Spam - It's Expensive!

Sending spam messages is virtually free for unethical advertisers, but it costs end-users a lot. In fact, it may be costing you a lot more than you think.

The most obvious way that spam costs money is that users end up wasting their time sorting through up to several hundred unsolicited email messages each day.

Certain versions of popular email clients like Microsoft Outlook include free spam filter enabled by default. The idea is that they only catch the most obvious spam, but still catch enough to make life easier for the user. Don't be fooled. These email filters can false positive just like any other. I see it happen often.

So what's the cost of a lost email message? That's hard to put a value on. If the message is just a legitimate newsletter, or a message to the entire company reminding everyone to clean up after making coffee - the value is presumably fairly low.

On the other hand, a missed email message could be something clearly important such as one from a potential new client. Who knows how many second-dates never happened due to a lost message. I know I've missed invitations to parties due to malfunctioning piece of software intended to block junk mail.

On the back end, spam costs IT departments in increased mail volume, and being forced to implement systems to mitigate the problem. Some popular server side software is open-source, and doesn't cost money directly. Time spent deploying a spam stopper system is however never free.

The frustrating thing is that email has actually gotten a lot less reliable since its creation. The internet and the SMTP email protocol were literally designed to maintain functionality if the country was under nuclear attack. Today, spammers seem to pose a larger threat.

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