11 April 2008 - 2:18Surprising Statistics On Managing Spam

An anti-spam company located in the UK, ClearMyMail, has recently issued a report that reveals how expensive fighting spam can actually be. Dealing with unwanted email messages received by sent by American spammers can cost small or medium-sized companies as much as £4.5 billion in terms of production costs.

The report continued to explain that many employees spent the equivalent of two full work days every year sorting, downloading, reviewing and discarding unwanted spam email messages. With approximately 6 seconds spent per each message received, small enterprises who include up to 10 different email accounts can count on approximately 160 hours of lost work time. Employees end up wasting valuable time trying to sort junk email messages from legitimate ones.

To minimize any work time lost managing spam email messages, the Managing Director of ClearMyMail, Dan Field, has several suggestions. Unwanted emails have increased with the growth and popularity of email programs and the Internet. Utilizing effective anti-spam software at your office, as well as in your home can reduce the problem. Well-protected computers make it harder for spammers to exploit them in order to send unsolicited emails. With less prospective victims to target, these spammers may be forced to adopt more conventional marketing techniques.

A recent analysis was performed by ClearMyMail to determine the countries generating the highest volume of unsolicited emails to Britain. The United States was at the head of the list with slightly less than half of all junk messages originating from that country with Britain, China, France and Germany close behind. At the other end of the spectrum, Japan generated one of the fewest numbers of targeted spam to the UK with less than 3%.

Many other reports from leading security providers such as Webroot have also confirmed the statistics contained in ClearMyMail’s recent analysis. The document entitled “State of Internet Security: Protecting Business Email” revealed that the growing number of malware and junk spam messages received can devastate computer networks in small or medium-sized companies as well as small nations.