atnewyork: Report: Spam Cost Corporate America $9B Last Year

In a study just released by Ferris Research of SanFrancisco, spam is said to have cost U.S. corporations $8.9 billion in 2002. This contrasts a recent report by Pew Internet which stated spam was not a big issue for business productivity.

The study found that spam to corporate accounts made up 15 to 20 percent of all email. Marten Nelson, a research analyst at Ferris states:

…the average corporate e-mail user receives between three and four spam messages a day, wasting an average of 4.5 seconds on each message. Over time, he said these figures add up to considerable lost productivity, particularly when accidentally deleted e-mails are taken into account.

Another study by Brightmail puts spam at 40% of all email by 2003 and Harris found in a study that most people want a legal remedy to the problem.