Spam is Expensive

Tracking the exact cost of spam may be impossible. Here's a list of a few of the ways spam can impact financially.

Most obviously, it wastes the time of the person who receives it. Some users have mitigated this by purchasing junk email filters, but they cost money also.

Prior to making it to the user, it uses up space and resources belonging to that user's service provider. Again, this can be reduced by using software to filter mail on the server. Frequently the software is free to license, but it costs money to deploy and administer. In addition to mail server resources, the networks themselves are also burdened.

At a larger scale, a portion of the traffic on major internet backbones is spam. Some research has indicated that the percentage of all traffic isn't that large. File sharing in fact uses far more bandwidth.

With Zombie spam, it steals resources from the user of the computer that got infected. It also usurps bandwidth both on the local network and on the upstream service providers network.

Another unaccounted for impact of Zombie spam is the cleanup. Zombie software is no different from any other computer exploit. The only recommended course of action after being infected is to "burn" the system to the ground. Anything else may potentially leave backdoors open for future exploitation. Formatting and reinstalling a computer can both leave the user offline, and require a full day from the resident system administrator. The costs associated with this can go into the thousands per incident.

SpamButcher can be used as Outlook anti-spam software as well as with most other mail programs that work with POP3.

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