http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=528&e=7&cid=528&u=/ap/
20030103/ap_on_hi_te/techbits_spam
Study: Spam Cost U.S. Corporations $8.9B
Fri Jan 3, 7:51 AM ET
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By ANICK JESDANUN, AP Internet Writer
NEW YORK - All those junk e-mail messages may promise instant wealth,
but they can be quite painful to the bottom line.
A study to be released Monday attempts to quantify the annual cost of
spam: $8.9 billion for U.S. corporations, $2.5 billion for European
businesses and another $500 million for U.S. and European service
providers.
Marten Nelson, an analyst at Ferris Research, says that while most spam
can be deleted in one second, occasionally someone is duped into
clicking the message. It also takes time to track down legitimate
messages mistakenly tossed by inaccurate spam filters.
Figuring it takes 4.4 seconds on average to deal with a message, the
messages add up to $4 billion in lost productivity for U.S. businesses
each year.
Another $3.7 billion comes from companies having to buy more powerful
servers and more bandwidth as well as divert staff time. The rest is
attributable to companies providing help-desk support to annoyed users.
The costs are less in Europe because spam isn't as big of a problem,
Nelson said. But in future calculations, Nelson said he may have to add
the costs of wireless spam, a growing problem in Europe as text
messaging gets more popular.
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