MSNBC: Offices Remain Spam Free Zones

Makarand writes "Thanks to a good job done by the tech staff and filtering software, office workers in the US are not bothered by spam mail and the value of email communications has not eroded. A survey conducted by Pew Internet & American Life Project, whose findings are reported in this article by MSNBC.com, found that spam is certainly a problem for personal email accounts but not for company provided email accounts. This is contrary to the perception that American workers are wasting too much time battling spam." YMMV.

Comments

I agree

[Drakonian]

I don't have a problem with spam at work.

I think that home users don't have the resources, know-how, or time to work out an effective anti-spam system.

I can't even find a good IMAP spam filter!

Is it really the filters?

[kzinti]

I get very little spam through my office e-mail. I don't know whether our admins use spam filters, but I have always attributed the low spam rate to the way I use the e-mail address. I use it mostly for internal e-mail, and I seldom give it to anybody outside the company. It doesn't show up in postings to Usenet (in a Reply-to field, for example), I don't use it to register at sites like nytimes.com, and I don't give it to people I don't know. That's not because I intentionally keep it a big secret, it's just a side effect of the way I work - I don't have much reason to give out my e-mail address. I believe that my lack of spam at the office can be credited to limited exposure.

Contrariwise, I wouldn't be surprised if there are people who get tons of e-mail at the office.

--Jim

Ok...

[craenor]

Now let's see a study to show how much effort IT departments are putting in around the country (or world) to eliminate SPAM in the office place.

I work for a major computer manufacturer (I'll give you a hint, we are again number one in personal PC sales), and I never see spam at work.

But how much money does my company pay a year for me to not see spam?

Spam is still a problem at work...

[Whatsthiswhatsthis]

just not for work email addresses. C'mon, who hasn't checked their private email account from work?

Re:Or just lack of exposure?

[McDutchie]

[...] spammers have a harder time getting work addresses. They're a lot less likely to be on public web pages, they're not used in chat rooms and they're much harder to generate by brute force.

Huh? Most company e-mail addresses I have seen are trivially guessable. They username is almost always some combination of first name or initial and last name, with or without dots thrown in for good measure. If the spammers have not figured that out yet, that just proves Rule #3, but then again, it's probably just a matter of time.

I don't know what's worse....

[black6host]

the spam I receive at work from outside the company or the emails from within. First, if it's spam I can usually tell from the subject line. Easy to delete. The emails from within require me to at least read it. And once people learned that they can use nice, pretty and extremely huge, clip art I've found that bringing up that important email to "everyone" is a real time waster.

In addition, far too many people where I work will email a subject to death. Coupled with a large CC: to population along with the "reply to all button" some subjects just won't die the undignified death they deserve. And, you have to read every one because of the odd one that may contain useful information.

I swear, what once took a 1 minute phone call to resolve now results in 20-30 emails back and forth. The only good thing I see is the CYA factor. I've saved my butt a couple of times being able to forward a message that I sent long ago, that apparently was never read. Why wasn't it read? Must have been deleted with along with the spam!

Seriously though, I spend far too much time wading through needless email at work than I do spam.

Re:how do they get hotmail addresses?

[Jucius Maximus]

"A related question to spam: How is it that after I create a hotmail account, within one day, I can be getting spam?

Does hotmail sell lists?"

I wouldn't put it past them.

"Or are there people and bots that just put together random strings of possible user names?"

For sure. There are enough usernames on hotmail to make it worthwhile.

"Does hotmail try to filter these"

Unlikely. This spam makes you more likely to either leave or pay for a bigger inbox so your messages are not auto-deleted to make room for more spam. Either way, MSFT makes money.

There's still a cost

[howlinmonkey]

Just because end users don't see the spam doesn't mean there isn't a cost. How much time is spent creating software to combat spam? How many hours do admins spend dealing with spam before it even reaches users? How much time do users have to spend circumventing anti-spam filters to send/receive legitimate email?

These are just a few of the obvious costs related to keeping spam out of user mailboxes. It would probably boggle the mind to know the actual cost of keeping spam out of Suzy or Sammy Secretary's mailbox.

Re:spam / snail spam debate

[mindstrm]

Yeah yeah, blah blah blah...

Get real man. Show me how many of the spam whiners are paying per byte. Show me how the cost of their email account or internet service would be less because of spam.

Re:Wow.

[KlausBreuer]

Sorry, but *that* was marked up as 'Interesting'?

Personally, I loathe advertising. Spam is just another form of that. Filtering out all that trash bothers me a *lot*.

And yes, it is expensive. My parents live in South Africa, downloading their email through a little 56K modem (which rarely hits over 9600, thanks to the lousy ISP). They pay per KB and per minute. Think they don't mind "just pressing delete"?
I'm lucky - I sit in Germany with an unlimited DSL line - and it *still* bothers me. Spam is on the verge of making my accounts unusable.

Bah. You sound a little like that idiot I read who called himself "all-american free-speech spammer".

Ciao,
Klaus