Email in-boxes full of spam are costing companies money and driving
employees crazy.
Nucleus
Research Inc., a Wellesley, Mass.-based firm, found that U.S.
companies are losing $71 billion annually to lost productivity
caused by
spam.
 | | | | | Basically we were working
overtime to keep up with the amount of email coming in.
George Bock
senior director of ITSole Technology
Inc. |
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The findings were based on a
Nucleus
Research survey of 849 business users of email. Users reported
that they spend 1.2% of their time dealing with spam in their
in-boxes.
Rebecca Wettemann, vice president of research at Nucleus, said
spam filters are getting better at blocking
spam. In a 2004 Nucleus survey, users reported they lost 3.1% of
their time to spam, as opposed to 1.2 % today. And the annual
cost to employees dropped from $1,934 per employee in 2004 to
$712 today.
"What we're seeing is filtering has better addressed the problem
than it was in 2004. Unfortunately, we're still seeing two out of
every three spam messages actually getting into inboxes."
The reason: Spammers are getting smarter. According to
Framingham, Mass.-based research firm IDC, nearly 97 billion emails
will hit inboxes this year -- and more than 40 billion of them will
be spam. The problem is so out of control that for the first time,
the volume of spam is expected to outpace that of legitimate
person-to-person email. Adding fuel to the fire is the increase in
image-based spam. By embedding their marketing messages in
attached, randomized .gif or .jpg image files instead of in plain
text, many spammers manage to elude basic filters. Some reports
suggest that image-based spam accounts for nearly 30% of all spam
worldwide.
Zaps productivity
George Bock, senior director of IT at
Sole
Technology Inc., implemented a spam-filtering solution from
Symantec Corp. earlier this year. Before that, the $200 million
Lake Forest, Calif.-based footwear manufacturer was relying on the
spam-filtering features of Microsoft Exchange, which just wasn't
enough.
"First and foremost, every day every employee had to figure out
which emails were legitimate and not legitimate. They would spend
15 to 30 minutes a day cleaning up the messages that would come
through," Bock said. "The other aspect was the impact on our
Exchange environment. It was killing productivity on the servers.
Basically, we were working overtime to keep up with the amount of
email coming in for the amount of mailboxes we had."
Bock saw lost productivity in the amount of time it took emails
to open or even arrive, due to all the strain on the Exchange
server.
Since going with Symantec, the amount of spam coming through has
dropped to two or three a week per in-box.
"The response has been absolutely phenomenal from the employee
base. They don't have to wade through it anymore," Bock said.
Taking away the headaches associated with spam is important, not
just from a productivity perspective. Employees seem near the
breaking point, based on some of their responses to the Nucleus
survey.
When asked to suggest criminal penalties for individuals
convicted of sending spam, many found the options of jail time
insufficient. They chose "other" and then typed in suggestions such
as the death penalty, slow hanging, public flogging, psychological
assessment and other suggestions "that are inappropriate to print,"
according to Nucleus.
Wettemann said there are other costs beyond lost productivity
reported by users.
"There are a lot of things," she said. "Every time a user clicks
on a virus, every time they call an IT help desk for help with
spam. There's the time mailbox administrators are spending on
managing and archiving messages. There are a lot of associated
costs."
Wettemann said spam filters can't win the war on spam alone.
"What I hope is we'll have a broader recognition of what the
real problem is," she said.
Wettemann said she hopes the government will take regulatory
action to force
Internet service providers to take a more
active role in managing spam traffic.
Let us know what you think about the story; email:
Shamus McGillicuddy,
News Writer