Switchfast Blog: The Future of IT
Spam can be more than just annoying
Wednesday, June 03, 2009 by Michael Holley
According to Symantec, spam now accounts for
90.4% of all email worldwide. Apart from being irritating, the
practical implications of such a massive nuisance are various:
- Spam provides a significant productivity drain to all worker's
with email. Commtouch concludes that it takes the average employee
five seconds to open, read, and discard a typical spam email. Based on Commtouch's calculations, a single
employee can cost his or her company hundreds (or even thousands)
of dollars a year in lost productivity simply by reacting to spam
email. Add the cost of storage and the time it takes for each
employee to re-focus on the task at hand after an interruption, and
that figure multiplies.
- The creation and transmission of spam email is extremely bad
for the environment. McAfee estimates that spam accounted for 62
trillion junk emails in 2008, requiring 33 billion kilowatt-hours
to send and receive. The amount of carbon waste produced from that
electricity is the equivalent to the emissions from driving a car
around the world - 1.6 million times. That works out to be both a
big chunk of pollution and a big hit to the electricity bill.
- As online malware and viruses continue to evolve at a
terrifying rate, email spam remains a favorite channel for
spreading malicious infection and phishing personal information.
Information thieves are becoming increasingly skilled at tricking
their victims into clicking links, often hiding links to malicious
websites or downloads under the guise of an "Unsubscribe"
button.
With email unlikely to be supplanted as the preferred medium for
business communication any time in the near future, our spam woes
are likely to continue to grow. Unfortunately, the time has come
for all businesses to take a good look at spam policy and
prevention, both for the sake of the company and the environment.
There are lots of great software packages available that do an
excellent job of reducing the onslaught, but more needs to be done
on the user side to ensure that this epidemic is contained. Things
as simple as encouraging your employees to continually update their
junk mail settings or set aside specific times to deal with email
exclusively instead of intermittently can go a long way in
increasing productivity.
Best,
Michael Holley
Switchfast Technologies
Chicago IT Consulting
& Support
Rochester
IT Consulting & Support
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