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

Spam: creating jobs since 1995!

[Nijika]

I guess... just like roaches and plagues. I just realized that a large part of my job is figuring out how to keep email going and meaningful despite the deluge of crap that comes in every day. It's not what I was hired for, but here it is as a major part of my role and a justification for my continued payment.

Would I prefer that Spam be stopped dead in it's tracks? Regardless of this, yes, because it also occours to me how much time I've wasted on this problem that I could have used doing other more productive things.

Re:How to get less spam

[Prairiewest]

Yes, having to post your email address for others to see on a web site is no longer a requirement. Especially since most of the web hosting companies will provide you with a free formmail script.

I took a few steps to curb spam in 2002: first, change my email address. That alone put an abrupt halt to the flow. Second, added comments forms to all my web sites, to stop the future flow.

Granted, I still get some spam, assumedly because some messages that I send get forwarded and harvested somewhere. I get about 2 or 3 spam emails per week right now, without using any filters at all. So that's acceptable to me.

I continue to advise people to change their darn email address and start anew. It's pretty easy to do for *most* people. I just don't understand the paralyzing fear that overcomes them when I suggest that. I also think that "but my business email address has to stay the same!" is not a valid argument. I have assisted some people here at the university that I work in getting a brand new email address, and (surprise) life went on and people still managed to send them email.

On a side note, I switched to a different bank in 2002, one with no monthly fees. I was amazed at how easy it was to do, and now I must be their most vocal evangelist. I'm constantly reassuring people that they, too, can stop paying monthly services charges to their bank. I think I have six converts so far :)

And no, 2002 wasn't some magical year of transformation. I think it's just coincidental...

Todd

Re:What scares me...

[Spy der Mann]

It's a simple cost to benefit ratio, as long as enough people buy things off spam, spammers will continue to operate.

I live in Mexico. Here (in Mexico city) there are thousands illegal taxis running. People don't care just as long as they get to their destination. Of course, the number of innocents being raped, kidnapped or assaulted in these illegal cabs.

If people stopped using them, our taxi assault problems would be over.

Generalizing, if people don't care about promoting assaults and rapes in illegal cabs, do you think they'll give a sh*t about SPAM?

Re:Does that include the cost of studies about spa

[hackstraw]

Since I read about a new spam study every other day, I'm wondering if that $22B price tag includes the cost of all the studies being done about the cost of spam?

All of these "annual amount of money lost due to X" studies are bullshit.

This is saying that $22B a year is "lost" due to people spending an average of 2.8 minutes a day deleting emails.

Well, how much paper has email saved over the years? How much time has email saved? How much does taking a dump cost businesses annually? What about reading /.?

I've been hearing these "take a miniscule amount of thing X and multiply it by the number of people Y and report REALLY BIG NUMBER Z" studies all my life.

Who cares?

Lets do a more interesting and relevant study for people for a change. How many hundreds of millions of dollars would be saved if we switched to a 4 day workweek? How about the quality of life for everyone having at least 3 day weekends every week? That sounds interesting.