Slashdot Mirror
What Is The Real Cost of Spam?
securitas writes "The NY Times has a nice feature about the diverging estimates of the costs of spam (Google). The estimates vary widely from $10 billion to $87 billion per year for American workers, and even more for global costs. Critics say that research firms' estimates vastly overstate the actual cost of spam. Public institutions like Indiana University have to be sensitive to the First Amendment rights of the spammers. And at companies like Nortel Networks, security architect Chris Lewis says that the real economic burden is the 10 to 15 percent - 5,000 to 10,000 messages a day - of the spam that still gets through, which costs the company about $1 in lost productivity per message. The costs can be much higher if a top executive is upset or mad about spam. "If someone in senior management gets spammed," Mr. Lewis said, "it could take 20 or 30 hours of everyone's time, up and down the chain." A chart of the per user amount of spam and the time spent processing it, as well as the varying estimates of the per user cost of spam are included in the article."
Well, yes, since the CEO needs to ask his assistant to ask a senior manager to ask the Spam Control Committee to ask a freshly-hired sysadmin to fucking hit his goddamn delete key. All that and more for just $50 million a year, plus golden parachute!
...which costs the company about $1 in lost productivity per message.
Where can I find a job where I get paid $1 every time I press the delete button? I'll fax in my resume' right away!
Spam has cost me over $10,000, and my dick STILL isn't any bigger.
Wow. Marriage sure has changed you, CmdrTaco!
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Next question?
-- Stamp out entropy. ->dryguy@bellsloth.net
Just as commercials on television pay for the programming you get to enjoy, advertisements in email are there to defray the cost of the email infrastructure. If you don't take the time to read these short, unintrusive messages, advertisers will be unwilling to pay to advertise on the internet. Who then will pay for the email system you take for granted?
The evasion of commercial email is a serious ethical, moral, and legal issue. Users caught implementing "filters" to evade their responsibilities could face an expensive lawsuit or even jail time.
We as a society must learn to respect the copyrights and first amendment rights of bulk emailers, many of whom struggle to put food on the table for their families. To summarize:
1. Commercial email deletion is a serious moral and legal issue.
2. "Everyone does it" or "I didn't know it was illegal to filter spam" are not valid excuses.
3. Filter users could face an expensive lawsuit or even jail time. To avoid this threat, just delete all spam filtering software you may have installed on your computer.
4. We will not rest until this insidious form of electronic shoplifting is eradicated for good.
The lost productivity due to spam is inconsequential compared to the lost productivity due to Slashdot.
http://yetanotherpoliticalrant.blogspot.com
It's because spam is incredibly annoying as opposed to merely damaging. If a virus is a knife in the guts once a year, spam is a snotty finger in the eye, twenty times a day, forever. Not surprising that many people make stopping spam a higher priority.
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling