Spam Costs U.S. Companies $22B Annually

KoReE writes "According to this CNN article, a study at the University of Maryland says the loss of productivity from spam is costing U.S. companies $22 billion per year." Of course, they also say people get 18.5 spam per day, and I'm tipping in at 20x that.

Comments

Strange Rationale for Coming Up With $22B...

[phidipides]

>Time wasted deleting junk e-mail costs American
>businesses nearly $22 billion a year, according
>to a new study from the University of
>Maryland... The average spam messages per day
>is 18.5 and the average time spent per day
>deleting them is 2.8 minutes.

Using this same logic, I would guess that Solitaire, Minesweeper, etc. cost American businesses at least $200 billion per year. I hate spam as much as the next guy, but using the time it takes to delete spam as the basis for determing its economic impact is ridiculous. A much more accurate number would be the amount of time/money companies use to prevent spam from coming in and going out of their systems, the amount lost to phishing and other scams, etc.