More Than A Nuisance: Spam Costs Are High And Rising

The amount of spam sent each year has reached staggering proportions, with research firm eMarketer estimating that 76 billion spam e-mails will be sent worldwide this year.

Ferris believes that spam now accounts for between 15 percent and 20 percent of incoming e-mail at a typical corporation, reaching 30 percent at ISPs. Antispam vendor Brightmail believes that the figure is even higher, exceeding 40 percent. The cost in lost productivity alone,think about how much time it takes you to delete spam e-mails over the course of a year,will amount to nearly $4 billion in 2003, according to Ferris.

And the problem of spam, and its cost to businesses, is moving beyond the networked desktop. Wireless services are becoming a prime target for spammers, as these operators provide connectivity to the Internet. With wireless connections relatively slow and expensive, the burden of spam will be particularly onerous to wireless network operators.

Moreover, spam frequently falls into the category of adult content, and some corporate users believe that this sort of spam could create liability problems as a result of U.S. employment laws, according to Ferris.

The U.S. Congress is among the lawmaking bodies considering antispam legislation. But with spam so cheap to send,eMarketer estimates the cost at 32 cents per 100,000 e-mails,and "clearinghouses" providing millions of e-mail addresses at a very low cost, legislation alone is unlikely to solve the problem.

Herein lies a real opportunity for the channel: developing effective technology to stop spam before it reaches customers' desks.