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Ipswitch Messaging Division Spamometer Reports High Costs

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September 08, 2008

Ipswitch Messaging Division Spamometer Reports High Costs

By Eve Sullivan, TMCnet Editor

 

Did you know that spam makes up nearly 87 percent of global e-mails and costs businesses millions of dollars each year?
 
Ipswitch (News - Alert) Messaging Division, a developer of messaging solutions that provides standards-based e-mail service, recently announced the results of its Spamometer survey, indicating the high costs of spam.

 
The cost of spam now runs in the millions and anyone with a list of e-mail addresses and Internet access can span millions of people with a single click.
 
Spam messages waste employee time, strain the resources of enterprise mail servers, and burden IT administrators. With some 14.5 billion globally produced spam messages per day, some research estimates that spam makes up nearly 87 percent of global emails. Predictions estimate a monstrous 58 billion junk emails will be sent out within the next four years, costing companies about $198 billion annually.

For a company of about 1,000 employees, each employee receives an average of 40 e-mails per day. About 60 percent of those messages are spam-related and require about five seconds to delete.
 
Looking at employee productivity, the direct lost annual output per employee averages out to be somewhere around 12.17 hours. Therefore, spam is expected to cost a company of this size about $549 per employee per year.
 
When a user deletes a spam e-mail, it goes into their trash folder for a period of time, in consequence, consuming storage space on a server’s hard disks and backup tape. Spam takes up valuable Internet bandwidth that would otherwise be used for legitimate business. The bandwidth consumed means Internet connection runs slower, destroying the efficiency of your entire operation as commerce becomes ever-more reliant on Internet applications.
 
If you then calculate the technology expenses associated with spam, the amount of time IT support staff spends combating spam and amount of time wasted by the email servers in processing all the spam emails, anti-spam measures result in an annual price tag (News - Alert) for a company this size about $549,120.
 
As spammers grow in their cleverness, their means of inundating your life with spam continues to grow. The trend of phishing has become more widespread as spammers think up new ways to make a buck at your expense. Phishing involves the use of email that’s designed to look like a legitimate company has sent it.
 
It is sent out to millions of people in the hope of scamming them into revealing personal information that the spammer can use for identity theft. The cost of phishing and identity theft to victims now also runs in the billions.

Many spammers attach viruses to email and are programmed to give the spammer access to all the vital information stored on computers. A recent report estimated that the cost of repairs and replacement parts for damage caused by viruses has topped nearly $8 million over the past couple of years.

Ipswitch IMail Server delivers crucial communication and collaboration tools without the high acquisition and ongoing administrative costs of systems designed for large enterprises. IMail Server provides solid, scalable, standards-based email service with Web-based access and administration. For more information, visit http://www.imailserver.com


Eve Sullivan is a contributing editor for TMCnet, covering news in the IP communications, call center and customer relationship management industries. To read more of Eve's articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Eve Sullivan





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