Information Technology Industry: Spamalot

If time is money, the average e-mail user has spent a small fortune dealing with the No. 1 nuisance of modern communication: spam.

Even when users immediately delete junk e-mail, sifting through the sheer volume of the unsolicited messages can cost a staggering amount of time. For Joey Auer's company, it has equalled 1.37 years.

Auer, CEO of Diamond Data Systems, said the information technology company was facing a spam crisis of its own and decided to outsource e-mail filtering to Postini, a Google-owned Web security company.

In the five years Diamond Data Systems has used the service, Postini caught more than 5 million spam messages that would have flooded employee e-mail inboxes. Estimating an e-mail user spends about 15 seconds distinguishing and deleting an individual spam message, Auer calculates that the filter has saved the company 1.37 years of productivity.

"The hardest part is trying to figure out what's real mail and what isn't," Auer said, noting spammers have become increasingly deceptive in recent years.

Auer's company pays $350 per month for the Postini service, which he said is "one of the best decisions we've ever made for our company," though it doesn't catch everything. Auer said spam continues to account for about one out of every 15 e-mails he receives.

"Spam is to the point that it's getting everybody questioning all mail. It's really a growing problem," Auer said. "If we could put that energy into something else, it would be so much better."

Mark Lewis, president of the Louisiana Technology Council, agrees spam filters are generally very cost-effective for businesses.

"It's important to people, if they want to be as productive as they can, that they can make quick replies to e-mails and not have to go through all the spam," Lewis said.

However, Lewis said some filters are too strict, sending some legitimate e-mail into the spam folder and costing productivity time whenever employees have to undo the work of the filter.

"There might be some critical e-mails come in that you don't want to miss," Lewis said. "That's a balance that every company has to consider when looking into spam filters."

In addition to the cost of eliminating unsolicited mail from inboxes and retrieving real mail from spam filters, companies also have to ensure their own messages aren't marked as spam.

CommTech Industries President Darryl d'Aquin has worked with several clients whose e-mails were mistakenly being marked as spam.

"We've had clients, just regular clients, whose domains got on a blacklist so no one was getting their e-mails," d'Aquin said. "Think of the productivity losses there if you rely heavily on e-mail, which most businesses do these days."

E-mails that include a number of graphics and highlighted links may appear as spam, d'Aquin said, suggesting users minimize the use of these features to ensure delivery of their e-mails. Users who send out mass e-mails, such as newsletters, might also have their messages mislabeled as spam, which can be avoided if recipients add the sender to their "friendly" list in their e-mail address books.

But as Internet users become savvier, spammers are also becoming craftier. Even with increasingly sophisticated anti-spam programming, spam continues to be extremely prevalent. Spam accounted for 92.3 percent of all e-mails sent in the first quarter of 2008, according to a study released by Sophos software company.

Spammers often gather contact by "crawling" Web site for e-mail addresses, scanning for the @ symbol and underlined text or by illegally purchasing contact lists. And because there are no physical resources involved, spammers can continue to be so widespread.

The federal government, under the Controlling the Assault of Non- Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003, is responsible for prosecuting spammers. Though there have been several success stories -- most recently, a federal judge's ruling that two spammers owe $230 million to MySpace -- many remain skeptical legal ramifications will effectively deter spam.

Even if the federal government cracked down on spammers, Lewis said a great deal of spam originates outside of the United States.

"They're worldwide, so how do you prosecute someone in France that's sending spam to people in the United States?" Lewis said.

Besides the economic and legal impacts of unsolicited commercial e-mail, some fear the social consequence of spam is much greater than a simple annoyance. Noting the importance of e-mail as a form of communication, Auer said spam has presented a major setback.

"Most people don't trust e-mail anymore," Auer said. "It took a long time for us to get people to trust e-mail and now (spam) has taken us backward."

Copyright 2008 Dolan Media Newswires
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.