age of excess—but now, it’s digital. The physical clutter of books and gadgets has been replaced by bloated inboxes, endless notifications, and constant ads. Email has become a spam graveyard, and social notifications interrupt real-life experiences.

This digital clutter isn’t just frustrating—it’s harmful. Every account, app, or service collects and sometimes sells our data, creating a tangled web of digital baggage that surfaces only during breaches—when it’s too late.

Yorba aims to bring intention back to the digital world. Our 2024 State of Clutter Report combines anonymous data from our users with industry research and expert insights to spotlight the worst offenders and empower change.

Want insights, stats
& recommendations on how to declutter your digital footprint?

THE REALITY OF A CLUTTERED INBOX

Even though it started as a way to communicate more effectively, email has become an overwhelming source of anxiety for many. And it’s making us sad.

On average, Yorba members have 148 mailing lists each.

This adds up to a whole lot of time. 
 5 hours yearly to manage SPAM, assuming you spend as little as 3 seconds on each email.

COMPANIES THAT SEND THE MOST EMAILS

People only open 1 in 4 emails.

Calculated using the average open rate of mailing lists among Yorba members.

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The rest just contributes to their overload and clutters their inbox

Yorba made me aware of just how much garbage was in my inbox. We all know there's a difference between physical minimalism and digital minimalism. With digital minimalism, there's no weight to things except for an emotional weight ”

Ryder Carroll

Author and Creator of Bullet Journal

Want more insights, stats, 
and recommendations on how to declutter your digital footprint?

DATA BREACHES, PRIVACY AND ONLINE ACCOUNTS

Most of us have online accounts we don’t even remember creating. They sit there quietly, but they’re not harmless. Every unused account is another way your personal information could get exposed in a data breach. With billions of records leaked every year, it’s getting harder to keep your private information truly private.

Yorba members have, on average, 246 accounts. 

On the whole, every 1 in 19 of those accounts have been breached.

Have been breached at some point

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PAID SUBSCRIPTIONS

Paid subscriptions can sneak up on you. Whether it’s an old streaming app or a long-lost fitness subscription, the subscriptions can get costly. Before you know it, you’re shelling out money every month for services you don’t even use. Those small charges might not seem like much, but they add up quickly, quietly draining your bank account while you’re busy with other things.

On average, Yorba members spend $254.31 on subscriptions monthly.

7 out of 10 people have been billed for a subscription they had forgotten about.

MOST YORBA MEMBERS ARE SUBSCRIBED TO:

% out of all Yorba members with their bank accounts connected

Want more insights, stats, 
and recommendations on how to declutter your digital footprint?

I don’t want to call us users anymore. I don’t want to call us consumers, because those are old-school terms. We’re not just using. We’re taking the lead in a dance with the websites, and the services of the world. “

Doc Searls

Co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto and instigator of Project VRM

HOW WE COLLECT DATA

At Yorba, we receive first-party consent to connect our members’ email address and payment methods with the accounts they’re attached to. To create this report, all metrics are aggregated from anonymized, system-generated identifiers, without storing or processing personally identifiable information.

  • When analyzing newsletter engagement, we use automatically generated reference numbers for both subscriptions and users–it’s sort of like assigning a random ticket number instead of using a name. From there, we track engagement metrics–like the timing of interactions–but source tracking is limited to technical parameters rather than personal data. In other words, we’re not looking at, storing, or pulling your personal data. We’re only looking at usage patterns connected with those anonymous identifiers. 

    All analysis is done on these aggregated, de-identified datasets so we can measure effectiveness without compromising security.

    The 2024 report pulls in that anonymous data collected from Yorba members alongside comprehensive industry research and expert interviews.