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January 1, 2003

Closing the Door

What price are organizations paying for receiving unwanted mail?

by Michael J. Hudson

Ask any group of CTOs which strategic business application means the most to their company, and they'll probably say email. Compared to many other Internet technologies, email is not only one of the oldest but also one of the simplest. With hardly any cost to your organization, you can instantly distribute advertisements, updates, and various other communications to your current and potential customers. And it lets your customers reach you just as quickly and effectively. However, this simplicity has also become email's biggest detriment. It lets almost anyone send you anything at anytime for almost no cost. This overabundance of unsolicited email has been branded the notorious term "spam."

Increasingly, spam is a major concern at the enterprise level. This concern isn't so much about controlling what email the organizations sends out, as that's easily controlled by opt-in policies. Instead, enterprises are finally realizing that receiving spam costs them time, money, and effort within their own organizations: Bandwidth is eaten up, mail server space is depleted, and your employees spend valuable time managing all the email in their inboxes. In fact, quite a few companies have had their mail servers completely brought down from the deluge of unwanted emails.

Paying the Price

Calculating exactly what spam is costing your enterprise on a daily basis is difficult, but according to research companies such as Computer Mail Services and Jupiter Media Metrix, the cost is considerable. For instance, Computer Mail Services shows that an organization of one thousand employees, each receiving at least 10 pieces of spam a day, can cost an organization almost $200,000 a year, and that's not including the cost of the equipment, software, and IT people that most companies must hire just to filter the junk mail. Even those attempts to filter spam are only moderately successful. To make things worse, Jupiter Media Metrix states that at a minimum, spam will double in the next couple of years. In fact, it estimates that the amount of spam in your email inbox will actually accelerate faster and faster every year. To add to the nightmare, America Online recently stated that almost 30 percent of all the email that goes through its system is unsolicited.

Besides expenses, other issues are of concern here, too. Some emails sell porn or touch on other risque subject matters that fly in the face of your company's Internet policies. Whether an employee actually clicks on a link in one of these emails by accident or on purpose, legal action is always a possibility. Also, spam is notorious for being the main mechanism for spreading computer viruses. More spam increases infection opportunities — and thus the amount of money spent fixing infected systems.

My point is simple: Spam costs organizations a lot of money, and the situation will only get worse. Email may be one of the most effective moneymaking technologies at your disposal, but it's slowly becoming one of the costliest technologies as well. And as with any issue, two sides need to be addressed: the sender and the receiver.

Dealing With Spam

As a sender, your company's obligation both legally and ethically is to respect your customer's privacy rights and set up opt-in policies that ensure that the email you send out is sent to people who want it. A number of email management packages are available that address this very issue. Most businesses ask their customers explicitly for permission to market or advertise to them by email.

Many major companies try to respect the privacy and the needs of their customers, but they usually aren't the troublemakers clogging up both personal and enterprise mail servers with spam. Because distributing a single message to hundreds of thousands of people is so easy and cheap, some people will abuse it. In addition, spammers often change domains, use fake return addresses, and craft appealing yet normal looking subject lines to lure victims into opening their messages. Worst of all, most laws, whether domestic or international, have little or no effect on stopping this constant flow of junk mail — most spam fits into the category of free speech.